Now I ask you plainly, “Can you expect the 40 clergy of Lambeth (for that, according to the ‘Clergy List,’ is their number) to cope with this unassisted? What are the 23 clergy of Southwark to do unassisted among a population of whom 68 per cent. do not attend service?” In saying this I am not underrating the labours of Nonconformists; but while we thank God for the honest hearty work of many among them, we have no business to take that work into calculation, if we want thereby to lessen our responsibility as members of the National Church. Now you see the extent of the evil. How can it be remedied? By multiplying our bishops, no doubt, and providing more clergy in each parish. That will do good; but it will be of no avail without a working laity. If the working classes are to be brought to church, you must bring them; and once brought, we must keep them. I want to tell you why you must bring them, and how you must bring them. You must bring them, because many of them seem to think that we talk to them in a professional way; we are a sort of ecclesiastical barristers holding a brief for the Bible. It is an unjust estimate; but there are many unjust estimates in this world. Therefore we want laymen who will go from house to house—who will conduct prayer-meetings and Bible classes, and cottage lectures—who will come and say to the members of the classes alienated from the services of the sanctuary, “I come to tell you about the religion of Christ, because I have found it helpful to myself. I come to ask you to seek pardon from Him, because I have found it myself. I come to ask you to frame your life according to the Gospel of Christ, because I find it makes my own heart happy and my own life bright with the sunshine of God’s love!” We want such helpers as these, and they must be laymen, and laymen of different classes. “I proceed . . .,” writes an earnest clergyman, who worked at one time in Manchester, “to indicate what appears to me to be one of the greatest causes of the evils for which our large towns have gained such an unhappy notoriety. It is needless to say that I allude to the separation of classes—a gigantic wrong, to which it is not too much to say may be traced all the physical and moral degradation and spiritual destitution over which so many philanthropists lament, and for which so few seem prepared to offer a remedy.” [13] We want to “gather of every kind,” to recruit from every class for the great army of Lay-helpers. Those who promote the work have no fear about this. Whatever God puts it into a man’s heart to do, that let him do in due subordination to the Church’s primary laws. Will you resist this call?
This brings me to another point—the necessity of giving “to every man his work.” Each of our Lay-helpers should have his own definite work assigned. It never answers to stray over the whole field of possible work, and happily there is scope for every variety of natural temperament. One is fond of teaching—then there is the Sunday school and the night school. Another has from God the gift of exhortation—“let him wait on exhortation” in the Bible class and the prayer meeting. Another is “a son of consolation,” and has the precious gift of tender sympathy for the needs and sufferings of others, and for him the sick-room and the home of poverty are the ground on which he has to do his battle for his Master. As a district visitor and an almoner there is plenty for him to do. Yet another has a very practical turn of mind, and likes “business” after “business hours,” and for him the penny bank and the provident fund afford a scope for the exercise of those talents, which, equally with the others, he has received from God’s hand. Thus, you see, there is scope for every one.
A few words now about the value of the Diocesan Association as a connecting link among lay-helpers. We are all quite alive to the value of combinations in political and social affairs. That “union is strength,” is a recognised maxim, except in religion, where, above all things, it is true. The Diocesan Association of Lay-helpers set out, if I mistake not, with a twofold purpose. It desired, as far as possible, to consolidate lay-help in the diocese, so that by united prayer, converse, and communion, those engaged in God’s work in this great city might be brought face to face with one another. It desired also to stimulate and to distribute lay-work—to stimulate it by being able to show how many there were actually at work already—to distribute it, by sending the superfluous wealth of lay-help in a well-ordered wealthy parish, to supplement the poverty and the difficulties of the destitute districts. In its work of consolidating and stimulating, we may thank God that the Association has met with a fair measure of encouragement. The work of distribution has proved one of greater difficulty. I am, however, very far from being without hope that it may be compassed in greater degree, when the needs of the East-end and the poor transpontine parishes are more widely known. The Twelve Days’ Mission brought us some help from educated laymen in suburban districts, and I can not only testify personally to the value of that help, but I am thankful to say, that in more than one case it has established a link which it would take a great power to sunder. The real aim of our Association then is to put earnest laymen in the way of getting work by giving them, on their first arrival in London, introductions to clergymen in need of help. It attempts no restraint on the parish priest. It merely offers you the privilege of feeling that in your work you are at one with the chief pastor of your diocese, and that you have the comfort of knowing that he prays for and sanctions your work. In a less degree, it is the same blessing which the clergy have from Episcopal supervision, and with you, as with us, if rightly valued, will act as a bond of union.
Before concluding, let me say that I believe this to be one of the most important ecclesiastical movements of modern times. It is occupying the thoughts of some of the most distinguished clergymen and laymen of our day, and formed the subject of the prayer of the Archbishop of this province, when he lay upon what we then feared was the bed of death. The next few years will probably see the question, whether we are to continue the National Church of this land, fought out in our legislature. If we make good our claim, it will not be by the prestige of our historical position or by the associations of the past. It will be by the living work of the present that we must elect to be tested, and if our laity realise their responsibility in time, I firmly believe that all will yet be well. Remember, however, that our present proportion of lay-workers is miserably small, and that every lay-helper has need not only to work himself, but to be a kind of missionary to persuade others to work—a recruiting sergeant for the great army, which comes “to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty.” Not only must we all, clergy and laity, work, but we must say that, God being our helper, we will not rest till every churchman, whatever his social position, feels that he has a responsibility, a work and a stake in our National Church.
Note.—I cannot resist calling the reader’s attention to the following words of my friend the Rev. W. D. Maclagan, in his essay in The Church and the Age (Murray).
“The Associations and Unions, Guilds and Confraternities, Sisterhoods and Brotherhoods, which are springing up every day, are surely not only testimonies to a great truth so long forgotten, that every member of the Body of Christ has its special powers and special duties, but also preparation for the recognition and realisation of another truth equally ignored, that the Church itself ought really to be one vast Association of Lay-helpers, one glorious Brotherhood and Sisterhood, combined in one, one great Confraternity of Faith, Hope, and Love, labouring together with Christ in the extension of His Kingdom.”
CHISWICK PRESS:—PRINTED BY WHITTINGHAM AND WILKINS,
TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE.
FOOTNOTES
[11a] See “Sermons on the Poorer Classes of London, preached before the University of Oxford,” by Robert Gregory, M.A., Canon of St. Paul’s, and Vicar of St. Mary the Less, Lambeth.
[11b] “Only one-sixth of the population of London attend Church.”—Christian at Work (N. Y. Paper) Dec. 1869. Such is the American estimate of our religion.