LAY WORK IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND
Dissenters have taught Churchmen a lesson, which they are, at any rate in our time, not slow to learn. The theory of the Church has been up to our own day almost exclusively sacerdotal. Its parochial system is, as Canon Champneys termed it upon one occasion, “a great allotment system,” and to work that system there was the priest with his assistant deacon. That time has gone. There was time also when it was quite sufficient to argue against anything that it was a custom practised among the Dissenters. The reader of Wilberforce’s Life will remember how anxious was that good man that the Dissenters should not take up the question of sending the Gospel to India, as if they did he feared their activity would put a stop to all Church action in the matter. It is not so now. The pressure of public opinion, the dreadful mass of heathenism which had grown up while the Church slumbered, the growing influence of Dissent, the increasing spirituality of the clergy, the zeal and liberality of their people, have in London completely altered the position of the Church of England. Never were her services so well attended, never were her clergy more useful than now. At the West-end the Church is the fashion. In the East, where the poverty is too great to admit of the existence of a church on Dissenting principles, the Church is in some parishes the only place of worship, and the Church clergyman the only religious teacher. I have heard of one parish where the utmost that the clergyman could get for religious and charitable purposes from his wealthiest parishioners was but ten shillings; and of another, where the clergyman spent five hundred a year in charity. It is in these parts of London that the Church is most useful, most successful, most untiring in its operations, most lavish of its spiritual and temporal good. The laity give munificently. For example, the Countess of Aberdeen gives three hundred a year for the support of a clergyman in the East, who preaches in a church built by Lord Haddo; the Marquis of Salisbury has subscribed 300l. for a similar purpose; and the clergy, whether vicars or curates, devote themselves unremittingly to the performance of their sacred duties. Under these circumstances they find themselves unequal to the task, and appeal to the laity for help.
The Association of Lay Helpers for the Diocese of London was formed in the year 1865, and “readers” have been admitted in the chapel of London House with a form of service drawn up for the purpose in the form following: —
John, by Divine permission, Bishop of London, to our beloved and approved in Christ, A. B., Greeting: We do, by these presents, give unto you our Commission to act as Reader in the parish of C, within our Diocese and jurisdiction, on the nomination of the Rev. D. E., Rector [or Vicar] of the same, and do authorize you, subject to his approval, to read Prayers and to read and explain the Holy Scriptures in the School thereof, or in other rooms within the parish, and generally to render aid to the Incumbent in all ministrations which do not strictly require the service of a Minister in Holy Orders. And we further authorize you to render similar aid in other Parishes in our Diocese, at the written request, in each case, of the Incumbent. And we hereby declare that this our Commission shall remain valid until it shall be revoked by us or our successors (whether mero motu, or at the written request of the said D. E.), or until a fresh admission to the said parish of C. shall have been made. And so we commend you to Almighty God, Whose blessing we humbly pray may rest upon you and your work. Given under our hand and seal, &c.
At present the Association consists of 44 lawyers and medical men, 141 clerks, 48 mechanics and labourers, and 156 ranged under the head of miscellaneous. They aim to strengthen the hands of laymen already at work by bringing them into closer relationship with the Bishop and with one another, and to call out more lay help by making known the kind of work in which the clergy want assistance. Recently the Association has been very active on the subject, and has held many meetings in all parts of the metropolis. At these meetings undoubtedly much good has been done; a distinguished layman has taken the chair; a paper carefully prepared has been read upon the subject, and then a discussion of more or less interest and value has ensued.
Great care is taken in the appointment of suitable agents. They must be communicants sanctioned by the Bishop; a register of the names and addresses of the members is kept, showing what description of work each unemployed member may be willing to undertake, and also of the place and nature of the work in which each unemployed member is engaged. Upon the application of incumbents, members of the Association are put into communication with them, with a view to such arrangements for lay assistance in parochial work as may be mutually agreed upon. Once in every year the members attend Divine service and receive the Holy Communion together. Once, at least, in every year a meeting of the members is held under the presidency of the Bishop if possible, in order to consult together upon one or more of the various branches of work in which they are engaged, and to make such regulations as may be found necessary or expedient. I hear also of the formation of Parochial Associations of Lay Helpers which hold monthly or occasional meetings of a desirable character. The executive committee of the Association is appointed yearly by the Bishop.
The work to be done is various. At all the meetings which I have attended I have found the principal stress laid upon house-to-house visitation and mission-house services. It has been found that the poor have a reluctance to attend the church, but they will attend a mission-house service, and to preach and pray at such place lay help is urgently required. Other subjects specified are teaching in Sunday-schools and getting children to attend, conducting Bible-classes, tract distribution, seeking out the unbaptized and unconfirmed, encouraging the newly confirmed to come to Holy Communion, and inducing the poor to attend church. Under the head of week-evening work such subjects are indicated as teaching in night and ragged schools, management of working-men’s clubs and youths’ institutes, assistance at popular lectures, penny readings, and other means of recreation, attendance at penny banks, clothing funds, and school and parochial libraries, visiting the poor, assisting in church services. Day work is much the same. Other subjects not already mentioned are superintending the distribution of relief, reading and speaking to working men on religious subjects in workshops; collecting and canvassing for funds for parochial and mission purposes, and acting as secretaries to parochial institutions and religious and charitable societies. Especial stress is laid upon the clergy being relieved of their secular duties as relieving officers. It is felt that clergy laden with an infinity of secular work, essential to the good of the parish and the carrying out of their plans, are thus more or less incapacitated for the performance of the higher functions of their office. When we think what are the manifold duties of the clergy, it is no wonder that sermons made to represent original compositions, and which may be read as such, meet with a ready sale. Parochially London has grown wonderfully of late. The census of 1861, for instance, enumerates twenty-three parochial districts as formed out of the old parish of Kensington. Bishop Blomfield consecrated in all no less than 198 churches during the twenty-eight years of his episcopate, of which no less than 107 were in London.
Lay organization may be said to have commenced but recently. The first District Visiting Society of which I have heard, writes Mr. Bosanquet, was founded in connexion with St. John’s Chapel, Bedford Row, of which Daniel Wilson, afterwards Bishop of Calcutta, was visitor. The Parochial Women Mission Fund was established in 1860. This association does not send its agents into any parish without a written application from the incumbent, who selects both the agent and her lady superintendent. There are now about 100 agents at work in London, acting chiefly in the capacity of Bible-women. For the young men connected with the Church there is a Church of England Young Men’s Society in Fleet Street, with fifteen branches in London and the suburbs; of 200 members on the books, more than half are engaged as teachers in Sunday-schools or other lay work. Then there is the Metropolitan Visiting and Relief Association, 21, Regent Street, formed in 1843, to distribute the contributions of charitable persons in such parts of the town as most need them, by means of the clergy and their district visitors. For that part of London which is in the diocese of Winchester there is the South London Visiting and Relief Association. How well laymen can work is understood in the neighbourhood of Drury Lane, where more than 500 of the lowest and the poorest in that district may be seen any Sunday afternoon at two Bible-classes conducted by laymen. Another lay agency in operation is the Workhouse Visiting Society.
In spite of all these organizations the Church of England as regards London has not yet fulfilled her mission. The harvest is plentiful, the labourers are few. Clergymen in the East say they would be glad of lay help from the West; but it does not come. In some parts of London there are parishes containing from 15,000 to 30,000 people, and in such a clergyman is almost unable to do his duty, in spite of his curates and paid lay agents. In most cases the number of visitors is quite insufficient. Mr. Bosanquet refers to a friend of his who had told him that some months after entering on a very poor cure in the south of London he had twenty-eight districts for visitors, but that twenty-seven were hopelessly vacant, and that the twenty-eighth was taken by his wife. This reminds me that some of the ladies of the clergy, especially in the East and poorer districts, labour as energetically as their husbands. I have heard of one lady who has two sewing-classes, with a hundred women in each. Commander Dawson, conference secretary of the Association of Lay Helpers, looks forward to the time when every communicant will be one of the agents of the society, thus stimulating his fellows, and giving fresh life and courage to his clergyman. It is clear when this consummation is achieved the Church of England, whether established or not, will shine with a saintly lustre which has never yet been hers.
Let me give a sketch of
AN EVANGELICAL PREACHER,
“You must go and hear the Church Spurgeon,” said an intelligent lady, residing not a hundred miles from Highbury New Park, to the writer.
“Who is he?” we asked.
“The Rev. Gordon Calthrop,” was the reply. “He preaches in a temporary iron church, St. Augustine’s, Highbury New Park.”
Soon afterwards, on a certain Sunday, we made our way to the church in question. There was very little difficulty in finding it out. As you enter Highbury New Park, leaving Dr. Edmond’s new church on the right, you come into a region of broad roads and handsome villas, into which poverty, which has an unpleasant knack of pushing itself where it is not wanted, actually seems ashamed to intrude. In these houses, almost countryfied, standing in the midst of well-trimmed lawns, shaded by leafy shrubs, between which flowers of the richest beauty bud and blossom, only rich people and people apparently well-to-do dwell, and they all attend at Mr. Calthrop’s church. Follow any of them, as on a Sunday morning the hour of service draws nigh, and bells far and near are calling men to prayer, and you find yourself at St. Augustine’s. Close by, a handsome ecclesiastical structure is rapidly rising, which is to hold 1400 people. That is the permanent church, the foundation-stone of which was laid by the Bishop of London, and where, it is hoped and believed, Mr. Calthrop may labour for many years to come. As it is, he has been preaching in this iron church, which will seat about nine hundred, for the last five years. He came there a stranger, fearful of the future, doubting what would be the issue. The church was quite a new one. The neighbourhood had been but recently built on, but he came with a heart full of zeal, with an experience ripe and varied, and in a little while it was apparent to himself and his friends that the step he had taken was fully justified by the result. Now he has a crowded church, more than 250 communicants, and a people ever ready to respond to his appeal, and rich in that charity without which a religious profession is but little better than sounding brass. The sacrament money at St. Augustine’s, as they have no poor of their own, is distributed amongst those of neighbouring churches. One of the noticeable features in connexion with the place is the attendance of young men from the neighbouring College of St. John’s. For the benefit of my readers let me add, that what was Highbury College is now a place of training for ministerial work in connexion with the Church of England – of young men who have not had, owing to unavoidable circumstances, the benefit of a University education, but who nevertheless are the right stuff out of which to make useful preachers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. On Sundays they find employment as Sunday-school teachers in various parts of the metropolis; also on that day, with a view to future usefulness, they go to hear such eminent clergymen as may be preaching in the City or the West-end, but mostly they attend at St. Augustine’s, and under Mr. Calthrop’s preaching they prepare for the great work themselves.
Nor do I know that they could have a better model. Mr. Calthrop is not the Church of England Spurgeon. I am not aware that the Church of England has a Spurgeon. I know none of the other Christian churches of our day that have. It is only once in an age that a Mr. Spurgeon appears, but Mr. Calthrop has no need to fear comparison with Mr. Spurgeon or any one else. Personally, he is much smaller than the far-famed Baptist orator Mr. Spurgeon, and in figure and face very much resembles the late Douglas Jerrold. His voice is one of wonderful sweetness and power, and as he reads the Liturgy of his Church you feel that with him it is no empty form, to be repeated parrot-like and with railway speed, but the voice of a people humbled on account of sin, and standing trusting, yet trembling, in the presence of their God. Exquisitely can he render all its pathos, all its tenderness, all its sorrow, all its fulness of exultation, all its ecstasy of Christian hope. From the reading-desk to the pulpit the transition is easy and natural. At a distance there is something youthful in his look; but in his grey hair, in his face lined with thought, in his eye, which seems ever looking far off, as if here was not the boundary of his horizon, as if it had realized something of the glory which is to come; you see that already golden youth has past, and that you have before you one who has attained to the strength and steadiness, and ripeness and experience, of Christian manhood. He will not detain you long, nor will he weary you with learning, nor will he aim to dazzle the intellect and neglect the heart. In language of poetical simplicity will he unfold and illustrate his text, and force home on the hearts and consciences of all, its lessons. There is nothing of the pretension of the priest about him, nor does he delight in the terrors of the law. Evidently he is the servant of one whose yoke is easy, and whose burden is light; and such is his freshness and originality, and such is his careful preparation for the pulpit, and such the naturalness of his delivery, that the more you hear him the more you like him. Much of his ministerial work is done at his own house, amongst the young people whom he collects there in his Bible-classes, which are largely attended. For this work he seems eminently fitted by a refinement of manner, not so much, I should fancy, the result of training, as of the natural instinct of a kindly heart. The North of London is favoured as regards clergymen, and Mr. Calthrop is a favourable specimen of his class. There are none around him more eloquent, more laborious, more successful. A recent American writer points to the chaplainships founded and supported in all the places of fashionable resort on the Continent as a proof of the amazing energy, and wealth, and power of the English Church. I would rather point to such churches as St. Augustine’s, where a pastor is maintained in affluence, and a church crowded, and real good accomplished, without one farthing but what is raised by the free-will offerings of the people.
Outside his own immediate circle Mr. Calthrop has laboured with much effect. As a platform speaker he is very effective. As an out-of-door preacher he at one time greatly distinguished himself. He was also one of the first to take his share in the work of preaching in theatres; and one of the best accounts of one – a service at the Britannia, which was reprinted in almost all the religious journals at the time – was from his pen. A little while ago he had the honour of preaching in Westminster Abbey. He was before that one of the preachers in the special services at St. Paul’s. Perhaps the greatest compliment in this respect paid him was the appointing him University preacher at his own university – that of Cambridge – a few years since. To have occupied that pulpit is a memorable event in any clergyman’s life.
Little more need be said. Mr. Calthrop was born in London, and educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. He at one time had thoughts of studying for the law, but ultimately the pulpit became the object of his choice. As a curate he originally laboured at Reading; he moved thence to Brighton, where he was curate to the late Rev. Mr. Elliott, author of a work still known in theological circles – the “Horæ Apocalypticæ.” Six years of his ministerial life were spent at Cheltenham, and thence he removed with his wife and family to what was then a new and untried sphere of labour. The wealth and material prosperity around him seem not to have impaired his devotedness. Very possibly they have opened to him fresh fields of usefulness; for if ever plain preaching was required for rich men, it is in the day in which we live. It is to the credit of Mr. Calthrop that he realizes this fact, and sees in the Gospel he proclaims a message for the richest of the rich as well as for the poorest of the poor.
A book might be written about Church Life. I can only say Dr. Temple tells us, that such commands as those in Leviticus as to tattooing, disfiguring the person, or wearing a blue fringe, should be sanctioned by divine authority, is utterly irreconcileable with our present feelings. The Bible is before all things the written voice of the congregation, writes Dr. Rowland Williams. The Pentateuch was not written by Moses. The Psalms do not bear witness to the Messiah. The prophecies are histories. Justification means peace of mind, or sense of the Divine approval. Regeneration is an awakening of the forces of the soul. Reason is the fulfilment of the love of God. The kingdom of God is the revelation of Divine Will in our thoughts and lives. The incarnation is purely spiritual. In London pulpits the preacher best known and most identified with Broad Church theology is Professor Jowett, whose great theme is that eternal punishment is inconsistent with all that we can conceive of the requirements of justice or the character of God. Dean Stanley says no clergyman believes the Athanasian Creed, and treats many parts of the Bible as mythical. Of Father Ignatius and his eccentricities it is needless to speak.
The following statistics will interest many: – “There is a weekly celebration of the Holy Communion at 169 churches, more than one-fourth; daily celebration at 20, nearly one-thirtieth; early morning celebration at 159, one-fourth; evening celebration at 97, nearly one-sixth; afternoon celebration at 5; choral celebration at 63, one-tenth; saints’-day services at 198, nearly one-third; daily service at 132, more than one-fifth; no weekday service at 104, one-sixth; full choral service at 128, more than one-fifth; and partly choral service at 115, nearly one-fifth; giving a proportion of nearly half where the psalms are chanted; surpliced choirs at 137, more than one-fifth; paid choirs at 88, nearly one-seventh; voluntary choirs at 231, more than one-third. Gregorian tones are used exclusively for chanting at 46, one-fourteenth. The weekly offertory is the rule at 128, nearly one-fifth. There are free but appropriated seats at 141, nearly one-fourth; free and open seats at 65, more than one-tenth. The Eucharistic vestments are worn at 20, being one church in every 31; incense is used at 7, one-nineteenth; the surplice is worn in the pulpit at 83, more than one-eighth; and 26 churches are open daily for private prayer.”
Dr. Sherlock, afterwards Bishop of Bangor, in his “Test Act Vindicated,” published in the year 1718, tells us that in the year 1676, upon a calculation that was made, the Nonconformists of all sorts, including Papists as well as others, were found to be in proportion to the members of the Church of England as one to twenty. That this is not the case now shows how the Church of England has misused her opportunities, or else that her claims have been rejected by the nation at large.