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Read Ebook: 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 Vaughan C J Charles John
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Ebook has 37 lines and 8391 words, and 1 pages
Transcribed from the 1868 Bell and Daldy edition by David Price.
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.
C. J. VAUGHAN, D.D.
VICAR OF DONCASTER.
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.
A SERMON.
Why repair ye not the breaches of the house?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
SINGLE SERMONS, &c.
THE JOY OF SUCCESS CORRECTED BY THE JOY OF SAFETY. An Ordination Sermon. 1860.
THE MOURNING OF THE LAND AND THE MOURNING OF ITS FAMILIES. On the Death of the Prince Consort. 1861. THIRD EDITION.
THE THREE TABERNACLES. On the Opening of St. Peter's School Chapel, York. 1862.
THE REVISED CODE OF THE COMMITTEE OF COUNCIL ON EDUCATION DISPASSIONATELY CONSIDERED. 1862. THIRD EDITION.
MACMILLAN AND CO., London and Cambridge.
ALEXANDER STRAHAN, 56, Ludgate Hill, London.
CHISWICK PRESS:--PRINTED BY WHITTINGHAM AND WILKINS, TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE.
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