Here we meet at the first step in England A CHURCH, of grand proportions, established for ages, inheriting vast endowments, wealth, privilege, and titles, with all the means of exerting the utmost influence on the national mind. For this what has it to show? It has great cathedrals, with bishops, and deans, and canons; a whole retinue of beneficed clergy, men who read or "intone" the prayers; with such hosts of men and boys to chant the services, as, if mustered together, would make a small army. The machinery is ample, but the result, we fear, not at all corresponding.
But lest I be misunderstood, let me say here that I have no prejudice against the Church of England. I cannot join with the English Dissenters in their cry against it, nor with some of my American brethren, who look upon it as almost an apostate Church, an obstacle to the progress of Christianity, rather than a wall set around it to be its bulwark and defence. With a very different feeling do I regard that ancient Church, that has so long had its throne in the British Islands. I am not an Englishman, nor an Episcopalian, yet no loyal son of the Church of England could look up to it with more tender reverence than I. I honor it for all that it has been in the past, for all that it is at this hour. The oldest of the Protestant Churches of England, it has the dignity of history to make it venerable. And not only is it one of the oldest Churches in the world, but one of the purest, which could not be struck from existence without a shock to all Christendom. Its faith is the faith of the Reformation, the faith of the early ages of Christianity. Whatever "corruptions" may have gathered upon it, like moss upon the old cathedral walls, yet in the Apostles' Creed, and other symbols of faith, it has held the primitive belief with beautiful simplicity, divested of all "philosophy," and held it not only with singular purity, but with steadfastness from generation to generation.
What a power is in a creed and a service which thus links us with the past! As we listen to the Te Deum or the Litany, we are carried back not only to the Middle Ages, but to the days of persecution, when "the noble army of martyrs" was not a name; when the Church worshipped in crypts and catacombs. Perhaps we of other communions do not consider enough the influence of a Church which has a long history, and whose very service seems to unite the living and the dead – the worship on earth with the worship in heaven. For my part, I am very sensitive to these influences, and never do I hear a choir "chanting the liturgies of remote generations" that it does not bring me nearer to the first worshippers, and to Him whom they worshipped.
Nor can I overlook, among the influences of the Church of England, that even of its architecture, in which its history, as well as its worship, is enshrined. Its cathedrals are filled with monuments and tombs, which recall great names and sacred memories. Is it mere imagination, that when I enter one of these old piles and sit in some quiet alcove, the place is filled to my ear with airy tongues, voices of the dead, that come from the tablets around and from the tombs beneath; that whisper along the aisles, and rise and float away in the arches above, bearing the soul to heaven – spirits with which my own poor heart, as I sit and pray, seems in peaceful and blessed communion? Is it an idle fancy that soaring above us there is a multitude of the heavenly host singing now, as once over the plains of Bethlehem, "Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth, good will towards men!" Here is the soul bowed down in the presence of its Maker. It feels "lowly as a worm." What thoughts of death arise amid so many memorials of the dead! What sober views of the true end of a life so swiftly passing away! How many better thoughts are inspired by the meditations of this holy place! How many prayers, uttered in silence, are wafted to the Hearer of Prayer! How many offences are forgiven here in the presence of "The Great Forgiver of the world"! How many go forth from this ancient portal, resolved, with God's help, to live better lives! It is idle to deny that the place itself is favorable to meditation and to prayer. It makes a solemn stillness in the midst of a great city, as if we were in the solitude of a mountain or a desert. The pillared arches are like the arches of a sacred grove. Let those who will cast away such aids to devotion, and say they can worship God anywhere – in any place. I am not so insensible to these surroundings, but find in them much to lift up my heart and to help my poor prayers.
With these internal elements of power, and with its age and history, and the influence of custom and tradition, the Church of England has held the nation for hundreds of years to an outward respect for Christianity, even if not always to a living faith. While Germany has fallen away to Rationalism and indifference, and France to mocking and scornful infidelity, in England Christianity is a national institution, as fast anchored as the island itself. The Church of England is the strongest bulwark against the infidelity of the continent. It is associated in the national mind with all that is sacred and venerable in the past. In its creed and its worship it presents the Christian religion in a way to command the respect of the educated classes; it is seated in the Universities, and is thus associated with science and learning. As it is the National Church, it has the support of all the rank of the kingdom, and arrays on its side the strongest social influences. Thus it sets even fashion on the side of religion. This may not be the most dignified influence to control the faith of a country, but it is one that has great power, and it is certainly better to have it on the side of religion than against it. We must take the world as it is, and men as they are. They are led by example, and especially by the examples of the great; of those whose rank makes them foremost in the public eye, and gives them a natural influence over their countrymen.
As for those who think that the Gospel is preached nowhere in England but in the chapels of Dissenters, and that there is little "spirituality" except among English Independents or Scotch Presbyterians, we can but pity their ignorance. It is not necessary to point to the saintly examples of men like Jeremy Taylor and Archbishop Leighton; but in the English homes of to-day are thousands of men and women who furnish illustrations, as beautiful as any that can be found on earth, of a religion without cant or affectation, yet simple and sincere, and showing itself at once in private devotion, in domestic piety, and in a life full of all goodness and charity.
It must be confessed that its ministers are not always worthy of the Church itself. I am repelled and disgusted at the arrogance of some who think that it is the only true Church, and that they alone are the Lord's anointed. If so, the grace is indeed in earthen vessels, and those of wretched clay. The affectation and pretension of some of the more youthful clergy are such as to provoke a smile. But such paltry creatures are too insignificant to be worth a moment's serious thought. The same spiritual conceit exists in every Church. We should not like to be held responsible for all the narrowness of Presbyterians, whom we are sometimes obliged to regard, as Cromwell did, as "the Lord's foolish people." These small English curates and rectors we should regard no more than the spiders that weave their web in some dimly-lighted arch, or the traditional "church mice" that nibble their crumbs in the cathedral tower, or the crickets or lizards that creep over the old tombs in the neighboring churchyard.
But if there is much narrowness in the Church of England, there is much nobleness also; much true Christian liberality and hearty sympathy with all good men and good movements, not only in England but throughout the world. Dean Stanley (whom I love and honor as the manliest man in the Church of England) is but the representative and leader of hundreds who, if they have not his genius, have at least much of his generous and intrepid spirit, that despises sacerdotal cant, and claims kindred with the good of all countries and ages, with the noble spirits, the brave and true, of all mankind. Such men are sufficient to redeem the great Church to which they belong from the reproach of narrowness.
Such is the position of the Church of England, whose history is a part of that of the realm; and which stands to-day buttressed by rank, and learning, and social position, and a thousand associations which have clustered around it in the course of centuries, to make it sacred and venerable and dear to the nation's heart. If all this were levelled with the ground, in vain would all the efforts of Dissenters, however earnest and eloquent – if they could muster a hundred Spurgeons – avail to restore the national respect for religion.
Looking at all these possibilities, I am by no means so certain as some appear to be, that the overthrow of the Establishment would be a gain to the cause of Christianity in England. Some in their zeal for a pure democracy both in Church and State – for Independency and Voluntaryism in the former, and Republicanism in the latter – regard every Establishment