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Title: Prospects of the Church of England - a sermon
Author: Vaughan, C. J. (Charles John)
Language: English
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ENGLAND***
Transcribed from the 1868 Bell and Daldy edition by David Price.
_PROSPECTS OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND_.
A SERMON
PREACHED IN THE
PARISH CHURCH OF DONCASTER,
ON SUNDAY EVENING, AUGUST 30, 1868,
ON THE OCCASION OF THE FIRST OFFERTORY IN
LIEU OF A CHURCH-RATE.
* * * * *
BY
C. J. VAUGHAN, D.D.
VICAR OF DONCASTER.
* * * * *
_Published by Request_.
* * * * *
LONDON:
BELL AND DALDY, YORK STREET,
COVENT GARDEN.
1868.
PREFACE.
THIS Sermon was preached in the common course of the Sunday Services, and
without any idea of its being noticed beyond the circle of its hearers.
As, however, the interest of the subject, far more, certainly, than
anything in its treatment, has called some attention to the Sermon since
its delivery, I have thought it right to comply with the request of some
respected members of the Congregation, and commit it to the chances of
publication. In so doing, I have made no attempt to supply its many
deficiencies, nor have I even removed from its opening sentences an
allusion to other Sermons of which it formed the continuation.
DONCASTER,
_September_ 4, 1868.
A SERMON.
Why repair ye not the breaches of the house?
2 _Kings_ xii. 7.
THE House is the Temple. We have travelled, therefore, from the north to
the south of Palestine, from the capital of Israel to the capital of
Judah. As soon as the two great prophets, Elijah and Elisha, are no
more, the interest of the story centres no longer in the kingdom of the
ten tribes: it reverts to the stock of David, and finds its latest gleam
of beauty and glory in the national reformations and personal pieties of
Hezekiah and Josiah.
Elisha is not yet dead: but he has ceased to occupy the sacred page after
the anointing of Jehu, until he appears once more, and finally, in the
striking incidents of his death-bed and his grave.
Meanwhile that Baal-worship which Jehu has extirpated in the north, has
found refuge in the southern realm, under the fostering patronage of a
daughter of the house of Ahab. Jehoram, son of Jehoshaphat, had married
a second Jezebel, in the person of her daughter Athaliah. Jehoram
reigned eight years, and was succeeded by his son Ahaziah, who perished,
as we read last Sunday, with his uncle Jehoram, son of Ahab, king of
Israel, under the hand of the avenging Jehu, the scourge of God.
Then Athaliah, seeing that her son was dead, determined to reign for
herself. She was one of those masculine spirits, one of those heroines
of pride and crime, who can brook no puny, infant sovereigns; she could
not live to be ruled by a grandchild; and so she took the decisive step
of _destroying all the seed royal_, after which, it is said, _Athaliah_,
late the queen-mother, _did reign over the land_.
But it is seldom, on this earth—which is still God’s, however much, at
certain times, the devil may claim it for his own—it is seldom, I say,
that crime is quite prosperous, quite thorough: something is forgotten in
every murder, which rises at last into a testimony; and some one, some
little babe perhaps, is overlooked in every massacre; there is a sister,
it may be, or an aunt—as it was here—whose heart yearns over that little
cradle, and who contrives to rescue its unconscious occupant to be the
heir of the throne and the avenger of the family.
Such was King Joash; rescued by his aunt Jehosheba from her own mother’s
fury, and by her hidden, during six years of earliest childhood, in one
of the chambers of the Temple—for she was the wife of Jehoiada, the High
Priest.
In his seventh year, there was a conspiracy, a revolution, and a
coronation. The little King was _shown_ to the people in the
temple-court, the crown was put upon him, the testimony (or book of the
law) was given him, he was made and he was anointed, and all the people
_clapped their hands_, _and said_, _God save the king_. And when the
usurping grandmother, attracted by the tumult, came upon the scene, with
the cry, _Treason_, _treason_! the High Priest _had her forth without the
ranges_; she was allowed to pass unmolested through the crowd and through
the guard, till she was outside the consecrated ground; and there she was
slain.
This was the curious, memorable entrance of the little King Joash upon a
reign of forty years in Jerusalem. You can imagine how that scene must
have printed itself on his memory. It must have given a strange, a
solemn importance to the house of God, and all its belongings. The
recollection of that sudden command, given by the High Priest, his uncle,
preserver, and king-maker, _Have her forth without the ranges_, must have
written upon his heart an indelible impression of the sacredness of that
spot which could thus arrest revolution and make the most righteous doom
impious. You will not wonder, therefore, if his young thoughts were
first turned, as a Sovereign, to the wretched, the dilapidated state of
the Temple itself. It appears that, on the one hand, there were long,
careless arrears of temple income: people had grown indifferent to the
payment of their most unquestionable dues to the Altar and the
Priesthood: on the other hand, there was a positive as well as a negative
defalcation; for on that sacred height of Mount Zion there had arisen,
side by side with God’s Temple, a rival shrine of Baal; and the
idolatress Athaliah, with her creatures, seems to have taken from the one
to build the other: in short, the very foundation and wall-stones of the
Holy House had been gradually pillaged and carted away, and the House
itself stood a monument at once of modern shame and ancestral glory,
needing the builder’s hand to restore it to decency and even to safety.
As for the vessels of the House—all those costly priceless treasures with
which the wealth and piety of king Solomon had filled it—they had gone,
bit by bit, to buy off the annoyances of powerful neighbours: King
Rehoboam, at the very outset of the schism, had given Shishak Solomon’s
shields of gold, and replaced them with pitiful shameful shields of
brass: it was too late, or too soon, to think of ornament—the present
question was one entirely of use and substantial repair.
It seems that even the efforts and injunctions of the young King were for
many years ineffectual. In the twenty-third year of his reign the old
breaches were still unrepaired. It is astonishing—men would not believe
till they had tried it—how long it takes to re-awaken one slumbering
conscience, or indeed to make one desired work of reparation, be it never
so small—we see it ourselves at this moment in a side-chapel of this
Church—a fact accomplished. And so King Joash, stung to the soul by the
disappointment of his own good intentions, summons before him Jehoiada
the Priest, his own uncle and benefactor, and expostulates with him and
his brother-priests in the words of the text, _Why repair ye not the
breaches of the House_?
And the result of it is, that, instead of leaving the money received for
this purpose in the unaccountable hands of the Priests, they have a chest
made, with a hole bored in the lid of it, and set beside the altar; and
the Priests are to put all the money which they receive into this chest;
and then they have a civil auditor, the King’s scribe, a sort of
Secretary of State, to act with the High Priest in counting and applying
the sums thus accumulated, and so it passes direct into the hands of the
carpenters and builders, and the work is done.
My brethren, you will all perceive why I chose this text this evening,
when we are making our first collection, under altered circumstances, for
the more substantial part of our annual expenditure upon this Church. It
is true, this House of Prayer is not in all respects like Solomon’s
Temple: I mean that, in Christian times, it is not the fabric, it is the
Congregation, which is the Temple or House of God. Nevertheless, without
a fabric a congregation is a rope of sand: there must be a place if there
is to be a worship: and therefore the distinction, though true, may be
overstrained; and I am not afraid to apply to this Church, the building I
mean, the expostulation of King Joash with Jehoiada and the Priests, _Why
repair ye not the breaches of the House_?
I have not, indeed, one moment’s anxiety as to your response. You love
_the place_, this place at least, _where God’s honour dwelleth_. I
believe that your periodical offerings on this monthly occasion will be
almost, or perhaps quite, equal to those which you make for any work of
piety or charity: and I may remind you that there is an especial reason
why your offerings should be large at the outset, inasmuch as already
four months are gone by of the current year, and we have to supply in
eight months the resources (as they hereafter will be) of twelve.
But on this point I feel an entire security. You will never allow those
who undertake the office of your Churchwardens to incur any
responsibility but such as you cheerfully guarantee to them. I will
rather take the opportunity of saying one word upon the more general
question.
We have never in this place—certainly not for many years past—laid a
compulsory church-rate. We have always allowed those who would to refuse
payment. Even when the law was clearly with us, we have never taken
advantage of it. So far, we might, if we would, have regarded the new
Act as confirming and stereotyping our own local custom.
But there were these two differences. We could no longer carry with us
the influence, the persuasion, of an unenforced compulsion. We could no
longer say, as heretofore, He _that may command_, _entreats_. Henceforth
it was lawful to refuse.
Again, we could no longer extend our payments over the whole Town; and,
with whatever abatements from caprice or principle, hope to enlist, in
the work of reparation or maintenance, the sympathies of an entire
population.
It became necessary, therefore, that we should look to the Congregation
alone; and, in one form or in another, ask those to support, who really
love and use, this House of God.
Hence our appeal to you this evening. And if on future occasions the
appeal is commonly made to you in silence, without special enforcement
from this place, yet let me hope that you will all register it in your
minds as a just claim, and not suffer these periodical gatherings to lose
their interest or to fail in their amount.
_Why repair ye not the breaches of the House_? The subject expands
itself before us, and we read the remonstrance as applying no longer to
the fabric, but rather to these three larger and more sacred topics, the
Congregation, the Church, the soul.
1. That anxiety which we do not feel about the fabric, for we are sure
that you will attend to it, we cannot stifle as regards the Congregation.
For indeed it is this which makes the House. The building is only
valuable, only significant, for the sake of the inmates. When it is
asked of us, _Why repair ye not the bleaches of the House_? we may look
up indeed at our broken pinnacles, our not watertight roof, our falling
flowers, our patchwork pomegranates, and think that these too require
attention or deserve reproach; but, after all, these are not the real
things; these altogether make not the House; the House, the Temple, now,
in these days of spirit and Gospel, is the community, the congregation,
the living body within. How is it with this? Are there no breaches
here, visible not to an eye of flesh, but to One who seeth in secret?
For example, my brethren, is there not too great a disproportion here
between the real and the nominal worshippers? Is it not lamentable, is
it not even discreditable, that so many should be present at one Service
once on the Lord’s Day, and so few at any other Service either on this
Holy Day or on any other? that so many should come together here this
evening to listen to music or preaching, so few to pray and to praise, so
few to break the Holy Bread, or to drink the Sacred Wine? Is not this
one of the _breaches of the House_, the spiritual house, which wants
_repairing_ amongst us?
2. But this carries me on to a somewhat wider field, which I have called
not the Congregation, but the Church. And here, as is natural indeed in
these eventful, these quickly moving times, my thoughts are upon our own
Church, that communion which is the congregation of congregations; that
communion which we have heretofore known as the Church of England by law
established.
So rapid has been the course of events in late years—I might single out
the last ten, or the last five, or (quite by exception) the last year of
all—that Church-people must prepare themselves, I feel sure, for a
speedy, a scarcely gradual, demolition of all that has been distinctive,
all that has been exceptionally advantageous, in their position. An
eminent man and excellent Bishop, who was laid in his grave last Friday,
was wont to say, _If I live ten years_, _I shall be the last Bishop of
Peterborough_. It is more than probable that some of my younger hearers
this evening may live not only to see what we call the Church of England
thrown altogether upon voluntary offerings for its maintenance—in which
case some of them may remember in old age the first collection made in
the Parish Church of Doncaster for the repairs of its fabric and the
expences of its services—but also to find it at least an open, perhaps a
very doubtful, question, to whom shall belong the Churches themselves and
the glebe-houses—whether indeed there shall be left to the old Church of
England, as we still fondly call it, any vestige of that legal standing
which has made her hitherto the calm shelter of her children, the
admiring wonder of foreigners, and the mark of obloquy or envy (as the
case might be) to thousands of her domestic enemies.
I am far from regarding this prospect—be it far off or near—with unmixed
alarm or dismay. I never believed that the Establishment, as such, was
Christ’s Church in England, or that the withdrawal of the favour of the
State would be the putting out in our communion of the Divine Shechinah.
It is not so much for the Church that I fear: for I firmly believe
Christ’s words, _Lo_, _I am with you alway_, and doubt not that the old,
the everlasting benediction is able to repeat itself in many new, many
diverse forms. I do fear something for the State, when it ceases to have
a religion. I do fear something for the average tone of religion in our
cottages and in our palaces, when there is no longer one form of worship
which has upon it the stamp of pedigree and of custom; when it is an
evenly balanced question with every man and with every family, _Whither
shall I go this day for God’s worship_? _whither_, _or whether any
whither_? I do fear that there will be more and more in many houses of a
cold indifferent scepticism, a Christless education and a Godless life.
I do fear that more and more may reach old age ignorant of a Saviour, and
go to their graves without any sure and certain hope of a resurrection to
eternal life.
For the Church itself I fear not. In so far as the Church of England (so
called) has had Christ in her and God with her, she is indestructible and
immortal. In so far as she has trusted in outward advantage, and
suffered herself, in her priests or in her people, to become sluggish,
lukewarm, contemptuous, or persecuting—in so far let a change into
adversity—God grant it—reform her. The great question for all of us, in
our several stations, more especially in the days which are now coming,
or almost come, upon our Church, must be this one of the text, _Why
repair ye not the breaches of the House_?
Let the Priests of the Temple ask it—ask it of themselves—Are they
trusting at all in the advantages of an Establishment, and negligent, in
the same degree, of that personal industry, of that individual
self-sacrifice, which alone can justify their endowment, maintain their
honour, or do their work? If the Established Church of England, as such,
be swept away, then, along with it, will go all idle, inconsistent,
scandalous Ministers: those who are to serve at God’s Altar afterwards
must be only such as are respected by their people: let it not have to be
said that England would gain as much as she loses by ceasing to have an
endowed, an established Ministry, inasmuch as, quite as often as not, the
Parish Minister was an indolent, an unworthy, or an inefficient man!
This is the way in which the Priests must set themselves to repair the
Temple-breaches.
Then for the People. To what end does a Church exist amongst us? To
what purpose this costly, this almost magnificent apparatus of vestment
and ritual, of Cathedral Church and elaborate minstrelsy? Does it mean
anything, or nothing? If it represents to the country, in symbol and
form, the wants of man’s soul, and the absolute necessity of a Divine
communion, then prove it by the using! Do not talk of the duty of the
State, of the rights of the Church, of Apostolical Succession and an
authorized Ministry—and never use any! When the Church of England
ceases, with our will or without it, to be an established, privileged, or
favoured Church at all; then, how many of you will be found to come
forward in its maintenance? How many of you will worship here, when
there is no longer any traditional or conventional propriety in doing so?
How many will accept their position, in reference to man, as only one out
of fifty or a hundred denominations—treat with all respect and charity
others who follow not with them—and yet, for themselves, become but the
more earnest and devout Churchmen, in proportion as State aid and legal
endowment become things of the past—things, it may be, of remote and
almost forgotten history?
And, meanwhile, let me ask this of the Churchmen here assembled this
evening, Are we half as liberal—I ask it advisedly—in giving for the
maintenance of our Church, as are many bodies of Nonconformists in their
offerings for theirs? You know that we are not. Let us look about us in
this matter. Let us rise to the emergency. Show that you value your
Church, by giving bountifully in her behalf. If the Church is what you
profess it to be, surely it is worth something, something even of
self-sacrifice, to maintain it in its efficiency. You know that there
are many amongst us to whom the Church costs nothing. On one pretext and
another, they evade all her burdens. They grudge the very rents of their
sittings; and if those rents were exchanged to-morrow (as I would they
were) for Offertories, still they would give nothing. My brethren, these
things ought not so to be. By this grudging, this ungenerous spirit, we
are drawing down upon ourselves, as a judgment, the sentence of
disestablishment and disendowment. Be it not so amongst us! Count no
money better spent than that which is given for the repairing of the
breaches of this House; meaning now by the House, not only or chiefly the
fabric, but rather the purpose for which the fabric stands—the
edification and salvation of human souls. Above all, see that you
rightly, earnestly, industriously use the means of grace herein afforded
you. What would not they give, who are gone from us this last week by
disease or accident, unrepentant, unredeemed, for one such feast of love
as was accepted this morning by but six and twenty souls—for one such
opportunity as we have enjoyed this evening of drawing nigh to the Throne
of Grace through our one Divine Lord?
3. Thus, then, we pass naturally, in conclusion, to that House, or
Temple of God, which is of all the most intimate, the most sacred, the
most inaccessible; yet in which, if anywhere, the true fire burns of an
acceptable sacrifice—the real altar is built of lively, living, devoted
stones. That House is the soul; and it, too, has its _breaches_. Yes,
we know it. That Temple—which ought to _lie four-square_, which ought to
have everything in its place, which ought to be gleaming with the fire of
the Holy Ghost, and adorned with the precious stones of a meek and quiet
and pure and Godward spirit—that Temple, of which the light ought to be
shining through into the life, and making every act and word and thought
gracious and beneficent and God-recalling—that Temple is all jagged and
disordered and spotted and sin-stained—that Temple lets its altar-fire go
out every half-hour, and suffers _a darkness that may be felt_ to settle
down upon its chambers—making unbelievers at last say, _If that be
faith_, _give me reason_; _if that be piety_, _give me conscience_; _if
that indeed be religion_, _let me know only the heathen’s revelation_—_of
good sense_, _good nature_, _and an elevated self-love_!
_Why repair ye not the breaches of the House_?
Do we answer, _I cannot_? It is a reproach, it is a calumny, upon the
Gospel of Divine grace. That is the very revelation of the Gospel—_God
giveth more grace_: more, as we need more; more, as we ask more; more, as
we look and wait and make room for more. I _cannot_? No; but God can.
_Ask_, _and ye shall have_.
Or do we answer, _I need not_? _I am well enough as I am_—_God is very
merciful_—_He knows our frame_, _and whatever deficiencies He sees in
me_, _Christ will make them up_? Alas! it is too often the evangelical
reply—if not with the lips, then in the heart! Christ died to make sin
less sinful, to make sin less dangerous, by substituting a figment of
justification for a reality of holiness, watchfulness, and self-control!
Thus even the Blessed Lord Himself is made _a minister of sin_, and man
turns the very table of his blessing into a new occasion of falling!
Or do we answer, finally, _I will not_? _I love the breaches of my
soul’s house_; _I do not wish that the gusts of passion should be fenced
out_; _I do not wish that there should be no crack or cranny through
which I may peep out on the world’s vanities_, _nor any secret neglected
postern through which some delicious delirious lust may creep in to
intoxicate me_? Oh! worst of all, most hopeless, this last answer—the
answer of many consciences, will they but speak, in this great
Congregation; the answer which not only virtually denies, but wilfully
refuses, the Gospel; which makes the Cross an offence, and Christ to have
died in vain!
May it please God, by some one of His thousand, His myriad agencies, to
make us feel! to bring us to our knees in hearty repentance before Him;
and then, even as it is written, _humbling ourselves_ first _under His
mighty hand_, at last to _exalt us in due time_!
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