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Is. 4 and injure its life and energy, and in some cases upset the equilibrium of the mind, and produce the saddest forms of insanity and melan- choly. In the same way as the deep sorrows ancUin- fathomed temptations of the heart need expression V , to be fully understood by their victim, so^ ', aspirations need the fervour of hymnology, the transcendental strains of psalmody, to enable them to ascend to their aim and object. Like the bird, which seems awhile to hover over the morning earth, unable to make way for its wings against the lower air, presently overcomes the difficulty, and as he sings louder soars higher, till he is beyond our sight in his own sky, so the soul needs the wings of hymnology and psalmody to ascend from the de- pressing atmosphere of the world to the presence of the Eternal. Who can say how many a holy aspiration has reached Him, borne on the wings of inspiring words, and with what radiant glory the lines of well-known hymns have been arrayed, which have been used in all the vicissitudes and changes of advancing or declining life, sung by the fainting whisper of death, and which were first attuned to the clear tones of childhood and youth ! While writing I remember the intense power thrown by a dying person, when she had reached the last stage of her journey home, into the well-known hymn of another school, " Jesus, Refuge of my soul," and that the force the words possessed to comfort 102 PAROCHIAL WORK. and give expression to the soul's deep feelings at that solemn hour, was chiefly given by its having been the accustomed channel of expression to the dying person from the earliest childhood. We need such channels, we cannot do without them. -The fact is, the soul is vast, and it is confined in one sense by a finite body. It longs and struggles for freedom ; it is as a bird who had never known captivity prisoned in a cage ; it flutters to be free, it sees its own sky, and longs to ascend. Words, sighs, tears, acts, expression of the eye, all are modes by which it aims at and gains a sort of liberty. The more intense and transcendental, the more perfect its release. He who most succeeds in con- veying to his fellow those deeper thoughts of the soul is a poet ; and poetry consists in that power. Music and painting are sometimes the channel, the common ground on which mind meets mind, so that the deeper the feeling possessed, and the more keen the power of conveying it, the greater the poet. Hymns are the poetry of the soul, and in propor- tion to their intensity will enable the soul to com- municate with God as the poet does with his fellow man. Every man possessed of any deep feeling longs for power of expression and rejoices in finding it. The more intense character flutters more closely to the wires of his cage ; in the same way every reli- gious man is a poet, and possessed of an inspiration. Religious feeling and desire is an inspiration, and it must find a vent. We are the Temples of the Spirit, PAROCHIAL WORK. 103 and every earnest man in his degree is inspired. " I believed and therefore have I spoken." There is a natural connection between deep feeling and fervid expression, and the Church must supply her own modes of expression for the most intense of all feelings, the yearnings of the soul after God, and holiness, and peace. Hymns and Psalms are of this very kind, and the principle which St. Paul recognised when he bade us speak to one another through "hymns and psalms and spiritual songs," is of that very description, whatever may have been the particular modes of it which he there intended. The world has had its poets ; it has its modes of intense expression ; it has provided its safety-valve for those inward yearnings ; it has its own modes of communicating thoughts, which are too deep for usual and ordinary human expres- sion. Then let the Church, the minister of a far higher order of poetry, do the same ; after all, any human mode of expression is indeed insufficient. The plane of the inward mind which words would enclose in defined limits is vast compared with all such possible expression, as the surface of the wilderness is to the tent of the wandering Arab which encompasses a portion of it. There is a de- light in finding vent, and the glare of temptation and evil desire may be dimmed by the radiancy shot out through fervent and poetical expression, which becomes a new interest, a counter sensation, and tends to exclude and expel the other desire, and 104 PAROCHIAL WORK. occupies the soul instead. Sinful desires are strong and burning, and one way of counteracting them is by raising other desires, equally strong, for holi- ness. Song, music, poetry, painting, have all pan- dered to vice; then why not let them be used as instruments of holiness ? We throw away a vast aid to the tempted by coldness of rule, and exclusion of warm modes of uttering the condition of the soul ; in many an hour of temptation, in many a solitary day's work, or walk alone, in many a hour's sick- ness or sleeplessness at night, the fervid strain of hymns will lead the soul upward, and be enough to dim the glare of sin, when otherwise the soul would be wholly absorbed in the contemplation of what is vile and earthly. We cannot ignore human nature ; for though Grace does all, yet we must use means, and to use them effectually we must study human nature to discover the powers of counter- action and development. If it is our nature to find relief by utterance, the Church must give the power of utterance ; and if it be in our nature that one strong feeling expels another, the Church must excite the strength of holy feeling to exclude the force of sinful feeling, and the power of holy words to pale the glow of sinful expression. Historical But for a moment placing aside this view of the Hymno- subject, the historical view is very important, and bears on the same point, as shewing the high esti- mation in which hymnology has ever been held. No single body of religionists have ever been with- PAROCHIAL WORK. 105 out the use of it, and in proportion as they were earnest and real, in that proportion they have made hymns the channel of their highest aspira- tions. Metrical measures have their place in every form of the divine worship, from the Roman Bre- viary to the hymns of the covenanters on the hills of Scotland ; we find traces of them in early days, and Holy Scripture seems to teach us in many places their importance and blessing. It is a mis- take, a most fatal mistake, to imagine that they are simply a mark of dissenting worship, and alien to the spirit of the Church, or a Church movement. No metrical songs can be more thrilling and soul- inspiring than the hymns of the Breviary, and Rome has for many hundred years borne witness to their power and importance in forming the Christian character. Every part of her service is marked by their recurrence, and every season of the holy year is connected by some heart-stirring hymn. They bear the stamp of a long antiquity, and are the still speaking witnesses of a time far gone. They tell us that the earliest ages used this wing on which to mount to God. They have borne on high the aspirations and fervour of the saints of cen- turies, have been the expression of all the sorrows of the Western Church, and the forms into which the lamentations of half Christendom have poured themselves ; then why should we do without them, or their substitutes ? How do we differ from them, or our needs from theirs ? What forms can be more 106 PAROCHIAL WORK. elevating than the " Veni Creator," the " Deus suo- rum Militum," the " Adeste Fideles ?" Such as these, from a liturgy teeming with them, will clearly shew that the Church of the continent, and the Church of centuries, poured the deepest feelings into hymn- ology. And on the other side the fact is equally striking. The more earnest bodies of schism and dissent have made a hymnology the leading feature of worship, and we know the existence of these bodies very much through their hymns. The moun- tains of Scotland have resounded beneath the stars of midnight to the covenanter's hymn, which burst from the voices of men gathered amid persecution to worship God on the moorlands, and many of them met the rack and the axe, borne up by the hymns of the covenant. They inspired the suf- ferer with dauntless courage, and became the words of the defiance he hurled at Satan and the world. The \Yesleyans, the most striking and earnest body of dissent among us, received from their founder hundreds of hymns, which are the heirlooms of their schism. They are many of them thrilling and intense, and have occupied a place of no small prominence in their forms of devotion to God. The evangelical school in the Church of England adopted many of them in their own earnest day. Such is the historical view of the subject, and yet in the face of all this, one of the first efforts of the Church-movement in England was to depress hymnology, and to bring back the coldest and most PAROCHIAL WORK. 107 frigid forms of the metrical versions. And why? Could English people do without that which all the Church had needed ? and did we no longer want elevating means to aid us in our difficult path? Why should we recede from the custom of eighteen centuries, and ignore what is older than the Bre- viary ? what advantage would the Church-move- ment gain by adopting a cold and reserved line? Too many returned to frigid versions of the Psalms, < and the high-strained melodies of religious earnest- ness on this side or that were hushed and silenced. But the metrical versions have serious objections on many important grounds. There is scarcely one which can be safely used throughout, and of some it is hard to select a verse. What we may have lost by the effect we cannot tell, but at least it is high time to repair the injury by an attempt to restore a deeper hymnology. There are many hymns in frequent use among English people which with slight altera- tions we might safely adopt, which have already been consecrated by the deep yearnings of hun- dreds of God's saints, and whose powerful ex- pressions are fitly framed for the ascent of the soul to heaven. Cowper, Doddridge, Toplady, and many more, have contributed according to their powers and opinions hymns full of Christian aspiration ; and while the Wesleyan hymn-book, with its 560 hymns, has become the very body of their worship, we must to meet the call of a Church-movement which has to grapple with Wesley anism, offer some- 108 PAROCHIAL WORK. thing of the same kind to our people. We have no versions with direct authority, but we have many which, with small trouble, might be adapted to our use ; or still more, particular hymns might be printed for particular seasons, and used with effect and power. The associations of a sacred season will cling around a hymn, and the soul will dive into the depths of the mystery of the season by the aid of the holy form of words ; many will embody with no small power the feelings of the holy week and the season of the Passion, and their words when thus wrapped round a season of the kind, will be- come the sweet remembrancer of holy thoughts on the Passion and Life of our Lord. But another important question arises with re- gard to the doctrine involved in hymns. Doctrinal No doubt doctrine has very definitely been con- view of Hymns, veyed through the means of hymns, through the power with which they lay hold of the mind and remain vividly fixed there. Their work is indirect, but most forcible and indelible. Indirect evidence is ever the more powerful ; and the feeling left with regard to the object of the hymn is regarded with that intense devotion with which the object ever is whose existence and work is taken for granted, a matter of faith, not of reasoning and proof. It leaves an impression which recoils at reasoning ; it resents the application of logical proof to its existence ; and the more intensely and fervently any thing has been thus taken for granted, the more is this in- PAROCHIAL WORK. 109 tense trust in it and love of it realized. The affec- tion of a child for its mother is no matter of reason- ing, and is the more deep ; if questioned, it would be found to resent the more indignantly the doubt of its existence. In the same way the truths con- veyed at the moment of experiencing holy thoughts through inspiring hymns, leave a deep mark on the soul, and to tear away the truth which such aspi- rations had gathered round the soul, would be an almost desperate attempt. The importance, there- fore, of taking care that such powerful and effective engines should convey truth, and not falsehood or heresy, to the soul, is momentous. And yet few things have been less guarded than hymns, and it was this very laxity in their form which caused the reaction against them at the beginning of the pre- sent Church movement. So many of them most commonly in use were the channel of irreverent expressions with regard to our Blessed Lord, and seemed tinged with a tone of Socinianism, that the peril was considerable, lest those who made them the channel of their deeper aspirations should lose by irreverent familiarity with His Humanity the eternal truth of His Godhead. In fact, very many of the hymns which I have referred to above, would need great caution in their use, and many ver- bal alterations : in the same way, from inaccuracy or transcendentalism of expression, from words se- lected rather to suit the hymn than its theology, a laxity of view may often arise with regard to Chris- 110 PAROCHIAL WORK. tian obedience, repentance, and practice generally. The doctrines of assurance and final perseverance are continually bound up with many of the most beautiful compositions of the school I have referred to, and the passages are numerous which violate high views of the power and life of Sacraments. Some of these writers are far more suited for the use of Churchmen than others, and with care a safe selection might be made. A burdened spirit feels a home in a well-known hymn ; it is its link to holy men and holy feelings ; it is the remembrancer of purity when the man is impure, of fervour when he is cold ; it is the continual chain which links him to his own better days, and is the form which has been consecrated by the aspirations of many a saint de- parted. It tends to eclipse the power of temptation by bringing out the form of holiness, and absorbs the eye as the sun does the star ; and when the power of temptation is so vivid, our difficulties so great, our warfare so keen, we can afford to throw no help away, if it be one which even for one ten minutes will keep us near God and away from Satan. When the soul is occupied in this way, and the ear dwell- ing on the strains of heaven, the will can often be made to decide for God, and the indecision of hours be arrested. It bears us within sight of the gates of our heavenly home, and we see its glory and are satisfied ; it is the telegraph of the soul, by which the things of her future state are brought clearly and more clearly before her ; it breaks away the objects PAROCHIAL WORK. Ill of this life, and paints in plain realities the objects of the unseen world. It is the pencil which forces into outline the vague boundaries of the region of faith. A hymn learnt in childhood will be the re- membrancer of holiness in youth, and draw out a tear from an eye that otherwise seldom would weep. It keeps warm and fervid the chilly atmosphere of the world in advancing life ; it comforts the long hours of solitude and sickness, and in the last moments will be the wing on which the parting soul will an- ticipate the glories of her heavenly rest. But I would say a word on the need of hymns Hymns for for schools. Hymns are peculiarly the voice and expression of childhood. Many a truth has sunk into a child's heart which would otherwise have lain cold and barren on its surface. Hymns become the means of conveying them to the inmost soul, and half a child's conscious Christianity often consists in its hymns. We cannot be too careful in select- ing them for children, and in storing their minds with them when young ; the religion of a child is of a peculiar kind, it has not much depth, and con- sists in a few very simple ideas and principles, for which the imagination and feelings must be worked on. Hymns do this. The evangelical school were far more successful than we have been in this re- spect. There are some admirable books of hymns for children, however, which we could use with great advantage and perfect safety. Mr. Neaie's hymns are very simple, and in many respects very suitable 112 PAROCHIAL WORK. to the object they have in view. " Hymns for Little Children," and " Moral Songs," are peculiarly beau- tiful, and highly to be recommended. They are full of real purity and deep feeling, and sound in doc- trine. It would be well if the authoress would de- vote further time to this very important work in which she has shewn such facility. We want books of this kind much, and we have scarcely yet reached the amount of aptness and feeling suited to the minds of children which are shewn in the writings of an- other school, however dangerous in other respects, in "The Divine Songs" of Dr. Watts, and the " Hymns for Infant Minds." It seems a very important thing to attach cer- tain hymns to certain periods and seasons. They will aid, as much as any thing else, in enabling the poor to realize the facts of the Christian creed, and the incarnation of our Blessed Lord. There are, no doubt, many of the metrical versions of the Psalms which are exceedingly well adapted to public worship, but after all they cannot touch on the high and elevating doctrines of Christianity. In- deed in most cases it is hard to select four verses from any of them which will be free from some such singular quaintness of expression as makes it objectionable. The 51st, 119th, 42nd, 18th, and 139th, with many more in the new version, contain verses well adapted to the very feelings I have been speaking of. But we must take care, lest in trying to shun the irreverence, familiarity, and vul- PAROCHIAL WORK. 113 garity of the hymnology of the lower schools, we sink into the other extreme, of leaving the poor, who are to be affected by the Church movement of our day, without those aids which the Catholic Church of every age and clime has made use of. The very inertness of English character needs every help which may bring the feelings into play, and affect and enlist them in the general work of religion. We must beware lest we fall into the mistake which seems most common around us, that the feature and mark of a distinctively English Church movement is to be cold, reserved, and exclu- sive. The Church is but the outward frame-work to aid in the construction of the temple of the Spirit, and where that Spirit is, such terms will become inadmissible. Let us take care, lest in aiming at a distinctive Church character, we lose the essence of vital and spiritual religion. 16. The observance of Sunday will be a matter Sunday, of much importance and interest to any parochial clergyman. . It is perilous to obviate any prejudice of a people which has been adopted in favour of religion, and when that prejudice is deep-rooted and old, inter- ference is the more fraught with danger. We must ever fear lest we cast a shadow between the soul and God. There are among every people certain national peculiarities with regard to religion, certain religious 114 PAROCHIAL WORK. acts which have been handed down as heirlooms in society; certain hereditary feelings which are strong and lasting as the hills. It is difficult to oppose them, even if to a certain extent erroneous. There is no point in religion a people will be more jealous of, no point they will assert more boldly and cling to more tenaciously. Such national feeling will af- fect and influence men of all classes and positions. Among the English a certain strong respect for Sunday is of this nature. It matters not why or from what source ; it is a great national fact, and the facts of a national religion may not be ignored. However deficient in religious teaching, however meagre in objective faith, however commercial in tone of character, however suspicious of ceremonial or priestly interference, the respect for Sunday as a theory or a practice runs through every portion of the framework of English society. It is a great English feature, it is part of the national religion, and when a national religion is poor and low, we should approach anxiously every pillar of the fabric with a fear of displacing it, however much they seem to need rectifying or repairing. Whatever fabric is based on conscience, must be gently and delicately touched ; otherwise all future fabrics erected on that foundation, will stand with fragile tenure. If we once thoroughly shake a national trust in some religious expression, we take a step towards rationalizing the people. I do not say that the Eng- lish people universally keep Sunday well, but that they intensely realize its advantage, and are jealous PAROCHIAL WORK. 115 of it. And any effort to slight it or lower its im- portance will be, as it has been ever, viewed with suspicion, alarm, and resentment. In this feeling nearly all classes will combine, and a response will be found to it from the heart of the farmer, the labourer, and the country gentleman. In Scotland this feeling is stronger still, and is a deeper prac- tice as well as theory. There are two or three manifest reasons for this fact, by which it may easily be accounted for. The strong puritan element, with which the Eng- lish character has been impregnated, and which it seems to have a peculiar aptitude and tendency to receive, was always tinged with Judaism of a cer- tain mould. It is a strongly scriptural form of re- ligion, and the conduct and example of the chosen people of God became the types and examples of the puritan, rather than the laws of the city of God, the heavenly Jerusalem. A strong fea- ture of the Jewish Church was the observance of the Sabbath, and with this the puritan school be- came tinged. The whole English people received the temper of the religion of that movement, and with it the feeling about the Sunday as the Sab- bath was handed down as an heirloom from gene- ration to generation. Another reason for it was the yearning of man's nature for definite points in their life of devotion to God and His service. Every one wants point, and to every one the truth is manifest, that what may be done at any time is done at no time. The need of i 2 116 PAROCHIAL WORK. certain fixed times for more intense devotion and sacrifice is felt by all, and some one day in the week set apart to serve God with greater definiteness, is felt necessary on all hands. The fasts and festi- vals of the Church had well-nigh lost their religious character in England at the time of our Reforma- tion, and the notion of a festival was associated to a great extent with riot and abuse. The re -action came. Sunday was the day which the puritan mind fixed on, and at once robed it with all the severity of the Judaic sabbath. It mattered not what form it took, whether cheerful or morose ; enough it was religious, and had that character. The Church had exactly answered this want in man's nature, and supplied a marked and definite season, Friday in each week, as the season of reli- gious denial and sorrow, and Sunday as the season of religious joy and thanksgiving. Each aim of the religious mind must be gratified and find its vent, and what the puritan fused into one, the catholic kept separate and distinct. But the refusal of the whole Church spirit brought with it at the same time the rejection of the whole Church system and scheme. These seem two prominent reasons for the strong feeling in the English mind for the observance of the Lord's day with a degree of severity and almost moroseness which stamps it with a Judaic character. Another reason might be given, though rather an explanation of the last one. The northern character is active and energetic, and the particular tendency PAROCHIAL WORK. 117 of our own northern Saxon character has been to- wards commercial development. The time and degree of attention required by this would lead men to shrink from a system which required the devo- tion of time to religious acts to a very great degree daily ; jealous therefore of this absorption of time, they have thrown themselves with all the greater force into the observance of Sunday ; and in pro- portion as daily service and kindred acts have been neglected, Sunday has been to a certain degree re- spected. Men have not the face to ignore definite religious worship altogether. There has been a natural tendency in many to work against this feeling, under the impression that it was uncatholic in character, and tended to cast into the shade other holy seasons and acts of wor- ship, and to perpetuate the spirit from which it sprung. But as I said, this must be done with great care and delicacy, or we shall uproot the slight hold which definite religion has on our people at all. We shall perhaps injure the whole principle and working of conscience, if we deal too roughly with the false or mistaken direction it may have taken. We must elevate Sunday, and give its full vigour and character to the English village and town, and very striking that character is ! We may use the feeling about the day for making it the opportunity of introducing weekly Commu- nion ; and work out all the joyous religious cha- racter with which the Church invests Sunday. The effort of Archbishop Laud to arrest the tide of feel- 118 PAROCHIAL WORK. ing about the observance, failed in a great degree ; it was counter to the mind of the nation. The English Sunday, in country parishes especi- ally, has a peculiar character, and one full of beauty; the effect would be lamentable if a man, from the desire to introduce Catholic practices and spirit, laid violent hands on this feeling. The calmness and quiet, the great attention to cleanliness and duty which marks the day, the books brought out to read at home, the quiet walk to church, and the hum of children's voices on their way to and from school, all give their own character to the lanes and fields of our agricultural parishes. When we have thoroughly impregnated our peo- ple with the tone and spirit of catholicity, when we have led them to understand the position of the other days and seasons appointed by the Church, and to use daily prayer as a real strength to the soul ; then we shall be able to take a bolder line with regard to the more appropriate feeling about Sunday. But till then we shall not be safe in attempting to take away that religious association which is connected with the day, even though it partakes of a sad and too little joyful a spirit. We must work on that feeling, make it the foundation for building up a structure of self-discipline and personal holiness ; try and lead the people to give up certain enjoyments for the sake of attending more strictly the services of Sunday : to value Holy Communion received before the morning meal, lead them to make the preparation for Sunday on the PAROCHIAL WORK. 119 Saturday, one which will really enable them to at- tend more strictly on the services of the day, and we may then turn to good account the mistaken impression which has gone abroad. 17. The special use of the holy seasons appointed A PP iica- by the Church, Lent, Easter, Advent, &c., will Holy s ea - always be found a most welcome help, if fully s understood, and an opportunity for pressing suc- cessfully the commencement of a worthy Christian course on many. The Christian life needs point, and nothing is harder than going on over a long space of time which is undivided ; it is easier to strive against temptations for short and limited periods. To make our warfare from Communion to Commu- nion is far simpler than to look along an undivided and indefinite period ; in this way the keeping such seasons as Advent, Easter, and Lent, is an aid to all, and to the poor, who so lack point, especially important. The Church's year needs to be used and applied to be understood ; a poor man will often feel that the unbounded prospect of spiritual effort is nearly hopeless, while he may be very easily per- suaded to make the effort for a season only. It is, for instance, more simple to undertake to attend daily prayer for the six weeks of Lent, or the four of Advent, than for the whole year ; a man will be dismayed at the outset in the one, though he will feel an interest in the effort at the other : and 120 PAROCHIAL WORK. being once achieved for Lent, the work will be found possible. It has been found that a gang of workmen on a railroad will impose a rule by common consent upon themselves through Lent, to abstain from some pleasure, or make some sacrifice, such as the giving up smoking, or the losing a small amount of weekly income to get to daily service during the six weeks ; and at the end of the time the habit formed by the effort has been strong enough to make them wish never to drop it, and has become the founda- tion-stone of a really religious life and practice. It will be found useful to give a code of short and simple rules and prayers to be kept through the season, by help of which the life of rule and disci- pline will be begun. ^* Frequency of Communion, it is almost un- necessary to say, is a most important part of effec- tive parochial ministration. Until daily prayer is established there is a manifest difficulty in having oft- Communion ; the minds of the people are un- prepared for it, and it stands out barely and un- connectedly in the public ministrations of the week, and will only tend to confirm more strongly the erroneous impressions men have assumed as to its nature. But when once it follows on a week of daily prayer, it receives a point which it had not before, and becomes a natural end to the religious acts of the six days. The practice of having holy PAROCHIAL WORK. 121 Communion only at long intervals, such as is still often the case, once a quarter, or three times a year, still more strengthens the impression that Hs value rests on its power to excite feeling, and that oft-repetition decreases its efficacy because it lessens excitement. The weekly Communion would become to the people an actual means of life, whose value we could hardly estimate. There are other benefits arising from it which are striking : the fre- quency of its return makes daily prayer a neces- sary preparation, and thereby leads men to make use of it. The expecting to communicate on each Sunday serves as a continual and daily check on the conversation, thoughts, and acts of the day, and tends to promote general discipline and watchful- ness. Early Communion will have great force ; it can easily be received before the morning meal, and comes at an hour when the work of the day and the calls of children do not interfere. It will be found most necessary to supply all, but specially the poor, with simple prayers of preparation for Communion, and these to be practically useful to the majority must not aim too high, or they will be unreal in the mouths of those who use them, and unreality cannot be risked at such a moment. There are few things among us which present so LOW views marked a declension from truth and high Catholic commu- teaching, as the position which Holy Communion m has been allowed to occupy. The condition of feeling about doctrine will always affect our prac- tices far more than we should at first expect ; and 122 PAROCHIAL WORK. this has been singularly shewn in connection with Holy Communion among us. There are two distinct views on the subject, two distinct theories, which have for some centuries floated among men, and between which men have vacillated ; our own branch of the Church has prac- tically, on the whole, adopted the lower one. The one involved the true view of the Real Presence of our Blessed Lord in the consecrated elements, founded on the universal doctrine and faith of the Church, and built on Holy Scripture. This doctrine was anciently the current one, but without the close definitions which various dis- cussions on it at length gave rise to, and which the Council of Trent, as we believe, much exagge- rated. The result of this last act was the denial altogether of the doctrine of the Real Presence, and the adoption of the view of its being simply a com- memorative feast. England imbibed a large share of this feeling, and it impregnated the great mass of the clergy and the people. The result was imme- diate and alarming. As certain acts followed im- mediately from the recognition of the Real Presence which affected every part of the teaching of the Church, so from the denial of that truth other acts resulted ; and from Holy Communion having been the centre of the worship of the Church, the point to which all her teaching tended, and round which all her doctrines were w r oven ; instead of its being recognized as the fountain and spring of all life in the visible Church, from which efficacy was derived PAROCHIAL WORK. 123 to every service and rite ; instead of remaining as the standard by which every act of the Church was tried and tested, and according to agreement with which or not almost every other teaching was con- demned or accepted ; it fell into a merely comme- morative act, without recognised fruit, reality, or life, became the least important instead of the most important of all the Church services ; our people ceased to feel reception a necessary duty, and the clergy scarcely required it ; it was looked upon as high privilege rather than a duty, a privilege which might be dispensed with at will ; men eyed it with jealousy, and it became the point of the service which they viewed with suspicion and alarm, and, consequently, carefully and sedulously depreciated by multitudes. Our people lost the true faith on the subject, and ceased to see reality in what was so little honoured and respected. But we have lived to see a great re-action. Let us be careful to use it aright, and see that we com- mend it to our people, by every gentle means. They are too generally unprepared for it. They must learn it by little and little, and very much indeed perhaps from the preparation which their children will receive between Baptism and Con- firmation. If the Real Presence be a reality, it is one which Practical will affect every thing. If it be any thing, it is every thing. If it be the present Saviour, it is the high point of all Christian worship, and every thing must spring from it as a source and fountain. Truth in 124 PAROCHIAL WORK. doctrine produces of necessity certain practices : and affects of necessity the Christian life and the Church's action. One result flowing from this truth will be weekly, and in towns, perhaps, daily Communion. It will become the great religious feature of the week, the great act of the Lord's day. The day will at once receive its point from this high act, and its due position among the other days of the week. By this weekly celebration the people of a parish will be led to see that it is of the highest import, and understand the truth and gravity of the doctrine from the elevation of its position. Daily service will then become a preparation for it, and the whole of the Church system be understood. If Communion be administered weekly, it is highly important it should be early in the morning, at seven or eight, by which means a great dignity can be given to the service and the mode of its per- formance ; the recipient will be able with greater ease to receive it fasting and with attention, not distracted or wearied by a long preceding service. It will cease to be an appendage, and become a ser- vice invested with its own dignity. Church services do not depend for their benefit on our souls on their power to excite feelings, but on the actual life and grace they as channels convey. And this is what we have to convince our people of. They are slow to learn it. The establishing early Commu- nion will get rid of the difficulty many persons feel who, for especial reasons, may not wish on par- ticular occasions to communicate, and who much PAROCHIAL WORK. 125 dislike to leave the church just before the ad- ministration, and thereby seem to turn their backs upon it. If men imagine the attendance will be scanty at the altar when the administration is so frequent, I answer, first, that we must remember the fact of celebration is full of high and holy energy, and when the minister himself and but three or four more have partaken with him, an act has been performed full of religious power, and which tends to conse- crate alike the day and the church in which it has taken place ; and it would be well if some visible mark were left, by the leaving the cloth on the altar through the day, to let the people realize that the celebration had taken place. But however, I answer, secondly, that in a very short time it will be found that many will be led to come, and that regularly, and the weekly Commu- nion will be realized and valued by our poor in a way we cannot imagine till we make the effort. Our poor have a peculiar value for Holy Commu- nion when led to get over their prejudices against reception, and brought to see its force and real nature. They see in it, to use their own words, " a check through the week on talking and bad thoughts/' and will look on it as a point for self- examination. A large body will gradually be formed of weekly communicants, while many who before only received three or four times yearly, will feel that, at least, as they do not receive it weekly they must monthly. 126 PAROCHIAL WORK. And when once established how beautiful will its power be over the souls of youth from our schools, who will be led from their first communion onwards to make it the weekly support of their souls ; and from being led to receive it weekly from the beginning, will never feel the difficulty which so many feel among ourselves. It will be as easy to form the habit of weekly as of monthly reception on children ; and when once established in a parish it will be ready for each child who receives Confirma- tion ; and every first communicant who is added to the number of communicants, and who continues in weekly attendance, will be a new and additional rea- son for adults to receive it in the same way. Before his example prejudice will fade away, and the figures of the young gathered at the altar weekly in the midst of a thousand temptations and allurements, will be a sight of no small power to the eyes of many who had hitherto held out against even com- munion at all. The effect on a coming genera- tion when they have been led from boyhood to re- ceive weekly will be passing words, inasmuch as the actual Presence of Christ will be all the more pre- sent to heal and aid. In this way alone we can hope to counteract the sadly low condition of our poor in this particular, and the state of ignorance in which they stand of the nature of the Holy Eucharist. What force too will weekly Communion as a fact to be appealed to, give to our teaching in the school, and that gradual preparation for first com- PAROCHIAL WORK. 127 munion which should be the work of the whole school life. Another result will be the closer attention to Mode of the mode of performance of this service. At this tion. moment it is generally made the least striking and most sombre portion of the service of the day, whereas the Church always used to make it the most effective and beautiful; and that for manifest reasons. How easy it would be to throw whatever power of beautifying services we may pos- sess into the performance of this ministration : if we have chanting, use it there, and make it some- thing more beautiful than the rest of the services. The mere fact would tend to elevate in the minds of the poor the dignity of the true doctrine. There is something painful in the very slovenly manner in which very often this service is per- formed, and the marked difference between it and morning and evening prayer. Parallel with a deep conviction of the Real Presence must grow up a more decent mode of celebration. So too the more decent arrangement of the altar will result from the recognition of this higher truth. There is often a neglect of this, and the altar, the scene of the highest act of Christian worship, is made the least striking and religious part of the fabric. Of course it has been exactly collateral with the depreciated view of the nature of Holy Communion, that chancels have in some cases been walled off and turned into school-rooms, that pulpits have shut out the altar, and the approach to the \ 128 PAROCHIAL WORK. holy place been obstructed by pews. The preserv- ation of high doctrine would have prevented these results. And though I would be far from recom- mending the undue exaltation, especially at this moment, of Church ceremonial, it is manifest it is due to the greatness of this act of worship, and has a very striking effect on the minds of the people. While it will certainly be the result of a higher perception of truth, it will also create it ; and in- asmuch as all this more decent arrangement will spring from the return to a high doctrine, nothing will so tend to bring men back to the knowledge of the same doctrine. Wherever ceremonial is ad- missible, it will be in connection with the Holy Communion. That is its legitimate sphere, and to that point it was that the Church of other days ever directed the chief efforts of her dress, her music, and her architectural design. The frequent recurrence of the administration, the fact of its celebration being known and recog- nised, the power of appeal to it as the natural means of holy life for the confirmed and the first com- municant, will all tend to a result on parochial life till then scarcely understood. It will place every thing in its true position and relation, and will become the key-stone of the whole fabric of parochial life. PAROCHIAL WORK. 129 19. I might here advert to the use of Holy Bap- Holy J . / Baptism. tism in such way as to affect the general condition of our poor. The careless and deficient way in which they treat it is not caused only by false views as to its efficacy, but frequently by its want of pre- face. If, amongst other things, the preparation of sponsors for their responsible office were made necessary, and they were compelled to feel that they were not going through a merely idle form, but were fulfilling a relation which had solemn respon- sibilities, it would tend to check the inclination to bring the kind of persons who constantly present themselves at the font for the children of the poor : any care as to the character of the sponsors must tend to elevate the general regard for the Sacra- ment itself; and the mere fact of preparing the sureties for their work would correct their own ideas of the Sacrament, and make them less willing to enter on unconsidered responsibilities; the re- fusal of sponsors who are not of good and respect- able character, and have not been seen beforehand for that purpose, is fully supported by the order of the Church, which requires only such as are com- municants to fill the office. Every thing which tends to draw a line between the good and the bad, which brings out in clear light those whose lives are respectable and well conducted, tells dis- tinctly on the elevation of the general character of our people; and however much the wicked may pretend to disregard the word and opinion of the good, they do care for it, and in spite of every K 130 PAROCHIAL WORK. scoff to the contrary, they feel being passed by; their general weight of influence is weakened by it, and they lose position even among their com- panions in evil. In the same way much good might be done by afterwards reminding sponsors of the reality and living force of the duties they have promised to fulfil ; by letting them know when the child whom they had stood for is old enough for Confirmation, and inducing them to come forward at that time in person. Any religious office which our people can fulfil becomes a direct means of holding influence over them, and of realizing more fully spiritual pastor- ship. We can afford to lose no opportunity of con- veying religious truth to the hearts of our people. It is very important to elevate the view and doc- trine of holy Baptism, to it is linked the whole Christian scheme, and around the doctrine of rege- neration is wound every Christian truth. It will be necessary too in many cases to urge the very early baptism of children, as there is an inclination for one reason or another to delay it, or to get children baptized at home under the excuse of ill- ness. There is a painfully depressed view of the subject abroad, and we must do every thing we can to check it. Its administration during the service on Sundays or saints' days, frequently re- ferring to and explaining its nature in sermons and catechizing, will help to improve the views about it ; every thing must be done to impress men with its dignity and nature, and a frequent PAROCHIAL WORK. 131 reference must be made to the promises and the covenant sealed at that holy hour. On the other hand, many things have been done to depreciate and lower its estimation ; the un- happy laxity of too readily administering it pri- vately, of administering it publicly almost entirely out of the hour of Divine Service ; the mutilation and abbreviation of the service by the minister, have tended to lower the repute of the holy Sa- crament ; and this feeling has been increased by the punctuality and authority with which parish registration has been attended to, which has been viewed naturally as the substitute for Baptism itself. Our people are most deficient in a living com- prehension of the simplest and most essential doc- trines of Christianity, and to those doctrines are attached necessarily many practices and points of holy living ; cut off from them, they are cut off from fountains from which issue streams of purity, truth, and holiness. When these doctrines are con- nected with religious acts and rites, they become far more easy of apprehension to the poor. Of no act is this more true than of holy Baptism ; the doc- trines connected with it, its regeneration, and its promises, are the hinge and spring of holiness of life, and affect materially the whole view of the Christian warfare ; and those truths become much clearer when the rite itself is carefully adminis- tered, and due preparation made. Acts become the interpreters of doctrines, and K2 132 PAROCHIAL WORK. holy rites the explanations of holy truths ; and one reason why the latter have become so obscured, has been the meagre, and mutilated, and often ir- reverent manner in which the former have been performed. Men generally, and especially the poor, learn more quickly by what they see than by what they hear, and in that proportion in which we give dignity and force to administrations, we give power and plainness to truths. Parish 20. This introduces another important part of Schools. parochial work ; the management of the parish school. It is significantly and strikingly true of this, that he who neglects the seed-time can expect nx> harvest, and in the school it is that the real work nmst be done for the future day. It seems in a high degree a mistake, for a clergyman to live out of his school, or to leave it to the management of a school- master, and then to complain of the heathenish ignorance and darkness of the adult and aged poor. That fearful ignorance we referred to above is to be remedied early in life, and a hundredth part of the actual labour bestowed on the child at school, will be sufficient to do the work which is now re- quired for the man who has grown up in sin, igno- rance, and infidelity. The teaching of the children of the poor usually seems to be something such as this ; a child enters the village school at an age so young, that with any thing like energy and real in- terest in him, his whole character might be formed PAROCHIAL WORK. 133 for future life, and every tendency watched and directed in a way which we have no power of bring- ing to act upon children of other ranks in society. The child gradually rises in the school, and re- ceives his instruction from a master who, however devoted to his work and efficient in its perform- ance, must apply himself chiefly to the intellect and the imparting of knowledge of various kinds. There is a peculiar precocity in children between the ages of seven and twelve, which will quickly and easily enable them to attain knowledge, in such a manner as to excite surprise : the pro- cess of mental arithmetic, the neatness of hand- writing, the recollection of dates and facts in their order, whether in geography or history, are all gone through with a facility and acuteness which astonish the bystander. He compares the effect partly with his own ignorance on the particular facts in question, and partly with his preconceived idea of the powers of a child, and especially of a poor child. All this tends to elevate his estimation of the mode of education, and gives him an entire satisfaction in the general condition of the child, and the expectation of a good and religious life. Now this opinion is founded on a wrong hypothesis. The master, not vested with spiritual powers or spi- ritual pretensions, has directed his chief aim at the intellectual powers of the child ; and these are con- sequently sharpened in an undue degree. The pre- cociousness referred to above is nothing peculiar, nothing really striking ; nothing on which to base 134 PAROCHIAL WORK. future hopes of goodness and religious life. Owing to the habits of the poor, their exposure to difficulties at a young age, and their being to a certain degree cast on their own resources in childhood, they gain a certain forwardness of mind unknown to the rich, ' whose habits are more dependent ; but this sharp- ness implies no depth, no real moral work or ac- tion, it is in most cases exceedingly superficial, and scarcely goes beyond the outer surface of the intel- lect. Sufficient knowledge is gained to run through arithmetical rules to the highest point with astonish- ing facility, when very often the child will be found deficient in practical knowledge of the lowest sort : and events of history are gained with surprising accuracy, without one clear definite idea or prin- ciple attached to any of them. The picture has no colour : it has not entered the inner surface through the pencil of the imagination or the feel- ings. It becomes available for a showy examina- tion, and the succession of the Plantagenets and Tudors is given with an accuracy which would leave many an historian behind, but with a bareness and indifference which a child would not shew about his dog or his toy. But the effect produced gains the desired object, the astonishment of bystanders, while a false estimation of the children's powers is produced. At the age of ten or eleven such boys become the teachers of others, and naturally, from the fact of teaching others, they receive the im- pression that they are thoroughly taught them- selves : and this superficial amount of knowledge PAROCHIAL WORK. 135 is the only permanent possession of the mind for life. At twelve years old the boy becomes less and less regular at school ; he remains a while in attendance at the Sunday school, till at last he appears on Sunday sitting in the free seats among the men, which is intended to announce the fact that his education, intellectual as well as moral, is complete. He then takes a servant's place in some inferior rank of society, or immediately is thrown with men and youths accustomed to evil, and fearless in the expression of sin : the slender work done in the school is soon broken down, and the knowledge he had seemed to grasp and give out while under training fades rapidly away. There is no outward and formal act to keep it up, the daily remem- brancer of school teaching, the frequent service in church, the morning and evening prayer, and the constant intercourse with good men, no longer force religious thoughts upon him. The undisciplined habits of the poor offer no remedy. In nine cases out of ten the domestic rule and the paternal ex- ample are ill fitted to take the place of the ar- rangements of the school or the influence of the clergyman and master. The youth finds around him the utmost laxity as to attendance at divine worship ; without a strong inward principle of good, it is very difficult to withstand the force of external circumstances, and the influence of the conduct of others. And where all example is on the side of laxity and evil, the heart of a youth, 136 PAROCHIAL WORK, beset with passions, and prone to many guilty pleasures and sensations, quickly coincides with the spirit it finds around. It is natural to expect that the life of school until twelve years old would have tended considerably to counteract this influence, and have prevented the evil results. But here is the point I am at this moment concerned with : the ordinary school life of a village boy does not do this. And all the pre- cocity, talent, quickness, activity, and memory we adverted to above, which so often makes the village school a wonder and the class a show, are not qualities which give any certain promise as to the knowledge or good habits of the youth afterwards. There is a shallowness about the mind of a child which prevents any thing taking deep root, though the shallow service has a certain power which pro- duces a quick visible result ; like a rich soil on the surface of clay, producing a rapid growth of lighter crops, but affording no true warrant that plants which strike deeper will have a proportionate growth or rapidity of development. These are childish qua- lities, and this very rapidity and ease of produc- tion prevent their being instrumental towards form- ing deeper and stronger moral habits. They pro- duce quickly, that is all ; they lie on the surface of the moral nature ; they are purely intellectual, and simply tend to prepare a surface, good, useful, and necessary for further cultivation. If the work is stopped there, it has been next to worthless : if proceeded with continuously, the first step has PAROCHIAL WORK. 137 been of the highest value. The boy of fourteen is a different being from the child of ten, and the work of six months tells more in forming his character and strengthening his moral habits, than the work of six years does on the child of six, eight, or ten. The mental cultivation of the child, is needful towards the further formation of the youth, if it be at once and continuously followed up ; but if it is not, its value sinks, and is like the foundation of a building, which is essential to the existence of the superstructure, but has no point, meaning, or value, if that be not at once placed upon it. The retaining religious knowledge depends on the strength of the religious habits. Religious habits are the soil in which religious knowledge takes its root, and planted without that soil, it will live for a while, but rapidly fade away. I do not say that mental cultivation is not to be used to a high amount on children, but that we are not to expect any solid result apart from the con- tinuously acquired habits of after years ; without these we are not to be surprised if the precocity of ten be succeeded by the blank and ignorance of fifteen and sixteen. Now it is in this very situation that the children of our poor are placed. It is this very vacuum which does succeed to the usual routine of village or parochial education ; and the problem which is presented to the great number of parish priests is just this, the management and treatment of youths from twelve to twenty. There must be a 138 PAROCHIAL WORK. solution of this problem somewhere ; there must be a remedy existing for this evil. We cannot believe that any portion of our existence is left thus with- out aid, and some applicable system. It is the complaint of most clergymen that the very boys on whom they have spent most labour and pains in the school, become their thorns within a year after by their undisciplined lives and open sins. Yielding easily to the habits of the generation above them, in the tap- room and at the gaming table, they quickly lose their knowledge of Christianity, belie their bap- tismal covenant, and scoff at the very truths which a few months ago formed part of their existence. Confirmation is often despised by them in spite of the most strenuous efforts of their clergyman to bring them to it ; or if they come, the process of preparation is one which at every point appears unreal and superficial. What should have been the moral preparation of years has shrunk into the in- tellectual preparation of three months ; and for the fitness of a holy life and choice have been substi- tuted the attainment of a few facts of religion again planted in a soil which will not receive them. And if at length the boy thus prepared is induced to give up a day's work to present himself before the bishop, or to forego two shillings for the bless- ings of the rite of Confirmation, it very often ends in being but the work of a day, a single insulated fact in a long waste of life, unsucceeded by Holy Communion, and not deepened or strengthened by a more regular attendance at church, or perform- PAROCHIAL WORK. 139 ance of daily devotions. Of course this is not the case with all ; but I suppose it is true of forty- five cases out of fifty which are brought to Con- firmation. Added to which we shall find on the least enquiry, that boys when they present them- selves as candidates for that rite, are ignorant even of the doctrines of the Trinity and the Atonement, and have forgotten the teaching of years, and the once surprising attainments of the village school. This is a heavy evil ; where does the remedy lie ? There seem two or three weak points of im- portance in the existing system of things in many parishes. First, the strong intellectual develop- ment which is given to our parish school educa- tion without the formation of distinct moral ha- bits ; and under intellectual I class even the attain- ment of religious knowledge. Secondly, the feeble grasp with which many of the clergy attempt to hold the youths of the poor after they have left school, and the absence of any direct, formal, and recognised courses of intercourse. Thirdly, and much resulting from these two, the unreal position into which Confirmation is thrown, and the very slight recognition of the power and importance of first Communion. These in brief seem to be the reasons of that false condition of the youths of our poor, who are lying around us in tens of thousands, and whose age is in the highest degree critical, as giving the whole complexion to the future life and influence of the rising generation. The gulph which thus opens between the two ages of life is 140 PAROCHIAL WORK. of the greatest importance, and affects in the high- est degree the moral condition of the people. It is not my object here to enter minutely into the detail of school management or educational tactics, but simply to confine my remarks to that object with which I originally set out, the way in which the parochial system, if fully and energetically applied, may be made effective in the moral improvement of the people ; and while so glaring an evil as the ignorant, profligate, and reckless lives of our youth is left unaffected, we must feel that in some way or other the parochial system is not doing its work. The importance of training this class of society is manifestly great ; from them the farmer, the small tradesman, the artizan, the mechanic, the field labourer of a future day, are to spring ; they ar3 the parties who are to mould the characters of the children of a coming genera- tion, and they are to be the men whose influence and example in the domestic circle, and the sphere of daily labour, is to elevate to good, or depress to the lowest sinfulness, the coming masses of our population. It lies with them whether the neglect of Holy Communion and contempt of God's house is to be a permanent heirloom in English society, or whether with the flood of light poured in upon us a succeeding day is to be better than the present ; it remains with them whether the hours of the farm, the shop, and the field, are to be the chronometer of the Church and religious life, or whether the laws of God's kingdom on earth shall set and PAROCHIAL WORK. 141 direct the machinery of the world and society ; it rests with them whether future ages are to look on holy seasons as obsolete names, or holy periods rife with life and energy and reality ; it rests with them whether the future multitudes of English poor in manufacturing and agricultural districts, shall be loyal, obedient, and patient, by receiving from their fathers the heritage of those principles, or whether they shall fall in with the tide of adverse principles of revolution and anarchy which have already affected so many around us. We must re- member ours is no common day ; we are standing on a great turning-point in the society of man ; we are not called to act and live in days like those of our fathers, and it will much depend on the line taken by the youth of this day whether England will be the centre and stronghold of obedience and quietness, or shall march in the wake of empires gone to decay. a. One remedy then seems to lie in the prac- tice of the parish priest in his school. I have tried to shew the true character of children of the age at which we find them at village schools ; it is the time of life when the intellectual powers must simply be made the channel through which to convey religious feeling and moral tendencies ; consequently, the more the minister of God places himself in this re- lation to the children of his school, the more he will attain this grand end in their education. The only hope he can have of really in after years keeping a hold on their minds, must be by some close 142 PAROCHIAL WORK. intercourse, some realized affection and interest formed in earlier days ; and the attachment created in childhood is the true foundation of influence hereafter. It is by this personal influence very much that we can hope to counteract the evil effects of ill example which will live before their eyes between the ages of fourteen and twenty. It is clear that this aim will not be reached unless the parish priest be the actual manager and teacher of his school; the influence of life depends more on the heart than the head, and that influence in this case over the heart cannot be achieved except by frequent presence and intercourse. When a school is carried on by a schoolmaster who has no necessary connection with the clergyman as the spiritual instructor of the children, the education must be independent of the parochial system. This placing schools in hands independent of the clergy- man, breaks off one great opportunity of affecting the hearts of children; it makes the education intellectual rather than moral, and connects the children with the secular rather than the spiritual guide. The different parts of the parochial system are interwoven with each other, and if you break one thread you weaken and injure the rest. The neglect of the recognition of the spiritual relation of the clergyman in the school, leads almost of neces- sity to the loss of his position with the growing youth of his parish, while the moral habit formed by the clergyman's bearing this relation to his school, is strong. Let him open and close the PAROCHIAL WORK. 143 schools with prayer himself in person ; let him in- struct his head classes daily, for however short a time, in their religious knowledge ; let him fre- quently visit his school in the course of the day for the purpose of imparting that instruction, and let him give the impression that he is the actual educator of the baptized children of his parish, and the master but his temporary locum tenens, and placed there as his assistant during the hours he is absent, and the whole effect and tendency of school life in a parish will be altered ; it will seem to be a religious life, more than an intellectual, and the object of it will seem the formation of moral habits rather than the acquisition of general know- ledge. And yet not in the least a less intellectual education on this account. He who baptized the child will continue to be its guide from the font to Confirmation, will enable it to realize that from the cradle to the grave he is its guardian and friend, and that one tissue-thread runs through all the life, from Baptism to burial ; that they are links of the chain which connect its birth with its death. He must be the actual fountain of the religious know- ledge imparted to it. I would also suggest the use of a more moral system of punishment and cor- rection than we usually find, and one which falls within the province of the clergyman rather than that of the schoolmaster. Children are open to appeals to their better feelings and their reason, and often the most depraved may be won by tenderness, personal attention, and care, applied to their parti- 144 PAROCHIAL WORK. cular case, much more quickly than through force or coercion. How little discriminating patient ten- derness is bestowed generally on a parish school child. Among other things, again, which serve to shew how the parish school has drifted away from the clergyman's hand and guidance, is the continual dis- tinction we find made between the day and Sunday school. The latter is the one usually arranged with reference to the clergyman himself, and that with a distinction so great in its arrangements as very much to prevent its immediate connection and unity with the education of the week. Why should not both be under the same rule and system ? and why should not the two harmonize in their general in- fluence on the mind of the child ? It is remark- able how often children of village schools are ex- cluded from attendance at daily service ; if they were looked upon as an integral part of the con- gregation, there would be much of the difficulty as to lack of attendance at once got over, and in the children themselves a habit formed of respect for the service of the Church, and daily dependence on God's grace, which would materially affect their after-life ; while the fact of being conscious of a ser- vice performed in the parish which they are not ex- pected, as a matter of course, to take part in, must tend to weaken the force of their respect for the services of the Church, and the view of their para- mount importance over all the other works of the day. At the same time it might be advisable that PAROCHIAL WORK. 145 children whose attention soon wearies should leave church before the close of the full service, perhaps at the end of Morning Prayer or the Litany, when- ever an additional service follows. b. Not only does the practice of thus appearing in close connection with the school, form a strong habit of mind ; but it gives an opportunity which a clergyman cannot afford to forego of knowing the characters and dispositions of the children themselves, of eliciting their affections and sympa- thies, of being the object of love and respect, for lack of which so many of our poor spend pointless and desolate lives ; and all this work should be begun in childhood and in the village school ; it must be to the clergyman the sphere in which he is simply carrying out a most important part of his great vocation on the individuals God has com- mitted to him. He must try to feel when he enters his parochial life, that he has around him a number of beings whose whole history of spiritual existence hangs on him, and for which he is respon- sible, and one portion of this whole life is spent within the walls of the school-room, within which he is simply doing his great priestly work over a portion of his people. He enters his school to cany on his general ministration ; it is one sphere of his spiritual life, and all its teaching and discipline are subordinate to the religious life it is intended to inculcate and form. c. Added to this the clergyman should through the connection he has with the school, accustom the L 146 PAROCHIAL WORK. children early to confide their difficulties to him, and look to him for advice in things spiritual ; and that very intercourse we spoke of above will receive ten times the force if begun in childhood and in connec- tion with the education of the school of the parish. It is impossible in the limited space before me to give even suggestions as to the particular mode of education to be pursued by the clergyman in his school, though this would well deserve a most close and accurate consideration. My great object is to shew the false position he is placed in when the vil- lage school-master becomes a person independent of himself, and creates and strengthens a new and separate interest in the parish, a custom becoming prevalent, and creating an actual gap in the working of the parochial system for which nothing else can be a substitute. Surely if clergymen would do their own work, would tie themselves to their parishes in such a way as the daily opening and closing the schools would require, and would consider their po- sition in their schools one of the first duties of each day, there would have been no opportunity for the state of things rising up all around us ; the school is the clergyman's right and legitimate sphere, and is a work which could easily be accomplished if only he would apply himself to it. If he deserts his post, and yields it to another, we shall continue to see what we do, and the parochial system will be crip- pled and broken up. When he is not looked at as the educator of the children he has baptized, he at once breaks up the unity of the parochial system, PAROCHIAL WORK. 147 which is so perfect for meeting the spiritual and moral wants of the people. In fact, we could almost feel a desire to retain the old system of the dame's school, when carried out under the immediate eye of the clergyman himself, as superior to that which we often now see around us. In the cottage of the old village dame the scenery of after-life lies around the children ; and girls live among the ob- jects and employments which will engage their at- tention through life, and they form far more the habit of mind which suits the attainment and per- fection of the virtues of an English labourer's wife and mother than in the too often barren school- room, cut off alike from objects of a domestic na- ture, and from the immediate personal control of the minister of the Church ; where the room, the life, the teacher, the occupation, all are alike temporary, and have scarce a connecting link with the cottage and the employments of the daughter, the wife, and the mother. Education seems to be taking too high a flight; it should be, the formation of habits which will suit a certain state of action and vocation ; those habits must be formed by acts of the same character as the person educated will be hereafter called upon to perform. In the case before us, the subjects of education, in many of our girls' schools especially, have but little connection with their after life. The formation of the wife, and the mother, is our aim, and the works and duties which will be the subject-matter of their vocations are what we are concerned with in their education. L2 148 PAROCHIAL WORK. We want to accustom them to the acts of domes- tic life, cleanliness and economy, and the considera- tion of the comfort of others ; we want to draw out feelings and sympathies, which are so little called out in our English poor, but which are absolutely necessary to form the character useful in their future life. There is a stiffness and coldness about some modes of education which must operate ill on the general character ; there is a nature, a tenderness in others, which tends far more powerfully to realize religious lessons and the Church's discipline. Education is fast drifting from the shore of reality and depth, while we are encouraging a superficial and shallow intellectual knowledge. What has been said here will not affect so strongly the education of boys as of girls. Although I cannot help feeling that in either school-room, if the master and mistress were persons who had been brought up in the school itself, fulfilling the relations of life in the parish where they are now educating others ; themselves humble and respectful, and dependant wholly on the clergyman himself for guidance and instruction in fulfilling their calling, the work would be far more real though of a humbler character. Another very important portion of parochial ^ u y - n connec tion with the parish school and the clergyman's work with the young, is the use of catechising in public. It clearly is the essentially Catholic mode of instruction, and while its benefits to the child instructed are great and manifest, the PAROCHIAL WORK. 149 use to all who are present at church is equally im- portant ; while the children are catechised the adults present are led, perhaps for the first time in their lives, to question themselves, and to reason as to the great truths of religion, and it becomes one of the most important opportunities of shedding light on the darkness which broods over the minds of men and women among us. In catechising in church during the evening or afternoon service prominence can be given to those points, so essential to be be- lieved and yet so imperfectly known, the doctrine of the ever-blessed Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Atonement ; it will become an opportunity of ex- plaining the nature and offices of the ecclesiastical seasons of the year ; and, if it immediately succeeds a baptism, of explaining to sponsors the nature of the duties they have just entered upon. But any thing I say upon the subject of catechetical teach- ing applies to the education of children as well in school as church. I will here repeat some remarks which I have made elsewhere 3 , on the efficacy of this mode of teaching, as the experience of each man in his own sphere may, however slighty, aid in the general work of parochial amelioration. Instruction is often too much given, and know- ledge conveyed, by exhortation, address, advice, and other like methods, by which the party in- structed is dealt with without any exertion on his own part. The sermon of the Sunday or holy- day is often followed up by the oft-repeated advice a In a number of the Christian Remembrancer. 150 PAROCHIAL WORK. of the week ; the explicit statement, over and over again, of the same truths, and the reproofs of the same faults, the very fall of which on the ear has become like a dead unmeaning sound. We have heard the complaint in whole neigh- bourhoods that not one out of a large number of village schoolmasters was able, on being asked, to give a distinct answer, in explanation of any one point in the Catechism, or the meaning of words used in it. Such is the result of the too prevalent system. The great strength of the catechetical mode of teaching lies in the fact of its drawing out the mind and powers of the disciple, and leading himself to deduce truths on reflection, as well as to enunciate them. Men will always save themselves trouble if they can ; they do so unconsciously ; the tendency to relax exertions is mixed up with our nature throughout, and influences us frequently when we are not in the least degree aware of such being the case. This is true of our bodies of our con- science, as well as of our intellectual powers : we know this is strangely true of our conscience ; it will soon cease to warn us if not exerted, and it needs to be called to exert itself. People who substitute an external rule, and system of routine, for the voice of their own conscience, and do what they see done around them ; who are just as virtuous and no more, than the world religious or secular around them, and who attach themselves to an outward guide, instead of their own inward PAROCHIAL WORK. 151 one, cease very much to feel the directions of the latter; they gradually lose the genuine native oracle of conscience. It is equally true in the in- tellectual world : the understanding is weakened, and the intellect impaired, by not being allowed to exert themselves on the subject-matter of their education. The powers of apprehension and atten- tion are so enervated from being saved trouble, that they soon will cease to exist altogether. This is often the case so unconsciously to ourselves, that although we wish most earnestly to call those intel- lectual powers into play, yet, if we are allowing our- selves to be the objects of direct instruction, which does not of necessity call out our mental powers, we shall find them increasingly unwilling, and our- selves surrendering the use of them. The perfec- tion of our mental, as well as of our moral powers, consists in exertion. All this is in close analogy with the natural world. An organ or function of the body is absorbed, or paralyzed, or obliterated, if deprived of a healthy and life-giving opportu- nity of action. Work is the proper preservative of being, either physical, ethical, or intellectual. The catechetical system unites all this. The subject-matter of instruction is first given by direct teaching, and the memory exerted upon it. It is then drawn out by questions, which require a pro- cess of thought in the mind of the disciple, calling out his own powers, and strengthening his intellec- tual faculties. A direct question involves a logical process in the mind. The child himself gives birth 152 PAROCHIAL WORK. to the idea ; he himself has formed into shape what he enunciates. The edge which he himself affords it, by exerting his intellectual powers to give it out- line, presses keenly on him, and he feels its reality in the act of giving it birth. He receives his knowledge, in the first instance, in so modified a shape, that he does not see or understand its separate parts or tendencies. In answer to a ques- tion, he must place the truth in some defined idea ; he must discover the aptness of the answer to the particular point in view, and whether the exact portion of the general truth floating in his mind is that which answers to the question. To do this, he must abstract, generalize, and divide. He has then formed his idea : this is one step towards definition, and in doing this he has ranged over the whole surface of his knowledge on this point, has discovered its different bearings, and has got it into shape ; the general diffused body of light has become a focus : the floating sounds have formed themselves into a distinct tune. The expression by words becomes the next step in the history of defini- tion. The approval of his answer, or the contrary, becomes a third step. So, by degrees, he strikes out for himself, and from himself, a clear view on one given subject, which he has gathered and taken out from a large floating subject-matter, and upon which he has been compelled to exert his intellectual powers. He has been led to see what to lay hold of as important in the knowledge he possesses, and how he can apply it to some practical detail. Truth PAROCHIAL WORK. 153 becomes objective to himself, and that by his own power. He has painted a picture on his own mind, and has become acquainted with its form. He arranges facts under principles, or gives them a certain connection with other facts, which he would never have done otherwise. He may have been long convinced of a fact, but it rested without point in his mind, scarcely recognised. On a question being asked with reference to it, he discovers the fact, lays hold of it, and classes it under a certain arrangement. It is one of a class, or it is connected with, and finds its place under a certain principle ; and the being led to classify the fact leads him to a clearer knowledge of it, enables him to understand it, and gives it a definite relation in the world of things, which it never had before. This process assists the memory, defines his own notions, and strengthens his intellect. He knows where he is. It is a logical process, and unconsci- ously he has become a logician. Take a case : a child is aware of the bare fact of Elijah being a prophet ; i. e. the term prophet is attached in his mind to the name of Elijah. But the notion is indefinite. He is asked what Elijah was, and he immediately is led to summon to his mind the class of persons called prophets, to consider what they were, to see the point in which Elijah resembled the class, and to state the fact of his resemblance. A child is aware of the fact of Herod being a cruel man, but the notion is indefinite is floating. When asked what kind of person Herod was, he 154 PAROCHIAL WORK. calls to mind his acts ; he tries them by some standard of what a person placed in Herod's posi- tion should be ; he gets the notion of his falling below the mark, and, when tried by other cases, he finds that it is in the point of mercy that he fails. Herod is a cruel man ; he all along knew this ; he would have told you so if he had been asked, but he did not understand what he meant till it was drawn out of him. Contrast the condition of the child's mind who has reached this end for himself, with that of one who is barely told of the fact, and in whose mind the fact is barely left. It is evident how far more clear, distinct, and applicable to practice, instances of knowledge must be which have been the subject- matter of a mental operation of this kind, than those which merely lie like objects floating on a surface, upon which they make no impression, and on which they bear with no weight. Let us conceive this mode carried out into the detail of all Christian truths. Conceive each truth known to the child, arranged under some class of ideas and principles ; conceive this done at the mo- ment ; and we shall soon see the power of the cate- chetical system, in strengthening the understanding and laying hold of the memory. Every article of the Creed, when placed in the form of a ques- tion, gives an opportunity of calling to mind, and investigating the whole train of moral principles. Every fact of Holy Scripture does the same. Cate- chetical instruction becomes a constant compulsion PAROCHIAL WORK. 155 to the child to have recourse to the treasure-house of its knowledge, to bring out instances which are to be tried one with another, rejected if they do not agree ; in which work the judgment is called into play, and is strengthened itself by weighing the fit- ness of facts with principles. Catechetical instruction teaches method and ar- rangement ; lets the disciple know where he is, and where his knowledge is ; reproduces from given subject-matter ; strikes out new relations of truth ; becomes a kind of myrioramic picture, suggesting new views by a re-arrangement of existing data. What, in fact, the study of languages and moral philosophy does for us, catechetical instruction does for the poor. The examination of the structure of languages, the carrying on this work involved in all the difficulty attending a dead language, the close attention to verbal technicalities, the constant ex- ercise of powers of generalization and abstraction, and the comparison of similar and dissimilar parts in words and grammar ; these draw out, discipline, strengthen, render keen our faculties, in much the same way as catechetical instruction does the powers of those whose position cuts them off from the above method of education. One important feature in catechetical teaching is its elementary character. The best means of gain- ing knowledge is, after all, by dwelling on simple elementary truths ; working them thoroughly into the mind, and developing their own native substance and inherent riches. On this plan the learner will 156 PAROCHIAL WORK. actually gain more knowledge than if he placed di- rectly before him, as an object, the different points of knowledge he wished to make his own. Kindred facts gather round one given fact like flakes to a rolling snow-ball, and the attention, by being fixed on one point only, gains a strength and keenness it would lose in diffusion : e. g. A man wishes to gain a knowledge of the facts of Church history in order to apply them to the construction of principles ; he finds an immense space to wander over, which dis- courages his own energy, and weakens his attention by its vastness and apparent want of connection. Church doctrine, struggles with the state, the con- dition of branches of the Church elsewhere, lives of her saints, and countless other points, rise up be- fore him in the field of enquiry, and he becomes bewildered. Let such a man satisfy himself with laying hold of one single life of a ruler or saint of the Church in one given epoch of her history, let him con- sciously and directly give his sole attention to this one point, determining to get it up thoroughly, to study it in all its bearings and relations, to see it in contrast with all collateral facts, bringing to bear his attention in full intensity on this one object, seizing the quivering, vibrating feelers of historic truth with the firm forceps of a single-eyed atten- tion, and he will have acquired more actual know- ledge of Church history, more insight into the rela- tions of things with regard to her, more power to from true principles about her in the study of the PAROCHIAL WORK. 157 one life, than he would have done had he spent double the time in wandering over the plain of cen- turies. He will have definite points to guide his mind's eye ; he will be looking down a vista of close rocks which bound the ray of his mental vision, as to one star at the end, and the ray of that star will gradually strike out the minutest points among the objects which surround him, which he would never otherwise have descried ; while, on the other hand, if he took his stand upon a summit from which his eye would have no given resting-place, he would lose in distinctness what he gained in space, and he would come away with an imperfect knowledge of every object. Each fact, each period, each point in history, has a thousand objects passing over it continually in faint and dim shadows, which, rolling in rapid succession, require to be closely watched, and then will come out in brighter and brighter colours, and more and more defined out- line, till the surface, however small, becomes to us the camera obscura of revolving centuries. Mean- while our powers are in repose, from having but one point at which to be directed. There are two systems of school teaching com- mon in this day ; the one I have just described and the common or monitorial one that now chiefly prevails in our schools. Of the latter the object is rather knowledge than moral training ; and while its object is an inferior one, it fails even of that. It does not give that very knowledge, the communica- tion of which it so exclusively aims at ; and it goes 158 PAROCHIAL WORK. on repeating its lesson of information, which is for- gotten almost as soon as it is given. It partakes of the impatience and hurry of the age, and proceeds from that intellectual temper, of which the Hamil- tonian system is the extreme result. Avoiding, or cutting short the elementary part of knowledge, it grasps truths before it can hold them ; and the child goes on from one fact to another, as the school-books pull him along, without entering into any one of them properly, or having any point of view or centre given him to help his understanding. The object of the catechetical system is the dis- cipline of the mind, and the strengthening of the character while passing through the system of teaching. The man is developed in all his nature, and with this discipline the catechist is satisfied. The man is not cared for in the rival system ; it is some particular work he is urged to do, and he, himself, his mental power, and moral discipline, are passed by. I have not made hitherto any appeal to autho- rity, or gone into the subject of Church customs and law, or touched on what our own Church says on the point, because I have wished to exhibit the catechetical system, first of all, standing on its own basis, and recommending itself on the ground of its inherent practical power and utility. That is, after all, its real recommendation. The Church adopt- ed it because it was a useful and efficient system ; because it did its work, and fixed religious ideas and doctrine on the youthful mind, as she wanted. PAROCHIAL WORK. 159 Let people examine the subject upon those ordi- nary principles of common sense and experience upon which they would act in general matters. I am sure the catechetical method will stand the test, and that it is, in fact, its great distinction, that it is based on common sense, and appeals to our genuine experience and observation as being the way in which all real profitable knowledge is acquired. However, we are members of the Church, and it is of course our duty to attend to her voice and listen to her recommendation, if she has any to give us. And on this subject we find her most clear and explicit, and enjoining the work of catechising on the clergy. Wherever she speaks of the edu- cation of her children, she speaks of catechising ; she continued at the Reformation the method of in- struction which former ages had transmitted. She adopts the views of the primitive Church on the subject, and takes them for her standard. It will therefore not be amiss to go a little into this point, and see how far, as members of the Church uni- versal,, and of the Church of England in particular, the catechetical method of instruction has a claim upon us above other and more recent ones. The Church orders that this instruction should be used on Sundays and holidays. " The curate of every parish shall diligently, upon Sundays and holidays, after the second lesson at Evening Prayer, openly in the church, instruct and examine so many children of his parish sent unto him, as he shall 160 PAROCHIAL WORK. think convenient, in some part of this Catechism.'' Then the following rubric : " And all fathers and mothers, masters and dames, shall cause their children, servants, apprentices, which have not learned their Catechism, to come to the church at the time appointed, and obediently to hear and be ordered by the 'curate, until such time as they have learned all that is here appointed for them to learn." These rubrics shew the inten- tion of the Church about catechetical instruction and the particular form of it. The first book of Edward VI. orders it once in six weeks, at least, which was afterwards altered into a direction that the minister should use it every holiday. In the injunctions of Queen Eliza- beth (xliv.), it was only required upon every holi- day, and every second Sunday in the year. The season of Lent was selected by the Church in earlier, as well as later, days, as one of catechising publicly, when the most solemn catechisms were always used. The fifty-ninth canon orders distinctly " That upon every Sunday and holiday before Evening Prayer, the Minister shall, for half an hour or more, examine and instruct the youth and ignorant persons of his parish in the Ten Commandments, the Belief, and the Lord's Prayer, and shall dili- gently hear, instruct, and teach the Catechism set forth in the Book of Common Prayer." This catechising was ordered in all Prayer-Books till the last review to be half an hour before Evening PAROCHIAL WORK. 161 Prayer; it was then altered to " after second les- son." Parents and masters are bound, both by the rubrics and the canons, to send their children and apprentices to be catechised, on pain, finally, of excommunication ; and by the canon of 1571, the minister was yearly, within twenty days after Easter, to present to the bishop the names of all those in the parish who had not sent their children and ser- vants at the times appointed. And to enforce this it was one of the articles exhibited to be admitted by authority, "That he whose child at ten years old or upwards, or whose servant at fourteen or up- wards, could not say the Catechism, should pay ten shillings to the poor-box." (Strype, Hist. Ref.) Again, the rubric, in the Confirmation Service, di- rects that, "As soon as children are come to a competent age, and can say the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments, and also can answer to the other questions of the Catechism, they shall be brought," &c. All these rubrics and arrangements in the Church in England, both those originally made, and the alterations proposed in them, shew that the Church intended that her edu- cation should be carried on by the means of cate- chetical instruction. I have tried, then, to shew that, a priori, we should expect this would be the best method for conveying and impressing truths on the minds of all persons. Secondly, that the Church has, in her earliest and purest ages, as well as in this land more lately, used and authorized the system. M 162 PAROCHIAL WORK. Mode of It becomes, then, a question, how shall each one in Schools, of us, how shall each priest or deacon, in his own sphere, through his own parish, best bring to bear the Church catechetical system on the people com- mitted to him ? How shall he manage the existing system he finds established in his parish, so as to conduce to the interest of the Church ? In the first place, the clergyman must occupy, as far as he can, a position of independence. He must not be the agent of a committee, or the administrator of a sub- scription fund. He must be able to carry out his education of the children as the baptized mem- bers of the Church, and look on his school as the Church's school of instruction provided by her for her children, with reference to the explanation of the baptismal promises and preparation for Confirmation. One great difficulty here will be the devotion of time, attention, and interest, which the clergyman must himself give to her children. He must look on them, as I said, as one of his especial fields of paro- chial labour. He must bring into existence a system of teaching which must be worked out, to a certain extent, by himself personally; and which cannot, and may not, be left simply to the schoolmaster. The whole arrangement of the school must depend on his systematic personal attendance to work and keep it in motion. The commissioned instructor of the children of Christ's Holy Catholic Church, who is to lead them from Baptism to Confirmation and first Communion, and from that to the bar PAROCHIAL WORK. 163 of God, has a hard life of labour, discrimination, and devotion before him. The parish school being thus immediately in connection with the Church, under her control, and intended to carry out her education, it follows that the whole process of teaching must be framed to carry out the baptism of the children. The Church sends her children fresh from the baptismal font, with directions to receive instruction in the nature of the promises then made, and to prepare for Confirmation. The parish school, then, must be in preparation for Confirmation, the sphere for the explanation of the baptismal promises, the oppor- tunity of "learning the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments in the vulgar tongue, and all other things which a Christian ought to know and believe for his soul's health." Strictly, then, this is the least education which the Church expects her ministers to give her children : of course the sphere may be widened at discretion, according to circumstances. But if this is adhered to as the rule, it will avoid much unconnected dif- fusiveness of teaching, which has been the fault of this age in education, and will enable the teacher to rally his facts around one given point, the great ad- vantage of which I have spoken of above. However far he may go from that one point, he will still be safe if restricted by definite lines to it as the centre. This will be the rule ; it may seem to confine and limit the expanse of education, but in the end it will be found to have the contrary effect, as all working M 2 164 PAROCHIAL WORK. by definite system has. In the parish school, let the reading of Holy Scripture be with constant re- ference in the teacher's, as well as in the child's mind to the baptismal promise and preparation for Confirmation. Let the repeating and explaining of the Catechism be all with reference to the same ; keeping up the clear view that the Catechism was constructed expressly to explain holy Baptism. Let the public catechising in Church be always prepared for at school, beforehand; and let it be after the second lesson, so that whenever holy Bap- tism is administered, direct allusion may be made to it ; let all the statements and questions be illustra- tive of that, and the parents and sponsors of the child just baptized, be thus themselves instructed in the sacred obligations under which they have just placed themselves. Again, if there be an opportunity, from the age and other circumstances of children, to instruct them in history, let it be in connection directly with the Church, and, bearing upon the administration of her rites, it may be easily brought to explain Confirma- tion and other Episcopal offices. Let the child be always made to feel that it is learning what the Church has ordered it to learn, that it is preparing for Confirmation. Let it as well as the teacher have the clear idea of one higher point, to which every thing is to be referred ; to Baptism in the past, and Confirmation in the future. This must be done with considerable variety to prevent weariness. This will shew the child that each single depart- PAROCHIAL WORK. 165 ment of teaching is worth nothing in itself, except as it subserves to the further ends of religion and morals. Knowledge will take its right place ; and education will be employed to give a good ten- dency and direction to knowledge, not merely to impart it. Each arrangement in the school may have direct and acknowledged reference to the child's duties arising from Holy Baptism. To a child's mind, its needle-work and writing may be made to have direct connection with that one point, the fulfilment of some duty of industry, or contentment, which is mixed up with baptismal promises. Suppose such a system as this : part of one day devoted to reading Holy Scripture in connection with the typical history of the Jews, as developed in our baptized state, the kingdom of darkness shewed forth in Egypt, and in the Jewish sojourn there; Holy Baptism, as shewn in the passage of the Red sea ; the pilgrimage of life, in the wilderness ; the guidance of our Lord, in Moses ; and the struggles of the baptized, in the books of Joshua and Judges ; and these points have been gained : first, the child has got up its facts far more accurately and reten- tively by referring them to one great point ; se- condly, he has formed a moral habit with respect to Baptism ; thirdly, he has had explained to him the nature of Baptism. Part of a second day might be set aside for the study of the Old Testament, with a view to eliciting baptismal obligations, and the meaning of the third promise, by discovering 166 PAROCHIAL WORK. God's commandments throughout it. A third day to the study of the New Testament historically, with reference to the formation of the Church, and the working and appointment of Holy Baptism and Confirmation. A fourth day to the study of our Blessed Lord's life and conduct on earth, as the pattern of the baptized. The fifth day to the study of the same, to gather the statement of God's law, scattered throughout the Gospel, as compared with the statement of the Mosaic dispensation. Again, suppose the same system carried on throughout, and the Catechism taught daily, with the same view ; perhaps, one day, simply said ; a second day, proved from Holy Scripture ; a third, treated for public catechising in church, and so forth ; and, perhaps, a day set apart for the espe- cial study of the Baptismal and Confirmation Ser- vices. Let the same method be carried out in other branches of teaching, as much as possible, using the plan of question and answer, and evolving the truth by contrast and exhaustion from all surrounding matter ; so leaving its keen edges to press on the mind of the child, which will become chiselled and polished of itself. To carry out this perfectly, it is manifest that the presence of the clergyman himself becomes very important. It would be im- possible to leave the working of such a system, so bound up with the Church's teaching, entirely to a mere schoolmaster. Besides the great force of association which would be lost, much advantage PAROCHIAL WORK. 167 is gained in the fact of the minister, who has him- self admitted the child into the Church, or is in the habit of admitting others weekly in the presence of the children, himself guiding on from its sacred portal down the cloistered pathway to Confirma- tion of the same man the same voice the same hand presenting them to the bishop, closing their eyes in death, and committing their last remains to the still resting-place of the grave. I say nothing of the power of Ordination, which gives grace for the work of instruction, as for other offices of the ministerial calling. It will be said that this is giving the parish priest a good deal to do, and I do not deny it. Without pretending to lay down any exact limits, or to say what proportion of the care and work of a school he should take on himself, and what he should leave to the schoolmaster ; and without asserting what extent of actual personal work should be rendered in the parish school, by the clergyman, as distinct from mere superintendence and supervision ; it is obvious that the more a parish school aims at, the more there is for the clergyman to do in it. The higher the school system rises, and the more moral and spiritual the influence it exerts over the youthful flock, the more congenial does the atmosphere of the school-room become to the clergyman ; the more is he at home there, and on his own ground. In the meantime, there are great consolations, as well as cares ; and fresh sympathies and interests come with the closer obligations. 168 PAROCHIAL WORK. The benefit is incalculable which such a plan as this would confer upon the poor. It would give them an indissoluble bond of union with the min- ister, a home and friend of their own, and a po- sition and locality in the social world, which now hardly belongs to them. Let us suppose such a system of teaching as this begun, and a number of young persons in a parish growing and forming under it. Let us imagine the Creed well worked into their minds by this method; beginning with the first article in it, and thoroughly imprinting that upon them, and going on from that to the rest, in regular order. Let us have at each stage the same perpetual and ever- renewed act of extracting from the child's mind, placing in contact with it each several article of knowledge and belief, and, by means of question and answer, making the learner form his own apprehension of it. Let us suppose all this course of teaching, gather- ing, as it proceeds, a quantity of Scripture illustra- tion about it; illustrations from the Jewish law, from the history of the chosen people, from the lives of patriarchs, prophets, and kings ; from the mira- cles, discourses, parables, in the New Testament. A Creed imprinted, a scriptural knowledge formed in this way, and composing an available and effec- tive whole in the child's mind, might not all these reasonably be expected to make a permanent prac- tical impression upon some in the school? The process would be a slow one ; but is it too much to expect that the parish priest would ultimately derive PAROCHIAL WORK. 169 strength, consolation, and support to himself and his office from it, in that new circle of parishioners which such teaching would tend to form ? I know how liable all efforts at doing good are to disap- pointment, and how weak a reed the human mind is to lean upon, especially when you are doing most for it, and think you have most claims on its gratitude. It may very likely turn out, that boy after boy, whom you thought you had formed, may disappoint you, may forget you, your lessons and your train- ing, when he leaves the school-room for the world, and remain as an eye-sore in your parish, and an ever-annoying memorial of labour thrown away. Be it so. In all such cases as these, it is only a residuum of good that the most sanguine after all should look for, and this they may not unreason- ably expect. And that residuum is a great thing. It makes up for much waste, for many regrets, for many slips and losses. It is the natural legitimate reward of labour and toil in the Lord's vineyard ; and though, in some cases, God may think fit to try the faith of His zealous servants, by refusing even this, still even this trial does not come with- out its consolation. We may easily have done good, though we do not see it ; and if the work in one part of the field shews no apparent fruits, in another it does. One clergyman has a discouraging parish, another an encouraging one ; the former may rejoice at his brother's success, and derive relief from it. The apparent fruits of any system are sure to be, to a 170 PAROCHIAL WORK. certain extent, irregular; and circumstances and causes which we do not know of, nip them here, and expand them there. But on the whole, and in the long run, good is working. In drawing out and recommending the cate- chetical system of instruction to the clergy of our Church, I do not mean at all to undervalue the labours of those whose services have been devoted to another system, or to forget the great deal of good, and real religious teaching, that has been going on in different parts of the Church. I know, and could mention, the highest instances of self- devotion to the cause of the education of the poor. In country parishes, and places far from the world's eye, in hidden spots, and recesses where no reward could reach the self-denying priest and teacher but that of his own conscience, the work has been going on. But I speak of general features, general effects, general tendencies, observable in the reli- gious education of the day. Where real and sound success has been attained among us, it has been owing, I believe, to that very principle of cate- chising which I have been dwelling on. The method is so natural a one, that persons who take pains in the work of education almost necessarily fall into it, and it forms part of their system, whether they know it or not. Every good instructor is more or less a catechiser, whether he is conscious of it or not. The principle lies deep in our common sense, and act it must, partially or widely, irregularly or regularly. PAROCHIAL WORK. 371 What I wish, is to see the principle brought out, expanded, and applied systematically ; and, if I may say so, scientifically. This has not been done, and a rival scheme has occupied the ground, and modern education has adopted another system. But catechetical teaching is the plan of nature, and of the Church ; and, with these two high authorities in its favour, I leave it to the serious, sober, ear- nest, and conscientious consideration of our clergy. I want to see education brought to bear in its highest powers on the poor as well as the rich ; and I am convinced that multitudes of various shades of opinion in this day will sympathize with the de- sire to employ some of the energies and powers of the lower orders in the work of the Church ; she wants their ministry, as of all other ranks of so- ciety, and many symptoms are now shewing them- selves of a growing conviction of this fact in Eng- land. There are powers, intellectual and moral, among the poor, which we cannot afford to lose, and which a sound and real system of education would bring out and apply. I know the cry with which these efforts may be met by some. The oft- repeated /cafcal yecopyelv %epe9 ev reOpa/jUfJievai,. But I grudge that the plough should have all our poor ; although at the same time I deny that the necessary effect of a sound, moral, real educa- tion, is to unfit youth for the humblest calling. 21. A scheme of school prayers might be drawn School Prayers, 172 PAROCHIAL WORK, out, which, by its plan and method, its reference to the facts of Christianity, and by its oft repetition, would become as powerful an instructor to the minds of children as any more definite form of teaching. Oft repetition teaches children almost with greater force than any thing ; it tends to form a habit, and it is singular how much truth may be conveyed through simple forms of prayer. A scheme might be drawn out which would involve the elementary teaching of every great religious truth, and become the centre round which might be coiled a vast deal more. Let us suppose simply, by way of illustration or sugges- tion, some such plan as the following. If prayers began with versicles and the Gloria, a verse might follow from the Te Deum illustrative of the season of the ecclesiastical year, by which the child would be led to speak of our Lord's passion through Lent, and the belief in His coming to judg- ment through Advent, the recognition of our union with the Church throughout the world through the Trinity Sundays, and so forth ; these verses would become deeply impressed on the children, and be- come in their minds connected with the great facts and truths of Christianity. A short lesson might be used from the Old Testament, illustrative of the events of the ecclesiastical season, followed by one from the New Testament ; the last passage followed by an antiphon which the children might them- selves say, by which the lesson of the day or sea- son will be impressed on their mind. The prayers and hymns might have distinct regard to the season PAROCHIAL WORK. 173 and so to the end of the service. In this way the whole service might become a definite body of in- struction, suited to the seasons of the ecclesiastical year. The oft-repetition will do much, and the child will gradually lay up a store of knowledge on holy things, which will become a foundation and treasure-house for after days. To this scheme catechising might be added for each day on a definite plan. If Sunday were always set apart for catechizing on the truth of the ever- blessed Trinity, and the Athanasian Creed made the basis of the examination, by degrees the truth as to the nature of God, the Trinity, the Incarnation, would unfold itself to the mind. Let Monday, in connec- tion with the creation of the firmament, be set apart for catechizing on the creation of the world, and the sacramental nature of the bodily and visible frame, and, if it seem desirable to connect the acts of our Blessed Lord's life in the same way, the cursing of the barren fig-tree on Monday in holy week might be added to the course of questioning. Tuesday would suggest the creation of the plants and seed, as the act of creation on the third day, by which the doctrine of death and the resurrection would naturally be suggested. Wednesday, in the creation of the heavenly bodies, will naturally suggest the last Judgment and the betrayal of our Lord, and the truths connected with it; and Thursday, the day of the creation of birds and fish, will suggest the doctrines of Baptism and the Ascension of our Lord. Friday of course will suggest its own lesson 174 PAROCHIAL WORK. of the Fall of man, connected with his creation and the Atonement. Saturday might introduce the notice of sacred seasons and places. Thus in the seven days we have a complete cycle of facts sug- gesting doctrines which will become a frame-work for the whole Christian teaching. The Trinity and the Incarnation, the Creation, the Resurrection, the last Judgment, and our consequent probation, the Ascension to heaven, and Holy Baptism, the Fall and Atonement, and the establishment of the Church as the centre and source of holy seasons, will be a cycle of facts embodying all the main features of Christianity. And the continual recurrence of them all the year round will tend to impress them very vividly on the mind of the child. A certain variety will be given by ecclesiastical seasons and festivals, the recurrence of saints' days will offer opportunities for introducing the Gospel-history, and facts con- nected with the Apostles, while the greater holy seasons will bring out doctrines such as Penitence in Lent, the holy life in Easter, Grace at Whitsun- tide, and good works in Advent. Added to this scheme would be the instruction in the actual Catechism daily, which might be divided into separate portions, in some respect answering to the lessons of the day. The first three portions would on Thursday illustrate the doctrine of Bap- tism, the Creed on Sunday would teach the Trinity, the Ten Commandments on Wednesday would en- force the lesson on the Judgment ; the duty to God might be attached to Friday, as the natural result PAROCHIAL WORK. 175 of the Atonement. The Lord's Prayer might be attached to Tuesday, and the duty to our neigh- bour to Monday. In this manner it is remarkable how large a number of truths will fall under the child's notice, and how the continued repetition will tend to make them a part and parcel of himself. The fact of this teaching being a daily matter will make up for the absence of greater length ; and a small devotion of time daily on the part of the minister will enable him to do much, through this process, in giving Christian instruction to his children. In the same way, system in carrying out teaching through the day will have the same effect. I spoke of the use of a theory with regard to Holy Baptism; this might be one way of teaching with a definite point in view : but it might be carried out in many other ways. A good division of the week's .work would be found in instructing in the Old Testament history on Monday, the life of our Lord on Tuesday, reading the Epistles on Wednesday, the study of the Prayer-Book on Thursday, and the minuter instruction in the Catechism on Friday ; the ques- tions being few and simple, and each point thoroughly impressed on a child's mind by oft-repetition, and taking care to begin each day at a point which had been referred to the week before. One or two rules are of the first importance in applying this mode of instruction : oft-repetition, the application of instruction through catechizing, and the greatest possible punctuality in applying it daily. 176 PAROCHIAL WORK. I have not here gone into the detail of other kind of instruction, but have confined myself to religious teaching. In the same way all other branches of knowledge may be applied, and by repeating the same process will accomplish the same end. The great thing we have to do is to make our children Christians, and so raise them above the fearful depression of knowledge in which they live. This must be our great and primary object in the parish school, and this must be achieved by a por- tion of every day spent in the school. Every thing must be made to bear on this end, and in the re- sult the clergyman will realize that he is fulfilling his vocation and his commission to the baptized children of his flock. The seed sown thus deeply in the pliant heart of childhood will never be eradicated entirely ; and the habit formed while young will preserve a force and vigour which will resist the opposing efforts of many an after-day. School 22. Many other important questions arise as to the management of schools, and one of the most promi- nent is on the question of payment. The custom nearly universal is to expect the poor to make small payments at the village school of a penny or two- pence weekly, or to take two-pence of the first of the family and a smaller sum for younger members. Now though it may seem at first a trivial matter, it still involves many important consequences and definite principles. The receiving any return for the education of children in a parish involves much ; PAROCHIAL WORK. 177 it at once recognises an independence in the party educated, it makes the school rather a body re- sponsible to the parents and under their influence, than simply the scene in which the Church carries out her work of teaching, as the spiritual mother of her children. The theory of a village school seems rather this ; the minister has dismissed the sponsors from the font with the injunction that they will see the child religiously educated in certain principles of religion. The Church herself, through her minister, is the authorized educator in matters to do with religion, and she erects and prepares outside the church a school where each baptized child may receive the necessary instruction, and to which the sponsor may send the child for whom he has answered. The Church making this provision, does it on the re- cognised principle of Christianity, taking nothing again, and expecting no recompence ; she teaches her baptized child with authority, and stands to- wards it as God's vicegerent. She rather bids than asks the children to come, and stands more in the relation of a parent than of a teacher or school- master. This position of hers involves many im- portant relations with regard to the child, all of which would be violated by the contrary theory. I will presently shew more fully what I mean. The admission of the principle of receiving payment at once violates this whole relation. There are certain pleas offered for the payment of money by the poor parent, and amongst the first N 178 PAROCHIAL WORK. and most striking is the spirit in the poor, which men say should be one of independence. Men argue thus : the poor man values much more what he pays for, he is more pleased with it, it reflects a dignity on himself; he gains self-respect, and he loses that spirit of dependence which too often descends into servility and subjection ; now all this is true enough, but the point is, whether this is the spirit we want to encourage. There is no doubt that all such institutions which require the support of those benefited by them, produce the tone as- cribed to them. But is that tone the tone we want to see hailed and encouraged among our people? I most strongly feel the need of raising a feeling of self-respect, but are there not occasions when this can be done far more safely than in the one before us? The first of all spirits we want to create in every one is that of dependence, dependence on God and religion ; all independence here is mani- festly wrong. The spirit of our age is independent enough, and we must consider its independence one of the very points we, in religious matters, have most strenuously to strive against ; and the spirit of our own people partakes strongly of that tone : if we would have them assume a more reli- gious aspect, it must be by creating not diminishing the spirit of dependence on all religious ordinances and religious teachers. The great mistake of the day is the attempt to destroy this very spirit. The institution of unions have broken up the parochial system, with many beautiful features of depend- PAROCHIAL WORK. 179 ence ; benefit clubs all tend the same way ; and self-supporting charities are fast cutting off the last bonds which were uniting men to God and the Church. We want to check this ; we want dependence ; or half our people will soon float off into the sea of infidelity and universal scepticism. Religious faith is formed by religious acts and religious posi- tions, and surely this is no day for loosening such ties. The essence of the parochial system is de- pendence on the minister of God and the Church system which he administers. We want men to love it, to respect it, to value it ; we want men to recognise it as one of which they are an integral part ; we want men to feel gratitude towards it ; in one word, we want men to depend on it : and the very alienation between rich and poor, so lamentably growing up around us, and which is the source of so many evils, is increased daily by these efforts at self-supporting institutions. We had far better let the poor feel that he has something he does lean on, and for which he can provide no substitute ; the very spirit of gratitude and humility which this would create, would soften the whole character and mellow its tone. The most important opportunity for inculcating this feeling is education ; it is this which will fix indelibly on the mind of the child the debt he owes to the gratuitous services of the Church of Christ, and the parent will be attracted to the system to which he owes so much ; he will learn a lesson in taking on trust and receiving with- N2 180 PAROCHIAL WORK. out inquiry ; he will strengthen the habit of doing something without having of himself a voice and control. It is absurd to talk of humility and sub- jection of spirit unless we have acts to enforce and illustrate them ; it is absurd to speak of forming these tempers in our people by instruction, preach- ing, and exhortation, when we do not perform acts which tend to give its spirit birth. We cannot in short afford to lose those very acts which tend above most things to form the desired principle. Every thing which is an object of faith to us is made far more real and tangible by its being looked to with reverence and love. These very feelings presuppose the quality of implicit faith and trust. This whole question might be illustrated by many other features of the day we live in. If the poor are to realize the Church, they must love it and look up to it. Who ever heard of making it an object to create independence of feeling towards a parent, or one to whom we owed life, existence, and preservation ? In this way we often hear that people object to charity, as it is called, and prefer teaching sick peo- ple and aged and so forth to depend on themselves, and not to lean on the Church and the minis- ter and rich Christians, because it creates a spirit of dependence. But this is just what we want. We want to strengthen and rivet the chain which binds together rich and poor, and, above all, the people with the Church and the minister of God. The spirit of dependence is the spirit of religion, PAROCHIAL WORK. 181 and the spirit of independence partakes strongly of the spirit of Antichrist. Of course there must be moderation and judgment used, but the excess this tendency has gone to in England in later days is highly alarming, and lies at the root of many of our social disorders. The small amount of dependence and respect which is still left in the people towards the Church and the clergy, is perhaps one great reason why we are not plunged into the horrors of a revolution. Dependence leads to all high and holy feelings, and it is our necessary dependence on God which leads to fear, love, reverence, and obe- dience. The seed of independence sown in one place soon scatters its kindred seed all around, and long before we expect it the whole surface of the individual mind will be covered with growths of the worst forms of independence and selfishness. And after all, what does the other line of action result in ? The spirit it engenders is one of suspi- cion, distrust, and very often of want of due respect in manner and feeling. They feel the part they have taken in the support of the schools or clubs gives them a right to speak and act continually in oppo- sition to the power which belongs to those who have part in the management ; while after all the sum given by them is so small that it does not cover by a quarter the real expense, and yet they are led to believe that it does. This fact produces dissatis- faction in both quarters ; in the rich, because know- ing the inadequacy of the portion given by the poor to meet the full expense, they do not shew larger 182 PAROCHIAL WORK. gratitude ; and in the poor, because they being led to believe that they really provide by their own means the necessary expense, are expected to shew gratitude for what they have done for themselves, and to return a subservient life of thanks for acts they have been told were purely their own. The whole arises from looking at the poor as a class of beings distinct from the rich, a class who may have experiments tried on them, or who may be the victims of any rich man's love for scheming, or regarded as mere machines for testing political and social principles. Men will often complain that the poor are ungrateful for the efforts made to help them ; arguing that when every scheme is tried for their benefit, though some fail, they should still be grateful for the ef- fort ; entirely forgetting that the poor never asked the experiment to be tried, never wished it, and heartily hate being viewed in no higher light than the rich man's kennel or his stud ; and this is the way they are looked at and held by thousands ; while their true position is that they are beings, morally and intellectually, in exactly the same posi- tion as the rich, and only socially inferior by the ordering of God's providence. What we want and what they want is the voluntary dependence of every class on the Church as the system appointed by God on earth, and not the real independence of position which makes every man's home his castle, and every man's family his kingdom, in which he may exercise undisputed sway. PAROCHIAL WORK. 183 The poor are not machines ; they are not to be the victims of every sciolist who thinks he may exercise a faculty or talent upon them, or test some experiment of science or philosophy on them, which may end in poison or ruin, but claims from them undisputed submission, and if he fails in his attempt forbids a word even of complaint or remonstrance. We would exactly reverse the whole thing, and create the spirit of dependence where the world asserts independence, and assert a real liberty and freedom where the world would from the most self- ish policy enslave and fetter. Such seems to me a sufficient answer to the ob- jections raised against the parish school offering free and unpaid education to the children of the poor. In every way the minister of God will gain far more power and authority over them, and be enabled to form their minds more easily in the mould he de- sires. The sum gained by their payments, espe- cially when we take into consideration the great irregularity of necessity occasioned by want of work, and sickness, and other causes, is after all very small, and might easily be made up by a slight additional effort on the part of the clergy- man, and few things would tend more to create in the minds of the people the feeling that they were the children of the Church, whose sole object was their spiritual good, free and without recom- pense. Night schools will be another remedy to the evil Night Schools. 184 PAROCHIAL WORK. we labour under ; with energy and persevering assi- duity a considerable portion of the boys of a parish may be got together through at least eight months in the year after work, for reading and writing; even through the other four months a few will come ; and if this school be kept open for two nights in the week, with continual and systematic work at catechising on the great doctrines of Christianity, and on the lessons of the Church's seasons as they arise, and in the rules of Christian practice, this might be made to fill up very considerably the gap we complain of, by keeping up knowledge already acquired, and forming and sustaining religious habits. Round this night school other opportuni- ties of good will be found to circle. It might be made to fall on a night when the service is late, and so the youths might be led to attend it; be- sides which, they would be drawn away from the public-house, and amusements of a sinful, or at least questionable nature, which during the evening are so likely to be the resort of this class of society. Above all these modes of retaining and influencing our youth, none of course is so effectual as that of really having gained their confidence in spiritual things, so as to induce them to open their minds, and mention their sins and temptations to their minister ; but this must to a degree depend on the earlier parts of their moral culture having been at- tended to in the way I have advocated above. collegiate i n connection with schools occurs the case of Life for PAROCHIAL WORK. 185 children when they leave. A boy goes to he has no particular home he can well call his labourer. own ; the limits of the average sized cottage will not admit of his still living beneath its roof, at least with any due attention to the rules of deli- cacy and decency. The consequence is, that either these bounds are transgressed, and great moral in- jury done to the right feeling which should exist among the poor, or else that youths find a lodging elsewhere, in a public-house, or in some home where no order or rule is observed, nor religious or moral discipline enforced. The small discipline of even the average home of the English youth is absent, and they are left to keep what hours they please, night and day, curbed arid restrained by no single rule which may tend to keep a check on the im- pulses and passions of human nature. Attendance at church on Sunday is equally neglected, and the day of rest and refreshment to the soul is spent as equally unmarked by any religious act as any other day of the week. It is clear that this kind of life throws the greatest hindrances in the way of the clergyman's exercising influence over the growing youth of his parish. While these two things exist, the impossibility of the space of the ordinary Eng- lish cottage holding the family grown up as it did in childhood, and the extreme danger attending the early exposure of the youth of the poor to undis- ciplined and unrestrained life and the world, there surely must, in the rule and regulations of society, be some remedy which would meet and correct the 186 PAROCHIAL WORK. evil. It was met once by the farmer's lodging and boarding the unmarried men in the farm-house. This is not likely to be revived. But would it not be possible, I simply throw it out as a suggestion, to try the collegiate life in some form to bear upon the difficulty ? In our own rank the collegiate form of living occupies that period which is of necessity released from the limits of home. The same life might be used for the poor, in a house adapted for the purpose ; a farm might be found, or some such building, divided into small rooms, one allotted to each youth, and one common room reserved for meals and spending the evening, which might at the same time be supplied with books and other rational and good amusements. The expense of living might be met with the devotion of a certain portion weekly of the wages of each, which when thrown together would go much further than the separate amounts would by themselves. The whole management might be in the hands of some trust- worthy and respectable man, who lived in the house for the purpose of keeping up its discipline, and presiding over its management. A certain number of very simple rules might be invented, which would be a great advance in discipline, when compared with the unreal life of our poor, and which from extreme simplicity need not be felt as irksome. Prayer said in public, morning and evening, before work and retiring to rest, and those so short as not to be felt burdensome ; attention paid to the hours of return at night, and a certain order and cleanli- PAROCHIAL WORK. 187 ness and regularity expected at meals, would be a discipline and order which such youths sadly lack, and which would be felt by succeeding gene- rations, and the whole character would gain strength, solidity, and general elevation. The inducements to enter such a life to the poo v themselves would be manifest. The degree of re- spectability given by it would ensure work in many cases from those who would value it, and the life of good order and discipline would of itself create that respectability. Besides which, the use of books and other amusements, would be in itself an inducement to many youths to enter on the life with gladness. Agricultural instruction might be added to these, and our boys prepared with some degree of mental culture for their particu- lar work. Though some may have no natural relish for discipline and the life of rule beforehand, and though there would be a tendency to cling to the freedom of undisciplined life ; yet by degrees the greater advantage of rule and order will become manifest and valued. Besides this, some pecuniary help might easily be added to swell out the weekly money of the members, in making their own go fur- ther. In every parish where there are the average number of richer inhabitants, they might easily be persuaded to subscribe sufficient in small subscrip- tions to give the necessary additional aid to keeping it up ; and the giving a tone of discipline and order to the youths on whom they must depend for work in their grounds, would be an inducement to them to 188 PAROCHIAL WORK. help the undertaking. The effects of habits of order and cleanliness, attendance at church, and intercourse with the clergyman continued by such means by the youths of our poor would be felt everywhere. One reason that our cottagers are in their present de- pressed state is traceable to their condition during youth when the character is being formed, and its tendencies confirmed and settled. There is no virtue in taking food without attention to order, without grace uttered aloud, and without recognition of the social nature of a meal ; there is no virtue, nor any benefit in the absence of cleanliness and method ; and much of that condition we have ever been in the habit of considering as the essence instead of the accident of their life. Why should not the whole condition of our poor be raised ? why should they remain in the depressed condition they are in ? why should not an effort be made by those in positions of influence and authority over them to ameliorate their state and elevate their tastes ? There would be few better works to begin with than the social life, and the arrangements of domestic intercourse. Good would thus ramify in all directions, and the more disciplined life of fifteen, eighteen, and twenty, would be felt in the order, steadiness, punctuality, reality, attention to God's day and house, and re- spect to those placed over them, by the men of a whole generation. Collegiate life seems the natural resort and remedy for the condition of youth in other ranks of society in all countries ; why, therefore, should it not be PAROCHIAL WORK. 189 used for the same purpose for the poor ? Such a life, once existing in a parish, would become a nucleus around which youth would quickly gather, and would become a most important and valuable opportunity of continuing the influence and instruction of the school life b . The difficulty suggested by the chance of some making such life an excuse for indolence and neglect of exertion on the score of having a common table from which all share, might with little difficulty be obviated by many methods ; amongst others, the simple remedy might be re- sorted to, of actually excluding from the society, after a certain time, those whose indolence seemed the cause of want of employment, or by having some common work for the good of the college itself, which might occupy the hands of those out of work, such occupation being made a necessary condition of membership. It is quite possible that some life of the same kind, though of a somewhat higher order, might be attempted for the more clever and intelligent boys of our schools, by which they might be trained for a higher work in God's Church, and called to fill some of those places which so need filling with a severe and self-denying ministry, and which distinct orders and brotherhoods have occupied in other countries : such a collegiate life into which those boys who displayed in the parish school manifest fit- ness and tendencies for it, might be drafted, would b This plan is already working at Harrow Weald with every pros- pect of its success, and being permanently self-supporting. 190 PAROCHIAL WORK. be most valuable in a village or town ; they would serve as a body aiding the ministrations of the clergy- man in many most important works. They would become an example of the Church's life ; a body which would aid him in many public ministrations ; theirs would be the minds and hearts on which he might best illustrate the force and truth of Church principles ; they would serve as a uniting link be- tween himself and the poor whose children they are, and for whom the agricultural college would supply a place when they were compelled to gain their sup- port from the tillage of ground and other manual work. Of course, more difficulty and expense might attend this latter form of collegiate life than the former ; and I am far from putting it forward as a necessary part of a well worked parish, but with energy and devotion the work might be done, and the two acting in concert would form great aids to the parochial ministration. 1 . I will suppose the case of an agricultural popu- lation in a parish of 800 people for the sake of illustrating the plan. The average of ages in such population will be 200 children between the ages of 3 and 13 ; 100 between 13 and 20 ; 100 in- fants below 3, and the remainder will consist of adults. I will suppose the common case of a clergyman, anxious to have all his people more or less under his personal influence. In the village school he has the whole mass of the children of his parish under his guidance and teaching ; and if he pleases to work personally among them, by PAROCHIAL WORK. 191 unity of plan he may obtain very considerable influence over this part of his population. The adults are thrown in his way by coming to him for spiritual advice, by the cottage visit, and by the many circumstances of daily parochial life. But the youths from the time they leave school to the time they settle in life will be his difficulty. They will be the portion of his population who will most painfully elude his grasp ; whatever has been the routine of school life, and whatever has been the amount of personal work done in his school-room, he will find that some of his most docile and obedient boys, will within a short time after leaving school become independent, assume a manner which has a strong tinge of impertinence, shrink from the memory of the restraints of school life and those who were in any way connected with it, with something like a vindictive feeling ; the at- tendance at church becomes unfrequent, and more to meet companions or display dress than aught else, and will be marked by irreverence and indif- ference. The result will be that the clergyman feels that in the most important and critical moment of life he is likely to drop a link in his continued intercourse, which will snap irrevocably the whole chain of his connection with the individuals of a large portion of his people ; and while he effec- tually influences seven-eighths of his population, one eighth, the most critical and important, are not only being lost themselves, but tending to injure his effectual operation on the rest, and to create 192 PAROCHIAL WORK. distrust in his work from the apparent ill result on that portion. I have supposed a hundred such youths. I will suppose an effort made towards reclaiming or retain- ing them by collegiate life. There is probably some house in the parish which can be rented, either an old farm-house, or two or three cottages together, which with small expense could be made to com- municate with each other. If such can be got with a portion of ground attached, it will be better ; four acres or six will be sufficient for a beginning ; a moderate sized farm-house with four acres of land will be rented in most counties, where rents are not high at least, for 30/. annually ; two or three cot- tages at a lower rate. Let the houses be taken, and with a slight expense a room be fitted up for a hall, with tables, benches, book-shelves, and fire- place ; separate another room for a prayer-room, and divide the bed-rooms by wooden partitions, from the floor to the ceiling, into small chambers of ten feet by five ; a house of moderate size, con- taining the average number of rooms, of four on a floor, and itself three stories high, might be thus temporarily divided for an expense of 30Z., and yet no danger be done to the fabric, and nothing be placed up which cannot be easily removed or trans- ferred without leaving a mark of its having been there. If the clergyman knows a man who is willing to throw himself into the working of such an insti- tution, he might entrust the management of it under his own guidance to him ; if he be taken from the PAROCHIAL WORK. 193 farming or labouring orders, he would be the more anxious to be wholly guided by the clergyman, and would simply act as his locum tenens. Into this house I will suppose for a beginning that fifteen boys are brought from the ages of fourteen to nine- teen, taking care if possible that at first the elder ones are well-conducted youths from the village, anxious to do right themselves, and to lead others right. Let these youths be taken from each larger family, where already the narrow limits of their old home are beginning to be painfully felt, and to whom such a change will be a striking advantage. The furniture may be of the plainest and most inexpensive kind ; an iron bedstead, with a box, table, and chair, will be enough for each little com- partment, which with the kitchen furniture in- cluded, and all necessary articles for the life of fif- teen youths, need not exceed 80/. This will give 50/. to the actual furniture, and 30Z. for crockery, cut- lery, and other necessaries ; a small library placed on the shelves of the hall need not exceed 10/. ; of course all this involves a certain outlay at the beginning, but there are few parishes, where either through the sacrifice of a portion of the year's income, or the gift of the rich, who will trust the clergyman, the necessary sum may not be gained, which will hardly exceed 1 50/. The table might be supplied in the hall with their meals daily, at which those of the youths who worked in the neighbourhood might assemble ; o 194 PAROCHIAL WORK. while those whose work lay at some distance would only do this on Sunday ; on the week-day they must take their food with them. The table might be supplied at dinner with good meat daily, and vegetables, a diet far above the daily average of consumption of poor families ; the other two meals, of breakfast and supper, might consist of bread, butter, and tea, to the amount which growing and working youths would require. The average ex- pense weekly of this for fifteen youths, with good management and going to market for provisions, would be about 41. 10s. And if each youth paid 65. and 6d. weekly the whole might be all but self- supporting. There are few active youths above fifteen who do not earn 7s., 8s., and 10s., weekly in districts where wages are good ; and where wages are low the whole proportionate scale of expenses in the college will be reduced. This will leave sufficient for them to clothe themselves with the remainder, and something more, the institution itself supplying them with food, coals, furniture, the washing of the household furniture, in fact, providing every neces- sary of life short of clothing and washing. When out of work they might cultivate the ground I have supposed annexed to the house, and the produce of that soil would return the rent, and the youths unable to pay their weekly quota from lack of work would receive their living in return for their labour : the expense of which the produce of their labour would also cover. But I am supposing them to be PAROCHIAL WORK. 195 generally at work on farmers' estates and gentle- men's properties in the neighbourhood. The rules of the college might be at first as simple and as few as possible. Attendance at prayers in the prayer-room morning and evening, the former at such an hour as to suit the work of the boys, the latter at some fixed hour, say nine ; and these prayers drawn up with reference to agri- cultural labourers. The hour of return from work would be that beyond which each member is ex- pected to be, and to remain, within the precincts ; attendance at church might be expected at the evening service three times in the week and twice on Sunday ; the character of sobriety and honesty being considered requisite for retaining member- ship. Silence should be enjoined in bed-rooms, after a certain hour in the evening. A few such simple rules as these would at first be enough ; in fact, the fewer and simpler the better. They would come to- gether to evening service, and occupy some one part of the church in a body. Something like similarity of dress may be achieved by the gift of some ex- ternal garment, as a white smock or flannel jacket, which, always true to the agricultural costume of the neighbourhood, would avoid any affectation or undue regularity, and yet realize a certain notion of exclusiveness and brotherhood, since nothing so creates these feeling as something like a general costume or similar dress. The mode in which this will operate on the youths of the parish is important ; it will affect materially o2 196 PAROCHIAL WORK. those who are members of the college and those who are not. I have supposed fifteen out of a hundred taken in : of course, if the plan answers for fifteen, it will a fortiori answer for the remain- ing eighty-five, for the difficulty will lessen with increasing numbers when once it has been started, and the expenses will lessen in proportion with the numerical increase. But I suggest this number for a beginning. To those who still remain out of the college, if the selection has been well made of those who have entered the college, the effect of example will be strong; they will see before their eyes daily the fact of youth elevated in position, re- spectability, and estimation, by the mere fact of a more disciplined and orderly life, and membership with a body which requires goodness as its requi- site condition. They will respect and attempt to imitate, although they may pretend to laugh at it ; and the effect will of necessity be an amelioration of their own condition. Goodness will appear practicable for youth ; and the example of boys leading, to a certain degree, a moral life, will act powerfully on the minds of others, and influence them far more than any sermon or exhortation could do. A nucleus will have been formed by a united body, which, though composed of but fifteen, will have a hundredfold more force than the individual efforts of sixty in apparent opposition. Attendance at church will appear possible, decent conduct will appear advantageous ; old companions reformed will tell on those left, and the clergyman PAROCHIAL WORK. 197 will have the power to appeal to a living example of well-conducted youth. Parties and coteries will be broken up, which had been found to disturb the peace of Sunday, or the stillness of the even- ing hours by drunkenness and gambling, and this will all influence the remaining adult population, and aid with no small weight the efforts of the minister at the work of reformation and religious teaching. But, however, my aim at this moment is more especially to describe the influence of such a life on the members of the college itself, and the power, if well and energetically used, it will have towards placing the clergyman in his true position over youth whom he has perhaps baptized, brought up from infancy, prepared for Confirmation, to whom he has administered first Communion, and whom he looks to guard and guide, if he lives himself, to the hour of death. A man who loves his people will view his life with each of them as a tissue- thread in the garment of his own existence ; he will interweave their history and destiny with his own ; the limit of their career will in his eye be the limit of his own, his union with them will be a chain, whose first link is fastened to the font and its last to the grave, and he holds that chain in his own hand. If a whole series of links be dropped, it is hard to connect the severed chain, and the years from fourteen to nineteen spent away from his in- fluence will tend to mar the whole perfection of his work with each separate member of his flock. It 198 PAROCHIAL WORK. is to connect this chain, to save these links, that the idea of the agricultural college seems desirable ; and my work now is to shew how it will operate towards this end. Confirma- 23. The preparation for Confirmation is now tion and first Com- generally made a distinct branch of parochial work, munion. This holy rite has lost much of its weight and force. In fact, the whole idea of preparing for Confirmation seems to me in itself a mistake : except in but a few cases, and the cases of adults, the school life should have been a preparation for Confirmation, and the education of each day should have had reference, as I have said, retrospectively to Baptism, and prospec- tively to Confirmation. What can be more unreal and false than the state of things which involves the necessity of teaching the Catechism for years and the truth connected with it, and then to return to the child on whom those years of labour have been spent, and find him, after a short interval, as utterly igno- rant as he was when he left the font ; and what can be more unsatisfactory than to have the work of in- structing over again for six or eight short weeks the youths we either did spend or should have spent years in educating at school ? Such a state of things shews there must be a fault somewhere. There are few things more unsatisfactory than what is usually called preparation for Confirmation : a Confirmation is announced by the Bishop, and youths are gleaned up from various parts of the PAROCHIAL WORK. 199 village to be made to understand what they had learnt before ; a few verses from Holy Scripture are committed to memory, and tracts read, which but imperfectly do the work, especially when the life of the learner is so bad as it often is, offer- ing a direct contradiction to the inculcated lessons. With the bare amount of necessary knowledge the clergyman is obliged to send many to receive the holy rite, unwilling to let them forego the privilege, but quite dissatisfied with the condition of the ma- jority ; added to all this, in many cases it is ex- tremely difficult to get the attendance of boys to half the classes for instruction, and in some cases a day's work is sufficient hindrance to their sparing the time for being confirmed at all. Whereas the preparation for any religious rite should rather be the formation of moral habits than the attainment of religious knowledge, and should, in this case, be the preparing for first Communion rather than for Confirmation. a. Among other remedies one seems to lie in the age of Confirmation being made earlier than it is ; there is far more harm in the dissolution of the re- ligious tie between the minister and the youth by the long delay of Confirmation till fifteen or sixteen, than there is in the chance of a youth receiving Holy Communion before he is of that age when the character is developed. In fact, the absence of the religious discipline of school, after the age of twelve or thirteen, throws a boy into a more unfit condition for the holy rite, than can be repaired 200 PAROCHIAL WORK. by the advance of age, or development of cha- racter. b. The preparation for first Communion must take the place of preparation for Confirmation. The amount of information gained at school ought to be enough to enable a child to be presented for Confirmation, and this would leave the ground open during any interval which might occur for prepara- tion for first Communion. How great the effect would be if the mind had been led to contemplate and dwell on the approach of this holy ordinance as the great turn of life, the putting away childish things, and putting on the Christian manhood ; what moment and weight would ever after be attached to the reception of Holy Communion, when its first reception had been invested with all the importance of the expectation and prayers of the years of child- hood. When we consider the amazing difficulties of the age of opening youth, when we recollect the keen temptations to sins hitherto unknown, which assail the soul at the very time of first Commu- nion, the attraction the things of life then begin to assume, the interest and charm so dangerous with which all the objects of the world become invested ; the acuteness which the powers of observation, imitation, and imagination, then begin to display ; it is scarcely possible to over-estimate the power and force of first Communion if duly prepared for, and fittingly and faithfully received. Why should we neglect this great weapon ? why should the first Communion of our youth be so lightly regarded PAROCHIAL WORK. 201 and so insignificantly passed through ? We are los- ing a vast advantage, and throwing away a weapon of incalculable power and force. We want every thing which may give point and force to the manage- ment of youths of the age I refer to, and we are neglecting the most pointed and efficacious of all acts, and allowing what should be the highest of moral preparations to dwindle away into the intel- lectual exercise of a few weeks. I might say very much on this head, but the limits of a general sketch of the efficacy of paro- chial life, such as this is, prevents it. If how- ever the present system be pursued, and Confirma- tion is delayed to a late age, and this strange interval is allowed to exist between childhood and youth ; at all events, let us make the most we can of the opportunity, and begin the preparation for Confirmation some years before the administration of the rite, and lead the mind as often as possible to the contemplation of it ; at least, by giving them forms of prayer to use daily referring to Confirma- tion and first Communion, by leading them long before to attend some of the weekly services in church with a distinct reference to their own pros- pect and position. In brief, the great work must lie with our young, if we would influence homes and family circles. Where age or the settled habits of years have already closed the ear against instruction, and the desire to change the adopted course of life ; where a prejudice beyond the power and reach of reason 202 PAROCHIAL WORK. has steeled the heart against Holy Communion, and the more frequent use of the means of grace ; where hereditary views and opinions have tended to de- stroy and keep in check the growth of holy desires and impulses : it is by the example and freshness of youth that we must hope to do the work of reformation, and achieve a change which mere reasoning will never do. Besides this, the destinies and habits of the coming generation hang to a great degree on the early habits of the present; every hereditary and false opinion and evil habit, every absence of regularity, order, and discipline, which we leave unnoticed and unamended in them, will be delivered down as they received them, as heir-looms to posterity. There seems real evil in the tendency to give up schools into the hands of men who have no spiritual connection with the children, and no parochial position. The parish school is part and parcel of the parochial life, and the natural and legitimate sphere of the parish priest ; it is a necessary link in the chain of the moral history of the individual, for each stage of which the spiritual pastor is responsible ; and the yielding this weapon into the hands of other men must serve as a check to his work ; if the clergy would realize that their parish was their home and sphere, that they had no time for other claims, and that they were separated from the world they are placed in for all works except those immediately connected with their spiritual ministrations ; if they would realize fully the great PAROCHIAL WORK. 203 account to be given of souls, they surely would feel that the daily opening of the school, the daily education of those they have baptized in the truths of their baptismal covenant, the daily influence over the minds of their children, will be the natural em- ployment of their time, and that the occupation of their legitimate ground by any other will be to them a matter of holy jealousy and annoyance. If the clergy were fully doing their work in their schools, the National Society would have a small sphere of action, and the struggles would be fewer for sound education and liberty of teaching. 24. Another part of the parochial system is that of Parish ... cottage visiting, and visiting from house to house. Though this has been by some far too much dwelt upon, and that to the exclusion of the higher and holier portions of parish ministration, and more than this, has been often allowed to transgress the bounds of reverence and due reserve, by encou- raging promiscuous religious conversation at unfit times, still, of course, it cannot be safely omitted ; there are many objects which the visit to the cot- tage gains which can be attained by no other means, and if kept in its due place, and in due relation to the other works, would form an essential help in the clergyman's intercourse with his people. The people, and especially the poor, need being con- tinually reminded that one is watching for them, and looking after their spiritual concerns, and the 204 PAROCHIAL WORK. conviction that he does so will become a reason and encouragement to their doing so for them- selves. Their temporal concerns require attention, and without the frequent visit will never come under the notice of him whose work and voca- tion it is to sympathize and attend to them. In many, a natural reserve, in some others a real un- willingness at being forced into notice, will be the reason why their temporal condition needs enquiry and examination. Besides this, the work of seeing that children attend school, of appointing 11 times for private spiritual intercourse and matters of a kin- dred nature, give these visits a great and necessary importance. The object of the clergyman should be to connect himself as closely and intimately as possible with the people, and the scenes of domes- tic life and occupation tend more than almost any thing to strengthen this tie and realize this con- nection. It destroys the distance which exists so often between the two orders of society ; the chil- dren learn to love and know him whom they are used to see in their homes, and mixed up with the routine of daily life. We want to do all we can to break down the partition wall which rises between the orders of society ; and every thing which will tend to excite the feeling which many have, that the clergyman occupies no higher position than that of the gentleman, cannot be too quickly done away with. The mode in which we should carry this work out requires attention and care ; there are three or PAROCHIAL WORK. 205 four points which are manifestly to be attended to. The visiting the sick, and clinic Communion, will form the two principal features. For the first of these, it is important that there should be system and regularity in the work ; if the Visitation Service were regularly used, it would tend to give point to this part of parochial work. There is a distinct life to be led, and duties to be attended to, and habits formed, in the sick and dying as in the living, and that whole preparation is an essential part of parish ministration. Casual visits, unconnected with any system or point in the mind of the clergyman, can do but little. How important the formation of the character in sick- ness is ! How many graces and virtues are intended to be produced by the season of seclusion and sor- row, and most especially when that illness is the last, and when, as sometimes, the whole of the work of repentance is to be done in that interval ! The doubtful and irregular visit to the cottage can- not meet such a case ; it requires a plan, a definite scheme, for achieving the object. There are cases where it seems to be the intention of God to make the illness co-exterisive with the entire formation of a character fitted for eternity; who is to accom- plish and develope this work, but he to whose spiritual care the sick man falls? and if he neg- lect it, how can he answer for it ? This would require great self-devotion, great sacrifice of time, assiduous attention, and the being absent but sel- dom from the sphere of his vocation. But for 206 PAROCHIAL WORK. any thing like an effectual application of the pa- rochial system, we must presuppose this very self- devotion. I will just remark in passing, that the visits of a clergyman to his poor must lose very much force unless he lays aside the magisterial air, so very commonly used. He has no right to cross the poor man's threshold with a covered head, nor in any degree to demean himself as superior within the walls of the cottage. Pie is a visitor, and must choose carefully the most convenient time for pay- ing his visit. Common sense would supply to every body many such details. Comfort, as well as instruction, and watching the character of the person he attends, will be the work of the spiritual pastor. The sick man should be able to expect the regular visit of his clergyman ; he should be able to depend on the daily prayer by his bed-side as a continual opportunity of increased strength and consolation; he should be able to look to the visit as the point in the day of self-examina- tion, and the moment in which he realizes and feels the sure but gradual approach of death. He should be able to feel a definite character is forming within him ; that there are great works of penitence, and prayer, and discipline of thoughts, which are being carefully watched and cultivated by him whom God has placed over him. He should be viewing his whole time of illness as one of discipline and rule, as much as was the time of health and active work in life. In cases of prolonged illness, Holy Com- PAROCHIAL WORK. 207 munion should be administered at definite and re- gular seasons, as an aid to the great work of peni- tence. The whole period should be viewed as a state in which the light of the everlasting morning is gradually and surely breaking, and beaming with fuller and fuller light on the soul which is preparing to be absorbed into its glory. Illness is a special time ; it is the time when Christ is peculiarly with the soul ; it is more important, more significant far, than any stage of life and health ; God is in a remarkable manner pleading with the soul, and through its silent and solitary hours, as through the mazes of a wilderness, the Good Shepherd is " going after the lost sheep until He find it." The lingering consumption, the protracted decline, the anxious hours of disease at the heart ; the tedious fluctuation of wounds, and fractured limbs, so often ending in death, though only seen through the long vista of weary months, and sometimes years, are surely all the special times of God's pleading and presence with the soul, and the occasions above all others when He says to His ministers, " Feed My sheep." When we contrast this view of the case with the one presented by the too common practice of leaving the sick to an uncertain visit, where no method is followed, no connection recognised with their last or the next visit, the fear must arise that we are by such treatment losing a great opportu- nity, and leaving fallow a ground prepared for culti- vation by God for us to sow with seed and watch till the time of the harvest. 208 PAROCHIAL WORK. If circumstances permit it, the true course to adopt would be the daily visiting of the sick in cases where death seemed the probable termination, with the stated use, on certain days, of parts of the Visitation Service ; and a well-considered plan for the occasions when this could not be used : with a definite view to the formation of a character such as suggested by Bishop Jeremy Taylor's Practice for Holy Dying. If the parish and its population be within the grasp of one man, he might well do this himself. If it were beyond this, and he were able to have the aid of curates, of course they would materially assist him in carrying it out, though other methods could be adopted where this was be- yond his power, which I will advert to afterwards. In cases of lingering illness the visits might be less frequent and less systematic; but while twice or three times a week might be enough, still there should be care taken that the time thus afforded by God for reflection, should be used fully for repent- ance of any of the particular sins which had pro- duced the chastisement. Attending upon aged and bed-ridden persons must form a recognised part of the work of the parish priest. Holy Communion administered at the times they used to receive at church, and stated prayers offered at their houses, should form part of the treatment. It must be a great error to allow persons to remain unsupported by any regular spi- ritual treatment, in old age and prolonged weakness, when grace is needed more than ever, and the re- PAROCHIAL WOTIK. 209 cognition of God's hand and dealings with them needs more than ever to he realized by them, when comfort is so needed, and sympathy more than ever valued, and who through life have been regular communicants, and dependent on regular means of grace. The use of the Visitation Service has some diffi- culties : it is clear some other, and shorter, and more immediately applicable forms, must be used for ordinary cases, and for this reason comparatively without authority. But in the absence of definite guidance, we might very safely use other forms which have more or less received the sanction of the Church, or of good men within her bosom. But this is only one portion of parochial visit- ing : the sick will form an important part, but not the whole of it. I cannot suggest rules for this, each clergyman can best judge of his own people. Such visits are not intended to answer the highest ends, but if it be so arranged that his visit shall be expected in the circuit of his parish at something like regular and stated intervals, his people will have opportunities, known and settled, at which they will be able to realize their connection with him ; and those who from open sin, regular neglect of the use of the means of grace, or refusal to re- ceive the warning, are living in a manner which in the more wholesome state of Church-discipline would fall within the limits of formal censure, might be made to feel far more keenly the intended and marked omission of their houses by the clergyman 210 PAROCHIAL WORK. in his parish visitation, than they would the actual censure and reproof, given them in words which, from oil-repetition, have lost much of their weight and force. There is great force in a censure which a man is left to pass upon himself, and the inference which he deduces for himself has tenfold the force of a conclusion which is stated by another. There is something infinitely more galling and annoying in being intentionally passed by, than there is in the voice of continual reproof. The man who is passed by feels the slight which is intended, without the satisfaction or palliation produced by self-defence. The reproof conveyed through words furnishes op- portunity of self-defence, and very often quickly enough some flaw is found in the charge, or some seemingly palliating circumstances, or some com- parison is instituted with worse cases around, which only tend to settle down the individual in a more confirmed habit than ever. On the other hand, when he is compelled to ask himself why he is thus slighted, and led to examine his own condition and conduct, and to pass a moral censure on himself, the conviction comes with all the greater force from the fact of having received his own unwill- ing sanction. And the slight put on a man by the clergyman is followed by the people of the neighbourhood, and a man whom the clergyman passes by soon be- comes marked by all around. However much they may profess not to feel it, it is felt keenly, and it PAROCHIAL WORK. 211 thus becomes a substitute in a small degree for the absence of a more definite form of ecclesiastical censure. All this hangs on the systematic cottage visit, and very considerable weapons are lost and thrown away by neglecting this part of parochial ministration. The people must believe that their clergyman lives among them, that he is their spiri- tual guide, and that the great work of his life is the care of their souls, and guiding them to heaven. His very appearance among them must suggest this to their minds, and his parish visit must be one wherein, without words, he calls up to the face of the receiver the blush at remembered sin, brings the recollection of comfort to the heart of the mourner as the messenger of peace and glad tidings, and reminds the doubting and the penitent of his being commissioned by God to teach, exhort, and direct them. How high, how exact, how watchful should his life be, whose appearance and manner is to suggest all this, and who is to be at all hours of each day the representative of Him " who knew no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth." Of course any thing like a system of instruction in the main points of religion, carried on at their homes, will involve great harm ; it will become a substitute for attendance at church, and other ordi- nances of paramount importance. This is the re- sult, and always has been found to be so, of this mode of instruction. We need not stop to shew it. Perhaps, if any advice could be given on this point, it would be, that such visiting should be 212 PAROCHIAL WORK. more for the purpose of realizing equality with them, or giving them an opportunity of gaining advice on any point which they may need, and from which they may be cut off through any other channel. But no doubt this branch of visiting must be left, in a great degree, to the discretion of the individual minister; and must be determined by circumstances, for which no general rules can be given : but in the case of men of careless, or deci- dedly irregular lives, it is better to abstain from visiting. It has been too common a practice to pay frequent visits to persons of this description, for the sake of reproving them, and urging them to some duty. As we have shewn, this must do harm ; it weakens the power of conscience by saving it trouble, and by preventing its being called into practice ; it makes religion an oft-told tale to an unheeding ear, and blunts the edge of truth, so as to prevent its be- ing felt when the mind would be open to its force ; it produces irreverence of feeling, and leads men to imagine that holy things are at their disposal. We are so made that the mere fact of being obliged to seek a benefit, and finding it hard of access, tends to increase our respect, and gives us a higher estimation of it; and so it will be espe- cially with the things of God and the soul. Having them placed within our reach when we are in an unfit state for them, makes us undervalue them. The holy things of God are deep mysteries, hidden save to the earnest seeker : it is a sin to treat them with levity. PAROCHIAL WORK. 213 Of course, such a system as this requires much on the part of the priest ; he must himself be re- gular in his plan, even to the smallest minutiae of conduct ; he must keep up with the utmost exact- ness the merest shell of his parochial plans ; he must have a particular definite scheme of operation for the very smallest point of his parochial manage- ment ; he must be as strict in not visiting too much as in not doing it too little ; he must visit those who less need it (and that with a carefulness of judgment which is wearisome) in order to have effect on those he does not visit ; in fact, he must visit as much for the sake of those he is willing to see, as for those he will not see. The least devia- tion or error in judgment may be most fatal in its- effects : he will be obliged to make much of what seems the most trivial conversation of three minutes with any of his people ; he must suit each word and sentence to individual character, disposition, and cir- cumstance. His life and conversation will be one of constant effort of judgment and discrimination, but he is called to it, and sufficient grace is given. Nothing is trifling which a clergyman does no- thing is indifferent ; every word and each action must be weighed, as they are all closely watched, and he is bound to make them all give weight to his holy calling. He may seem to be doing little, while, in fact, he is doing much. His omissions must be intentional, and his very silence ought to have a depth of mean- ing, of which only himself is conscious, and others 214 PAROCHIAL WORK. are left to guess at. Judgment plan system due observation discrimination of character : these are the points he should aim at rather than showy activity or zeal, which lie on the surface. Of course, first and foremost, personal holiness and instant prayer. No opinion must be expressed at hazard, even on minutest points. Every thing said and done must form part of his parochial system. This is not easy. What are called activity and zeal are easier, and have more tangible, ostensible compen- sation. The one leaves men very much to work out their own inward sense of right and wrong, the other saves them the trouble ; the former may seem to give less to the priest to do, but we have shewn how false this is ; it makes every action of consequence, and his continual presence among his people needful, to influence their minds and con- sciences. Religious 25. The formation of bodies to aid parochial minis- Fraterni- . ties. tration is another most important question connected with the subject. If the plan of sisterhoods of mercy could be worked in connection with the parochial system, and some centre and home be found where persons who want a work to employ wasted ener- gies, to give them a recognised position in social and active life, and to find objects on which to be- stow strong sympathies and yearnings, which other- wise have no special channel for exhaustion, how much strength might be given to the clergyman in PAROCHIAL WORK. 215 carrying out his work, how much of actual benefit would be bestowed on the poor themselves, and how great a boon would be conferred on the per- sons employed, by thus giving them a work and a positio n The great work of recovering or instruct- ing those who, from peculiar circumstances, the cler- gyman, and especially the unmarried clergyman, is cut off from instructing, would be effected by such an operation in a wonderful degree. Only in such societies let us be satisfied with reality of intention, and not concern ourselves too much about the use of antiquated names and habits, which often would in our day prevent their being accepted and trusted, and which give to many persons an idea of trifling. The detail of it would be too minute and long to enter on in a limited space like this ; it is being nobly tried in one large town at least ; but I feel that the parochial system can hardly be considered as perfect without the recognition of some such body. 26. Our parochial system is so worked and ar- Devotion ranged, that one part hangs loose from another : and of plan! y the connection of one part with another is often, as it exists, but little manifest. Unity of plan would throw a force into every one of these parts, which untried is hardly conceivable. If the education of children is looked at as carrying out the work of Baptism and Confirmation : if the latter be viewed as a step leading immediately to first Communion, 216 PAROCHIAL WORK. and all as the first steps of a holy series going on to the end of life ; " from strength to strength," until the soul appear " perfect before God in Sion ;" if first Communion were viewed as the introduction to a systematic life of rule and discipline, to be con- tinued to the end of the spiritual warfare ; and that life of discipline thrown into close connection with other parts of the religious life of the parish, daily prayer and weekly Communion ; what life and ener- gy, what reality and point, each part would receive from the other, and how much the priest himself would be urged on to his work, by seeing that his work consisted of links and chains, not one of which might be dropped. The smallest sphere of labour and the smallest population, would afford scope and room for the energy of the most devoted spirit, and the power gained by unity of plan and system of action, would considerably make up for the apparent difficulties of large and over-populated places. No clergyman with a hundred souls would feel at a loss for a full occupation of time, and none need sink under a withering despondency on account of the number of apparently distinct works which appear starting up on all sides. The mere fact of connection simplifies separate parts ; and a few ac- tions to be performed without reference to each other present a difficulty which passes away when one is made to blend with the other, and the full performance of the first is only achieved by passing on to the second. It is true that no life is less definite, and more at individual will, than that of PAROCHIAL WORK. 217 the parish priest; and yet none ought to be, and might be, more rigidly systematic ; but the system must be self-imposed. The man of public business and trade is bound by rules, according to which he does his duty or neglects it ; we have no such call externally, but that is no reason why we should be without one ; few men are with decency so able to leave their work as the parochial clergy ; every call to a public meeting can be attended to by them with an ease found in no other profession ; and yet none ought to be so tied to their work. Few men are so often heard to complain of want of definite plan, or have more hours at their disposal for re- laxation ; no other sphere of life in the world will so easily admit of this ; and the man in any other sphere who would attempt it, would immediately sink in his professional position as unfit to gain a standing. Then why should the clergyman, who has the care of souls, whose advance or retrogres- sion is a work of much peril, be absent a week and often a fortnight, while the tradesman cannot undercalculate by one quarter of an hour the call on his time? The very way in which the proverb "of a clergyman's fortnight" has become familiar, shews that the work of a large part of the clergy has dwindled into the performance of services on Sunday. Are there not infinite vocations from Sunday to Saturday in which we must be fully employed ? It will not be an unusual case to find the Sunday a somewhat weary and pointless day to a clergyman 218 PAROCHIAL WORK. when the immediate work of the services is over, because they have not yet found in schools and in- dividual souls the amount of labour which would engross and interest them. It seems no uncommon case to find men complain of so little actual, de- finite, and compulsory work in parochial routine, that they are compelled to find for themselves other vocations and employments, when they have them- selves created the vacuum by throwing up parish education into the hands of another. The study of Church architecture and music, editorship and secretaryship, must be the relaxation only, not the primary pursuit of the man who holds the cure of souls. He has a higher call than all or any of these, and if some have thrown themselves into these, they have surely neglected and cast aside their own true and high vocation. Each man has his own work, let each man do it. Nothing will be more beautiful and pointed than the life of the clergyman, if he once realizes his in- dividual relationship to each individual soul under his charge. Each service of the Church will be a centre round which will circle a hundred incidents. The reception at Baptism would be realized as the beginning of a long series of events, which through life would be affected by the services of the Church. Many circumstances of the child's life would tell towards the formation and completion of his spiri- tual character : illness would be a link within the chain, and the visit to the cottage of the sick child would be but one of a hundred opportunities of PAROCHIAL WORK. 219 carrying on the spiritual management of that soul : each fault would be an opportunity of applying the reproof and chastisement needful towards forming the character required. When illness threatened death, what force would the mention of the name in the prayers in church receive, by the case being one thoroughly known and realized as an object of individual regard and affection. The school prayer would call to the mind of the children, and the mention of the name in church would do the same for the adults, that the illness was a real act of God's providence towards a member of their own body ; and when death did at last sever the link of visible connection and intercourse, what force would not the burial-service and the quiet assemblage at the churchyard grave gain, when the person whose remains were to be interred was one felt to be re- lated to all present by his nearness to the heart of their minister, the common parent of all his people. Meaning would be elicited from services and acts, which now often stand out barely, and without point ; the life of the individual would become the context and interpretation of each religious act and service. Let a clergyman once realize this strong personal connection with his people, and every scene, and act, of his parochial life, will become invested with interest and responsibility. 27. There are still points we might dwell upon for Burial of the dead. 220 PAROCHIAL WORK. more effectually carrying out the parochial system. I have alluded just now to the funeral. It might be made a striking and important opportunity. If a point be made of its being decently arranged; if the children who may be present are taught to look respectfully on the last act of the earthly journey, and to stand round the grave uncovered, and to take actual part with their books in the service ; if they are taught to leave the church- yard in an orderly manner, and to respect the graves ever after, a force would be given to the service, and a consoling realization of the Com- munion of Saints, which is continually thrown away in the hurried funeral, the irreverent gazing and indifference of attendants, the noise of children who come as to a sight, and the small respect paid to churchyards themselves at all times. We want our people to realize the Communion of Saints ; we want them to understand that the departed still exist, and their memory is not to pass away. We want them to feel that there is a vacuum here whose object is in Paradise ; we want them to connect those they have lost with their own daily journey to church, and as they pass the graves of those they loved, whose earthly remains rest beneath the shadow of the wall within which they once worshipped ; we want them to feel it is as a voice from the other world, calling them from earth, and reminding them of the visionary store in Paradise, and daily telling them of souls who are waiting their arrival on the everlasting shore ; what force the graves of a village PAROCHIAL WORK. churchyard have to effect this ! and how import- ant it is that their dignity should be respected. How full of holy feeling is the little group which marks the resting-place of a whole family, its number year by year gradually increasing, as the infant rests by its mother's side, and the youth is numbered with his sister who died in her spring ! Nor is this assertion far-fetched and unreal, the poor do believe it deeply and strongly ; they do care to see the graves of their own respected, and they care to lie side by side. " The burial with their fathers," is a desire implanted in man, and the assertion re- ferred to here w T ill issue in a far, infinitely far, higher affirmation of the doctrine of Communion of Saints, and the resurrection of the dead, than any teaching of words can effect. As I said above, acts and rites do more than words, and the religious acts of parish life, its Baptism, its Confirmation, and its burials, are acts full, positively full, of the deepest instruction in Christian truth. The decent care of the churchyard becomes an important engine of good, and though in towns these weapons may be less available, there are generally some opportuni- ties of greatly improving its state. 28. Many more ideas might be suggested as to the Marriages. fuller development of the social life of the poor in parishes, but the subject would be too long to do more than hint at here. The raising the dignity and holiness of matrimony by making a marked and 222 PAROCHIAL WORK. striking distinction between the marriages of those who have violated the laws of chastity and those who approach it holily and purely ; that distinction being perhaps in part made by the clergyman in person assisting at or absenting himself on the day from the home of the parties. Nothing of this sort would be thrown away; the poor do value such attentions, and one reason that all these acts have so fallen in dignity and importance, has been that those who might have done it have neglected to give a grace and honour to them. The social con- dition of the poor, and with that their religious con- dition, must receive these attentions and helps. Wakes. 29. Again, the recovery of the original intention of wakes might tend to improve the social condi- tion ; and the happy gathering of those who have been long absent in service in the old church of their Baptism, the altar of their first Communion, and the home of their childhood, would tend to at- tach them to the Church and to recall the simpli- city of early life ; it would revive many recollections and associations most quickening in the midst of a cold dead world, and keep up the affection of chil- dren to parents, a tie so often sadly severed after they have passed from the roof of their early days ; it would bring them again into connection with their instructors in holy things, and would become an ex- ample to those who are yet to leave their homes for a busy and wicked world. The clergyman might PAROCHIAL WORK. 223 make it all this, and prevent its having charms for the dissolute and idle. 30. There seem to be some striking defects in the character character of those clergy who have aided the Church ciergy. movement of our own day which calls for passing remark in such an essay as this. There is a want of manliness in many, and that bold and independ- ent pursuit of the great object which characterizes the men of the world; there is an attention to minutiae, a singularity of regard to minor points, a frittering away of the power of their minds in con- ventional expressions and practices which tend to lower the general tone and caste of the man ; and the form which the character results in, is very ob- jectionable to that peculiarly manly spirit which marks the English people and the English poor. The use of conventional phrases will always tend to produce this result ; it shuts up the moral and mental tendencies within too close and rigid limits, which destroy that boldness which is an essential feature of true Christian manliness. The whole life of discipline and rule, and the being bound down by dogmatic theology, tends to reduce within limits that kind of independence of mind and thought which characterizes the world; and this is in itself wholesome and healthy ; but there is no need to dwarf and cripple the energies and character by the recognition of limitations and 224 PAROCHIAL WORK. forms which are not essential, by which originality of conception, boldness of action, and freedom of thought are crippled and nearly destroyed ; it is a striking and painful fact that we find almost less originality and bold individual action among the clergy than any other body of men ; a greater wil- lingness to tread in paths marked out by past cus- tom, even when that custom is manifestly weak and infirm ; or when any step is taken towards a more original line, it too often ends in a result in which the smaller and less bold parts of the moral consti- tution are called into play. The clergy have not got their position in the world, and are not gaining the amount of respect they should. We want heroism and the most real self-sacri- fice among us ; we want bold ventures ; we want hazardous and decisive lines of action, to meet alarming and appalling evils which are the sub- ject matter of our vocation. The clergy must live more out of the softer and more easy scenes of the world ; they must not rest satisfied with being the most respectable part of the society they move in, nor with filling posts of general influence on weaker minds ; but they must themselves be of active and independent spirits, living protests against the corruptions and abuses of society and the world around them, blending the different ranks of society together, uniting and healing differences, and striking out continually 'new and clear lines to meet the cases of spiritual and mental destitution and corruption, which in a PAROCHIAL WORK. 225 day like our own can alone be met by bold and original action. Surely we have a noble field of action ; surely human nature and the moral being afford a wide and ample space for justifying vigorous and decisive actions. If any men on earth would be justified in breaking through weak and unnecessary limits which common custom alone has imposed, we are those who will stand thus excused ; and in each man's own individual sphere he will find abundant oppor- tunity of inventing. If men would a little allow their work to be their guide, and the wants and condition of their people to be the index of their labours, instead of thinking it at all times neces- sary to follow in a line already laid out by others, the result would satisfy them ; we want men to be rather less anxious to do exactly the thing which they think right according to a certain customary rule, than to attain the main object of their work, the salvation of souls : and when once the mind is free from this kind of trammel, the mode of opera- tion will at once be simplified, as men will them- selves daily and hourly suggest the best mode for their own treatment. Human nature is so variable, so dependent on circumstances, so ever-changing and fluctuating, that it is impossible to meet it ex- cept by a system of work which is elastic, and capable of adaptation to the wants of the mind and soul. There is an absolute necessity that the clergy should meet the people on common ground. It Q 226 PAROCHIAL WORK. will be impossible to gain confidence unless men feel that those in whom they place it thoroughly understand and sympathize with them in every thing. Sympathy is necessary to confidence, and confidence is necessary to influence. When the poor feel that those who instruct and guide them are living a life far beyond them in comfort and ease ; when they see them moving in the style of society which in public teaching they appear to condemn, and seeking the very excitement they teach them to shun ; a feeling of repulse is created instead of attraction, and they shrink from those who would draw them to them. It is a truth in history, that wherever real influ- ence has been gained, it has been by the example rather than the precept of the leader ; and that the manifest self-devotion of the master has inspired the disciple with an enthusiasm which no amount of earnest persuasion could have gained without it : we whose vocation is worthy of a higher self-devo- tion and self-sacrifice than any other, must above all men take the same course. The looking for compensation to labour in the ease of society, and placing around ourselves that ease of domestic life which the poor do not possess, will immediately separate us as with a bar of iron from those we are striving to influence ; when we urge denial of life, and overcoming temptation, they will then perhaps unconsciously to themselves argue, that our free- dom from anxiety and ease of living put us at an advantage, and that they do not occupy the PAROCHIAL WORK. 227 same ground in the discussion ; if our words are to recommend themselves, we must be prepared to share in all respects with our people the hardships of life, the late hour, exposure to weather, readi- ness to attend every call at any time, willingness to be at the sick bed for nursing or administering the comforts so needful in illness, and, above all, the consolations of religion, counting the calls of the world as indeed nothing in comparison to the spi- ritual calls of our vocation. This will inspire con- fidence and trust, and the affection which would have been otherwise chilled, the respect which would otherwise have been paralyzed, will flow on in strong and mighty currents, bearing men's hearts in the direction we could desire. The poor must feel the clergyman to be his affectionate friend, his spiritual advocate, his champion : and even more attached to his than to any other class in society. It must in short be felt that the clergyman's is a life not a profession, a matter of the heart not of mere science ; a work in which he is fully engaged with every deep feeling of his nature, not one in which he is simply following a custom and obey- ing a rule. If men fear that this kind of life would destroy outward respect, they will find that the real respect and deference, gained by true appreciation and affection, will produce a far higher and more trustworthy regard than any merely external marks of the feeling which is gained by distance, igno- rance of each other, and fear. The respect which is willingly yielded by a loving heart is far more Q2 228 PAROCHIAL WORK. valuable than that which is given as a matter of common custom to official position. No one need fear the freedom of real love ; it will produce spon- taneously and freely all that is included under the terms good taste, courtesy, deference, and the like ; for, after all, these are the external offspring of love, and the usual instances which meet our eye are but poor substitutes for them, copies and imi- tations, because the love which would produce the original does not exist. A clergyman must live only for his people, and his people must feel that he does do this ; till this point is attained, he will do his work but meagrely and unsatisfactorily ; he must actually feel that his great and absorbing desire is the bringing a certain number of individual souls to the seat of judgment ; that one engrossing thought and aim must exclude all others ; and desire of preferment, position in society, general and political influence, cares of do- mestic life, must gradually fade away as stars whose lustre pales before the advance of day, though they are still actually occupying their respective spheres. All or many of these may exist ; but they must be the accident not the essence, the bye-work not the aim of the clerical life : in fact, when once a man has realized a deep and inward interest in particu- lar souls, this will be the necessary consequence ; that interest alone will be enough of its own force and power to exclude desires of change of position, and more extended and therefore shallower influ- ence ; and a deep interest realized in the welfare of PAROCHIAL WORK. 229 others will tend to cast a shade over selfishness or love of personal ease. There are many more parts which might be ad- verted to in the parochial life, and many of those I have referred to might be followed out more mi- nutely ; the arrangement of village schools, and the question of spiritual counsel, might each be fol- lowed up into close and important detail. But the object here is to be suggestive rather than de- tailed, and to offer hints from experience rather than to furnish a code of rules. The two chief points adverted to, parish education and spiritual counsel, the education of the mind and the soul, are the two centres round which the whole ma- chinery of parochial work must circle ; and while with respect to the latter many forms with which it is invested, seem a real hindrance to the gain of the reality, and should be deprecated ; on the other hand, men cannot too quickly disabuse themselves of the idea of its being un-English, dangerous, or questionable as a weapon of operation. It is not un-English ; for what the mind of the whole race of man yearns for cannot be excluded on the ground of nationality, and what every sect and class of dis- sent and religious movement has used with effect, cannot be declared alien to the character of the people. If rightly worked with full consideration of the character of the people, it must have its effect, and so far from producing an effeminate, slavish, and dependent character, it will result in one which is the exact contrary, from the fact of 230 PAROCHIAL WORK. its freeing the conscience from the burden of un- repented and consequently enslaving sins : it will thereby enable the whole character to rise in man- liness and true energy, and will lead it to the full realization of its hitherto misunderstood depend- ence on God. And this tendency leads to an in- tense desire after reality, and practical work, and dread and suspicion of every thing which does not directly and plainly accomplish its end. With this kept in view, those works and systems which have been found effectual to the religious life in the Church of other countries, will be found equally efficient and indispensable here, only divested of those characteristics which may give them the very force and influence in Italy which it deprives them of amongst ourselves. One thing to remember is this, one great portion of English character has ever thrown its religious energy into the scale of religious reformation, and the strongest of these movements has been Lollard or Puritan. My remarks throughout refer more especially to the population of a country parish ; but in such a sphere the great mass of our clergy are living : it is in that simple line that those experiments must be made which will afterwards be applied successfully in towns. Rector and The mode of carrying on parochial life seems to Curate sys- J tem. have been often mistaken. Instead of realizing it as a life of contact with souls and sympathies, it has PAROCHIAL WORK. 231 been viewed as a profession. The distance between the rector and his curate has only been equalled by the distance between all and their flock ; and the short stay which curates generally make in a parish leaves them, as a class, without influence on any body. The first rule seems to be for every man to do all he possibly can in his own parish towards carrying out his work himself, and if possible to work out his own scheme. There is a power in individuality of action and singleness of will which is beyond cal- culation. Few great works are done by divided action, and it is nearly impossible to get two or three so exactly to coincide with the will of one as to have the effect of unity of plan. There is a whole- ness, a connection between parts, a close linking together of one point with another in the concep- tions and schemes and acts of individuals which nothing can become a substitute for. This is true in all great works ; it is manifestly and strikingly true in parochial management ; one part of parish life hangs on to another ; one part relates to the other ; church sermons, school management, personal in- tercourse, all link on each other, and form one great chain of connection between the soul and God. They belong to each other, and they cannot well originate from more minds than one ; one idea has given birth to the whole, and one seed is the germ of the whole plant ; each parochial act hangs on the other ; and two minds can no more produce this unity of result than two separate germs can produce one bloom. The effect will probably result in a poor 232 f AROCSIAL WORK. imitation, or what is worse, in two schemes being at work on the same mind. One remedy would naturally be the effort of each man called to an independent spiritual cure, to make it by self-sacrifice as far as possible within the limits of his own individual management ; and when this is impossible, rather to adopt the line of sub- division of the whole into its integral rather than its component parts ; on a larger scale, when it can be done, the division of parishes or assignment of dis- tricts might achieve the object, and when this can- not be done really, it may be done nominally. The usual method resorted to is, the division into the component parts ; the giving up schools to one man's care, and the visiting to another, the preach- ing to another. Now this destroys the view of the unity of idea and plan recurring through all the parts of parish work ; it forgets that the sermon is the result of the visiting, and the schools the pre- paration for both : but no parish priest can preach effectually without he is speaking to people whose intimate cases he knows. Otherwise, each work will become to a certain degree hollow and un- real ; the sermon will sink into an essay, and parish visiting into an irksome labour ; the school- room will become the scene of a tedious and cold instruction, carried on two or three times a week, on children who are looked upon as the children of a class who are thrown in the way of our respon- sibility, rather than a family of baptized children, who are travelling with us to their eternal home, PAEOCHIAL WORK. 233 and to retain and gain whom is the anxious work of every day and hour. How can this be realized by a company of three or four men none of whom feel responsibility for the souls of the parish, or if one does from being the rector, if he takes up just that line of work which least tells on the minute details of the individual heart and character ? Every great work in the world has been done by unity of will ; the greatest men, and those who have achieved the noblest ends, are those who have gone to their work almost unaided by any other mind ; the vast idea their own mind suggested was only intelligible to themselves, and would have been marred and ruined by the interference of another. And every mind that is devoted and earnest is capable of some great aim and end. If however such singleness of action The Dia- is physically impossible, or for other reasons im- practicable, then the remedy will seem to be in the real and true working of the diaconate. The master mind must still conceive and work out his own conceptions, and those who aid him must simply and loud fide help him in the line in which he exactly directs them. But where men are at work with curates, in too many places this is not the case ; the delicacies and courtesies of society are conceded, and the pulpit or the school prostituted to false feelings of civility and attention ; or if not this, there is no plan at all adopted. The powers of four or five men do not achieve what the power of one might if directed rightly, and the power of that one is paralyzed by the conviction that as he 234 PAROCHIAL WORK. has so many aids he need not bestow his full energy to the work. Nor is it uncommon to find that the system of distance, of official prudery, has crept into this relation of life, and the fictitious and withered relationship of many educational bodies between teacher and taught, finds its miniature in the re- strained and distant intercourse between the rector and his curates ; unreality anywhere is poor, weak, and powerless, and of all unrealities the official dis- tance of those in place is ill-placed, and betrays real weakness and inability to achieve the object in view by any more open and honest process, but to find this spirit miniatured in the great work of carrying out spiritual cure is truly sad. The work of souls is one which must unite in every holy energy and power those concerned in it, and cannot admit of being ruled by the laws and customs of the world. In proportion as the work on which confederated men are engaged is deep and real and earnest, in that proportion will all chasms between them be filled up, and the chains of their union be rivetted by closer and firmer rivets. The only distinction which would be admitted would be in the applica- tion of the rule of obedience, where the superior in spiritual power should stand in the position of one to whom the religious will of those under him pays submission. This would work well, nay more, it seems the natural and legitimate way of men work- ing together on the spiritual wants of the people. But this must involve two or three important con- ditions. The head of such a body must be first in PAROCHIAL W011K. 235 self-abnegation, in giving up the world, in putting aside the fashions of society, in living the life of the secluded and laborious ; he cannot be simply chief by having less to do, and in being able to indulge more in society because he has curates to do his work ; he must not be one who counts certain works of spiritual cure the drudgery fitted for his assistants, while he only takes what he esteems the higher and more refined department of labour, under which heads we shall often find preaching, visiting the rich, and attendance on vestries, classed among the more elevated ; managing schools, divine worship, and visiting the sick, reckoned among the inferior works left to the curate. This is surely in- verting the two orders, and simply making spiritual cure important in proportion as it is superficial and on the surface, and unimportant as it is minute and deep, and consequently laborious and exacting. In fact, the spiritual work must be the reverse of the world's work, and inasmuch as the world offers its highest honours to those who are most highly ele- vated in place, he who stands the highest in spiri- tual cure is the man who must wish for least of the world's position and importance ; whether it be in the division of action and plan, or in its influence on the people we are to work for, it is equally dan- gerous and paralyzing to adopt the kind of line I have referred to. It may be important to some that I should offer Spiritual advice in 236 PAHOCHIAL WORK. some par- a few hints which are the result of experience in ticular cases. a country parish, as to the guidance of some of the more usual forms of sin which come under the attention of the spiritual guide ; because nature being so much the same, the treatment which suits one class of character and disposition under certain circumstances will be in many respects applicable to similar cases. In general, then, it will be found in bringing the poor or indeed any persons to close personal inter- course, that the first thing to be done is to realize to them that they are leading a life of religion at all. Vagueness will be one of the first features which will meet us ; they have the idea that they are religious simply because they hold certain reli- gious opinions, or recognise the fact of God's moral government, and give their assent to the necessity of certain religious acts. Some will be found simply satisfied with their freedom from grievous vices which mark the conduct of others, or with an in- tention to do better on some future day, when as they say " it is put to them," while they are living vague unmeaning lives ; dreaming away their exist- ence, and scarcely distinguished from the lower creation in the pointlessness of their life with refer- ence to eternity. The object is to give such per- sons religious consciousness, to make their spiritual lives definite, by appointing them some act or other through which they may test their condition. Of course, the case supposed here is that of persons who are under no strong convictions, or sorrowings PAROCHIAL WORK. 237 for sins. If they are in a state of contrition, and really are disturbed on account of sin, the course to be pursued will be one of definite repentance ; but if, as in the greater number of cases which will fall under the notice of any person beginning to attempt this kind of work, the state of mind is one of deadness, and absence of all religious sensation, the course to be pursued will be one of offering point. One of the first things to be done after realizing some consciousness, is to achieve the life by rule. Religious consciousness is the very thing which in some cases we wish to avoid. A man should be as little conscious of his religious actions generally as he is of being in good health, or possessed of a sane mind : but the case of our poor is peculiar in agri- cultural parishes, they are so utterly unconscious throughout their whole character, that it will be of the first importance to excite this feeling in degree at the outset. Finding, then, a man aware of no religious life at all beyond the recognition of God, of His moral providence, and the importance of certain religious actions ; our first step will be to open his eyes to the actions of his past life, and the greater sins he may have been guilty of in youth, or other periods of his life. These sins will pro- bably have been committed without any idea of their criminality, and under the conviction that they may safely be classed under the head of mis- fortunes. The feeling will be common that the strong leadings of nature, common customs, and 238 PAROCHIAL WORK. the absence of intended harm to our neighbour, will be sufficient excuse and palliation for trans- gressions. It will be necessary with such a person simply to act on some acknowledgment of his sin with re- gard to the future judgment, or his own responsibi- lities, by inducing him to do some one definite act daily which will require attention, and the slightest amount of sacrifice, and which will give him the conviction that he is acting religiously. Let that act be the kneeling down every evening before re- tiring to rest to say the Lord's Prayer, a habit, pro- bably, which ninety-nine persons out of a hundred among our poor have never formed. Let him per- form that act for one week ; and at the end men- tion the fact of having done it. Let each omission be exactly mentioned at the same time ; and having achieved his act for one week, let him go on to the next : he will take an interest in the effort, it will give him his first feeling of self-respect, his first victory over self; it will give him a definite position in the moral world. His whole character will rise with that act. Let him take no step beyond this for awhile ; let him confirm this into a habit ; while he is doing it, he will rise in other respects, he will gradually fear to sin in swearing and drinking. Let the eye" be simply fixed on one act, and in- directly it will be fixed on nearly all others. The one moral act may be the one suggested above, or many others : if on investigation the chief fault of the person be found to be swearing, let the daily act PAROCHIAL WORK. 239 be an endeavour to check the habit of swearing, and this, with distinct and determined effort for one whole day, will tend as much as any thing to form a definite religious character, and give that very con- sciousness and self-respect which is so much wanted. Very often the best daily act will be one which has reference to a sin daily committed ; and the effort to check by some rule an oath or act which has be- come a strong habit, will tell remarkably in affect- ing and altering the character. The object is to get some one act done by definite rule and plan, which will require some vigilance ; some close study of self, that will give an opportunity of self-examina- tion afterwards. The point to be aimed at is some simple practi- cable rule, which can easily be accomplished by the person guided. The rule cannot generally be too simple. When this is achieved another may be added ; till by degrees the character of the man will be strengthened, and go on from strength to strength ; realizing a growing self-respect in a work which he clearly understands, and feels within his grasp. He feels what he does and can do, and the interest of doing a possible work carries him on with energy and spirit to accomplish it c . 31.1 have tried to give a sketch of a parochial life, and the mode in which the system might be applied c I have here omitted the further remarks on spiritual instruction and placed them in the volume of Sermons on the Ministry. 240 PAROCHIAL WORK. to our populations. It has been but a sketch, for each head which I have touched on has been rather a suggestion for further development than an attempt at detailed plans. Of course no one must enter on this work expecting to see the results of his labour ; he may have that blessing, but it is the unwonted gift of God. He will find what the world will call disappointments ; he will labour long and hard at many cases which will appear at first to yield to his efforts, and will perhaps after years result in failure. Ingratitude, want of appreciation of motive, harsh constructions will continually arise, like cold winds, and chill the warmth of expectation and the glow of sanguine hope : petty jealousies, cases of meanness and unkindness in those on whom he has spent affection and interest, want of refinement and good taste, will continually create disgust and annoy- ance ; but we must judge of the poor by their own standard, and not test them by the pictures and re- finements of our own minds. They have ways of speaking all their own, which are as true channels of reality, affection and gratitude, as our more sub- limated modes of expression. We must remember they form the large class, and we are as one to thou- sands among them ; it would be highly unfair to dis- credit the reality of their good feeling merely be- cause it did not find its vent in the modes of ex- pression of a refined and educated few. Although we must not look for results or measure our exer- tions by the amount of success, still no man can work among his people with zeal and energy without PAROCHIAL WORK. 241 finding much to encourage him, and much to cause him gratitude. One peaceful dying hour, when on the pillow of death the rays of eternal light have found their way and resting-place through our in- strumentality, will be reward enough for the labour of years ; the last whispered gratitude which con- nects the peace of the dying with the guidance of life, or the last expression of affection which lights up the eye before it sinks in death, are our re- compence ; the return of confidence in the man- ner or open countenance of the school child, the sight of poverty chased away and joy and cheer- fulness taking their place by the hearth and home, the brow relieved of its frown and the eye of its tear by words of comfort we have been able to offer, the penitence referred to our warning, or the communion received at our exhortation, the gra- dual elevation of mind and character of the child or the adult, the increasing numbers who kneel at the altar or worship in daily prayer, these are the clergyman's rewards even here, far, infinitely far above what he could expect, and enough to cheer him through years of toilsome and difficult self- devotion. Above all we must remember we have no choice left us, the entire devotion of every power, talent, and moment, is the heir-loom of the Cross, the commission given us by Him who spared not His own self for our sakes : He has laid that cross upon us, and we have nothing left us but to bear it joyfully ; with that upon us self- seeking is indeed perilous, indolence in the highest 242 PAROCHIAL WORK. degree criminal. We cannot escape our lot ; there is a sufficient grace offered and an abundant pardon for our short-comings when we are striving sin- cerely. Only let us devote the same singleness of purpose, the same zeal, the same manly energy, the same wisdom, the same boldness and originality of action to the glorious and ennobling work before us which men devote to the wealth and honours which fade to-morrow, and we shall not regret it in the retrospect of eternity. No vocation is so great and elevated as ours ; we deal with man in his highest capacities : the statesman applies him- self to his social life, the orator to his rational powers, the poet to his imagination, and the philo- sopher to his moral being ; the physician, the his- torian, and the logician all apply themselves to some one or other part of his nature ; it is our lot while we may use the weapons of all these, to have committed to our keeping that with which each blessed Person in the ever-glorious Trinity is con- cerned, the heart and the soul of an immortal being ; and the crown to which we look as our reward is that which at His appearing the " Chief Shepherd'* will give us, which " fadeth not away." Let us keep it vividly before us through every day that the salvation of never-dying souls is our vocation ; the guidance, protection, instruction and comfort of those souls are our work ; those acts and words which will conduce to that end are the one absorbing object of our life ; before them all other employments, however clerical or sacred in the esti- PAROCHIAL WORK. 243 mation of society, in truth pale as the morning star before the rising sun ; however important and neces- sary may be the management of large societies, the membership of committees, political agitation, and vigorous protests ; however beautiful and true aes- thetic services and dress, elaborate architecture, and refinements of manner may appear ; however valu- able writings, the result of much experience and thought, may be to the world around, these are not the primary work of the parochial clergy ; winning souls to Christ whom He has given to their charge, is their first point of life ; before this all must give way, alike the ease of domestic life, or if need be, in some cases domestic life at all, the calls of society and the refinements of taste. There are many works the clergy are doing among those just referred to ; but great though they be, many of them belong to another province, and they will perhaps be better and more fitly done by the layman than the priest. Let each do his own work : it is a mistake for the priest to leave his own high sphere to do the work of another, however grave and solemn that work may be. Many an employment may be religious in its object and yet have no connection with the vocation of the priest, and one error of our day has been the imagining that every undertaking which has a religious aspect can alone be done by the minister of God ; the consequence of this is that the work of laymen is badly done by the clergy- man, and the priest's own vocation is forgotten or his work diluted. Let each do his own work in an R 2 244 PAROCHIAL WORK. honest, manly, devoted manner, and then the dilet- tantism and affectation too common around us, of devolving on another our responsibilities, often from a mock humility, or intruding into another's sphere with an affectation of conscious unfitness, will cease: it is a trifling which hard-working men of the world would not endure, and why should we ? He that applies himself honestly to his own vocation feels fitted for it by the power given him, and needs to make no apology for what he claims as his right- ful sphere of action. Building churches and re- storing windows is not the work of the priest, and political agitation and the platform of the com- mittee often will thrive better in the hands of a layman, while the very cause they have in view will be better done by the clergyman in staying at home and working on the souls committed to his individual care. If his object is freedom of teach- ing and power to instruct souls, he will be further- ing his own object better by working his own school and being present daily in his own church. The lives of our clergy partake too much of the spirit of the day, diffusiveness and want of singleness of aim. It is highly painful to go to parishes where clergymen professing Church principles are living, yet no bell calls to daily service, and they are found on the platform of societies, or on the stage of an agitation meeting. Surely the very point they have in view will be gained far easier in their school-room, and by daily prayer in their own church. It is painful to find clergymen who are fully alive to the value PAROCHIAL WORK. 245 of souls and the effectiveness of the system of the Church, yet merging the priest in the ecclesiastical architect, while three hundred poor children are left to a national school-master, and church benches are empty at daily Prayer, because the poor have not been previously exhorted to attend. It always does, and it ought to create a feeling of distress to enter a parish or a church, where points of minute detail in externals are attended to, and the hearts and souls of the people unheeded, the altar scarcely frequented, and the free seats empty. The clergy do not understand the world's busi- ness ; when they interfere with it they are generally manifestly out of their sphere, and from being on the ground which belongs to others, they gain con- tempt instead of respect. It is on this account it so often happens that the ministers of God incur the contempt of the statesman, the indifference of the legislator, and the suspicion of the man of business. They constantly are found in their spheres, and bring on themselves the just imputation of being absent from their own work, while the world are assiduous at theirs. In our own high and holy vocation we have enough to do. It is at the altar, in the church, in the school, and our retired cham- ber, that we shall be at our post, and dare the world to scorn or interfere with us. There we shall effectually, and only fully effectually there, prepare our people to meet the shocks which may be im- pending, and in laying a deep foundation in their hearts and minds, erect a temple which, with God's 246 PAROCHIAL WORK. grace, will endure the winds and tempests which are lowering over our horizon, and for which a reward is offered us as high above that of the man of merely worldly vocation, as the immortal soul we guard transcends in value the mind which is its handmaid, or the body which will sleep in dust. I have thought it better to take this opportunity of reprinting the remarks on education which I made in a letter to Mr. Gladstone. Remarks on education have become in this day trite and proverbial, and to offer any thing which wears the face of originality is almost a hopeless task. The ever-varying form, however, of human nature will invest perhaps with a certain freshness any statements which are the result of even the smallest experience in her school, and the frequent contemplation of youth will suggest ideas as to its treatment which may not be useless. It seems that the regarding education as the cultivation of the intellect, and an acquiring ac- complishments alone, is a mistake into which edu- cators have very frequently fallen ; or if they have gone a step farther, it is scarcely beyond the addition of the formation of the taste to the above attain- ments. The creating distinct and strong moral habits the close study of individual character the watching minute traits, and striving to discover for what ends they were made and implanted, do not PAROCHIAL WORK. 247 seem to have been objects contemplated in the edu- cation of the day. The consequence is, that the in- tellectual and rational powers are strengthened and sharpened, and that is all; no moral impetus is given no moral habit formed no food supplied for the exercise of those powers when brought into operation. They are left to find their own support ; and it is needless to say how often they imbibe poison, not food. Whereas true education surely should influence the will, and give it right tenden- cies should form moral habits and direct the taste should not be satisfied with bringing out works from the human machine of the highest capacity, but rather should aim at placing a main-spring on those works, and giving them an impetus in a right direction. The true subject-matter of educa- tion is the heart, more than the intellect. Many causes may account for the absence of a more exact and individual mode of education. It takes time and trouble, and cannot be easily ap- plied by one man to a large number. Besides which, it prevents the arrangement of children in classes, over which one system of management will be effective, and the dispensing with which involves considerable effort. But education cannot be edu- cation, in a true or high sense, without this. It appears from any observation of our nature, that each man is placed here with certain strong ten- dencies, capacities, characteristics, and constituent parts, all tending to a given point, which point they will reach only by being brought out, exer- 248 PAROCHIAL WORK. cised, and disciplined. Those ends of their exist- ence are a work for the Church here, to enable us to fill a place in God's great system upon earth, and to fit us to occupy the position prepared for us above, by the perfection and discipline of our own individual character. But whatever the end intended may be, it is clear that, while all these propensities and tendencies are unheeded, while all are cut by one rule, while the same system is observed towards the reserved and the open, the innocent and the penitent, the cold-hearted and the affectionate, the result must be, that the whole character will be dwarfed and stunted ; nay, more than this, that it will actually deteriorate, from the mere fact of having vast and violent propensities left without a fitting object for their application, or a safety-valve for their exhaustion ; the result of which will be, that they will flow back on the moral constitution, and obstruct and hinder whatever wholesome developments may be in process. The waste of human character must be appal- ling under this kind of method. We can hardly imagine what the effect might be of a close and accurate study of these inward indications and tendencies; how much, by God's grace, it might enable us, with the aid of the expansive and elastic system of the Church, to bring out high and great men ; in short, how many might have reached an exalted condition, if only their propensities had been watched, and their particular lines attended PAROCHIAL WORK. 249 to. As it is, it frequently happens that, in the course of a few neglected years, there is scarcely a trace left of those paths which in childhood or youth so plainly pointed at distinct and elevated ends. We may exemplify this in some such case as was suggested ahove. Take a boy whose mind is naturally irreverent, and deficient in religious aspi- rations, with perhaps a rationalizing cast, and place before him high motives, expect from him high acts : the effect will be to create disgust in him, confirm the predisposition to scepticism, and in- spire a settled distaste for religion ; and in the end you will probably have to discard him altogether, owing to his confirmed opposition to all that is right. But apply to that character a method suited to his capacities ; approach him on lower grounds grounds which he will acknowledge appeal to him as a rational being, and, if possible, avoid so bringing forward high motives as to create a conscious repug- nance in his mind, by which his aversions will be- come strengthened ; address to him what he does acknowledge sympathy with, and you will gradually lead him on till his whole tone has become elevated, and high aspirations developed. It is manifest that such a process as this will require great patience and close observation ; but without great patience, such a boy as this will be (as thousands have been) cast aside, though clearly there are elements of character in him which were intended to be educed, and which would, if attended to, have enabled him to fill that place in God's scheme for which he was 250 PAROCHIAL WORK. born. In every one there are those first seeds of natural character and baptismal grace, which, if duly cultivated, will produce that perfect Form which the individual was intended to become, but which, if neglected, will gradually dwindle out, to his temporal and eternal ruin. Again : take other examples. In every set of boys, there will probably be one who is naturally ambitious, and conscious of an inward yearning after the attainment of influence, and the capacity for achieving that object. There will be, perhaps by his side, a boy of an opposite cast altogether, whose chief inclination tends towards ease, quietness, and irresponsibility, with probably a vein of vanity and trifling conceit about him. It would clearly be a mistake to treat these two under the same system : if it were one that suited the latter boy, it would injure the former ; since the necessary check that should be given to the self-confidence and in- dolence of the one, would, when applied to the natural yearnings of the other, produce a baneful effect it would either check the whole impulse, which was intended to have a vent, or that impulse would direct itself into another channel would in- fluence for evil, instead of for good would spend its powers in corrupting schoolfellows, instead of in receiving discipline and strength, by which it might hereafter benefit mankind ; or perhaps it would find for itself a sphere of apparent useful- ness, misguided, and probably mistaken. We must guide tendencies, or they will guide themselves ; PAROCHIAL WORK. 251 any thing like an enlarged scheme of education or Church discipline must find a place and scope for every class of character and energy ; nothing must be neglected which has a trace of God's creative or regenerating hand upon it, since each trait of dis- position is, as it were, His finger pointing in one direction, with the words, " This is the way ; walk ye in it." We might instance another case. There are dis- positions in which love and affection are so powerful, that, if appealed to, they will lead the child to almost any acts of obedience and patience. These tenden- cies should be noticed and directed; it would be absurd to treat a boy possessed of these feelings, and one who was destitute of them and unconscious of any of the kind, in the same manner. The power of love is placed in the disposition for the sake of being acted on, and made the instrument of good to the possessor ; and that in such degree, that, if neglected, it will become a curse rather than a blessing. Such a boy yearns for an object on which to bestow his power of affection ; he very likely found it in a parent or brother at home ; but that home once left, he too often seeks for it in vain in school or in the world. The educator may be- come the object ; he may place himself as the point which may receive and exhaust that affection ; he may work through it as a most powerful means of reaching the final end in the education of the youth, the attainment of obedience and discipline. Such feeling, once evoked and worked through, 252 PAROCHIAL WORK. becomes an instrument of indescribable power, far, infinitely far, beyond the influence of fear and terror. The eye of the teacher may become the index of his mind and feeling towards the boy ; a glance may impart forgiveness, and receive in re- turn the reciprocal expression of satisfaction, obe- dience, and peace. It would be quite impossible to use the same treatment in the same way towards a boy of cold and unamiable disposition ; he would neither understand nor thrive under the process ; it would take the shape of the worst of unreality, and create disgust and aversion. Simplicity and guilelessness of character need, in the same way, the most anxious study and care- ful management. While in most characters you have to create consciousness and self-confidence, in the simple you have continually to be on your guard, lest you give a consciousness which will be far inferior to the existing condition of instinctive goodness. In short, the educator must be guided by nature in the choice of his weapons and the mode of his attack, and not blind his eyes to all natural hints, and, by fusing all traits of disposition into one, apply one system as the panacea for every moral evil. While certain points of the moral constitution will be the better for an expansive and united sys- tem, other parts require the most delicate, minute, and critical care. Any true plan of education must recognise and act on both of these principles. PAROCHIAL WORK. 253 In any number of boys there will be found as many different characters as there are individuals ; and the more each is watched and brought out, the more apparent will the difference become ; these manifest hints of nature are not to be passed by ; it is acting in direct opposition to the only guiding hand we have in this matter, to take no notice of such tendencies. It is impossible to apply the same rule to the naturally vain and the naturally diffi- dent, to the energetic and the indolent, to the truthful and the equivocating, to the youth pos- sessed of high spiritual aspirations and to him who is scarcely open to the appeal of the lowest reason, to the strongly sensual and to the pure and intel- lectual ; the same teaching, the same discipline, the same words, the same reproof, the same encourage- ment, may destroy the one and save the other. Another essential mistake has been made in the working of education, resulting from the idea on which men have acted, of the entire corruption of each part of the whole human being. Some men appear to think that our nature is so utterly viti- ated, that there is not one high or good feeling left to which we can hope successfully to appeal. Among other evil results of which view is, the im- pression that correction can never be applied to the moral character, except forcibly and against the will of the recipient. The higher, truer view is, that there are distinct leadings to good in every one ; if not, we ignore baptismal regeneration and 254 PAROCHIAL WORK. the image of God in man. While there is a witness of the Divine Being within us, we must appeal to that witness ; while there is a response to the in- vitation to wisdom, we must strive to gain it ; while the moral ear is left, we must address it ; and if there be aught in baptismal grace, God has a witness in every heart and a response in every soul. The object of true education must be to work through these inward agents and advocates for good. No man is left without God's wit- ness ; consequently the educator should always ap- peal, if possible, to the inward approval of good ; and that appeal should be suited in proportion to the degree and kind of good which is inherent in the educated. If the boy be open to a high sense of holiness and devotion, let the educator address that sense ; if, as suggested above, the irrationality and misery of a sinful course be the highest view the boy is able to take, he must found his claim to his attention on that inward conviction. Let him be real, honest, and earnest in his claim upon his ear, and there is scarcely a boy on earth, unless he has been allowed to go to ruin already, who will not listen. Goodness, in spite of all corruption, does recommend itself to every man's reason ; no one admires vice as such, and for its own sake. Baptismal grace and Conscience are still authori- tative voices within us ; and to pass them by as if they were not so, is a distinct act of unbelief and irreverence. With this view the educator should, if possible, gain the consent of the boy's will to PAROCHIAL WORK. 255 each step in the process of education ; for instance, let his attainment of knowledge be founded either on his sense of duty, or his appreciation of the intrinsic value or interest of such knowledge ; let his religious acts be, if possible, regarded in the light of privileges more than duties ; let his will, if it be possible (and it is possible), consent even to the reception of punishment, viewed in the light of a chastisement corrective of evil, and aiding to the attainment of real happiness. I do not hesitate to say, and I speak it from experience, that most boys will go through threefold the actual privation of bodily pleasure, and the endurance of personal dis- cipline, under the idea that these punishments are pleasing to God, and really preparing them more for that condition to which every high feeling within calls them, than they would if they viewed it simply as acts of external restraint, having no reference to their real well-being. Surely every view of punishment we gain from Holy Scripture is of this nature. Let the educator, if possible, apply it in the position of a father and of a spiritual guide rather than of a school-master ; let him shew the boy that he sorrows with him, not that he tri- umphs in the possession of power over him ; and that while he suffers with him in his fault, he will not rejoice till penitence and correction be complete. The boy will realize a confidence in his guide, will actually trust him, and so consent to his punish- ment that a blessing will be diffused over his whole moral being. 256 PAROCHIAL WORK. I do not fear to assert, that there is not one boy in a hundred who is not open to this method of dealing. The fact is, boys have been too often made to feel that they are mere machines, butts for the exercise of arbitrary power, and that they were taught by those who had interested motives only in the work, and no real concern in their temporal or eternal welfare. In the exercise of the one method, I believe boys will cheerfully go through the highest acts of suffering without resistance, whereas, under the other, they will scarcely consent to the least expression of autho- rity without compulsion ; the result of which latter is, that a double character is produced, a con- scious desire to be free from what is an irksome restraint, a continual smothering of every little whisper which seems to recognise the truth of the plan adopted ; instead of (which is quite possible) the mind of the boy and his teacher being carried in one channel, so that the closest of unions is realized, and the deepest reciprocity of affection gained. There will, of course, be exceptions to this rule, and cases which will require force and coercion, where the consent of the will cannot be gained ; but these exceptions will be comparatively few. The reason for all this, which was referred to above, seems plain. The child is, of course, by Baptism, a born saint, possessed of a heart which is continually, till sin has ruined it, suggesting holy desires, counteracting the evil suggestions of PAROCHIAL WORK. 257 an original nature, and struggling to rise through all obstacles, as water to its level : he must, there- fore, be treated as ever under the influence and direct guidance of the Blessed Spirit. Take this for granted, and expect to find in him such rela- tionship ; the whole process of his education will be affected, and in many respects materially altered by it from that which we find so commonly in use. If a child is treated as a matter of course as wicked, it tends to make him so ; he forms his view of him- self to a great degree from what he sees the opinion of him to be ; and having once discovered that he is suspected and distrusted, and expected to act wrongly, he will become accustomed to that idea of himself, and shape his own conduct on the type thus presented to his mind's eye. It is a truth in human nature, that children and the great mass of mankind have but little knowledge of their own characters and dispositions, and quickly form that idea about themselves which is suggested by the conduct of others towards them. They see themselves, as in a mirror, in the treatment they receive ; they become accustomed to a view of them- selves borrowed from without, and on that view they act ; they see it is taken for granted they will do wrong, and think they therefore must do wrong ; they lose self-respect, and with" that a large portion of the desire to do right. It is remarkable to ob- serve how much a man's opinion of himself affects his conduct ; how much he tests his acts and motives by the standard of himself; and this being true, it s 258 PAROCHIAL WORK. is of the first importance to let a child see we expect good of him and not evil, truth not falsehood. In fact, it is an act of real irreverence to approach with any other feelings one who has received regene- rating Baptism, and claims God as his Father. Not only does the taking for granted that a child will do wrong accustom him to the thought of it, but often it will actually suggest the sin we profess to correct. It is impossible to see fully how withering, how depressing and ruinous to the moral condition of a boy it is for him to discover that he is never treated with respect. Give him free scope, trust him, take for granted God's Spirit does speak within him, expect to find him holy and good, and he will realize to himself that he occupies a firm ground on which to exercise his inward tendencies ; his cha- racter will develope itself in that direction towards which his feelings guide him, and he will return to his educator that confidence he has received ; and it will be his delight to shew that that trust has not been misplaced. There is an impression, and not an unnatural one, that this close observation and guidance of boys' natural tendencies will unnerve the vigour of the constitution, and destroy manliness of cha- racter. It is perfectly true, that where treat- ment of this kind is adopted partially, and with- out being fully and consistently applied in each and every part, this will be the result, and boys will become unhealthy from a continual tendency PAROCHIAL WORK. 259 to self-consciousness and an over-dependence on others; but this fault will reside in the educator, and the imperfect method in which his scheme has been applied and worked. A priori, we have no right to expect such will be the result, and expe- rience in the few instances in which we have the power to read it, shews us that it need not be the case. Our original creation contemplates the gradual approach to a state higher than that in which we are born ; that perfect condition, or the nearest ap- proach to it which we can reach, must be attained by the application of each constitutional element of the character to its proper object. The subject of those tendencies cannot do the work for himself, he needs an educator ; and the work of that educator is the judicious and close application of each part to its true end. The human being falls short of attainable perfection if the working out of one such constitutional germ be overlooked, and the youth thus neglected feels the loss of it throughout his after life. " The child is father to the man." We have no right to expect that the true aim of nature in the whole man is attained till the completion of this work on each of his powers, and in that com- pletion will consist true manliness. The aim of nature cannot be imperfect, and if the effort to work out her hints results in an imperfect charac- ter, the fault must lie with the educator. Manliness and energy of character must, of necessity, be the points in the human being to which nature, as a whole, tends. s2 260 PAROCHIAL WORK. It has often happened that men who have used the kind of system advocated above, have worked it partially, have allowed many of the seeds of the character to remain in an undeveloped condition, forgetting that the human mind which is incom- pletely educated is in a condition inferior to that which has received no education at all. The rough, uncultivated boldness of a savage will be more strik- ing than the effeminate enervation of a half-formed youth. The former, left with no attempt at indi- vidual training or direct care, presents a feature of severity which is agreeable to the mind, when seen by the side of the contrast we have referred to above. Imperfect forms suggest the idea of failure, which is not suggested where no effort appears to have been made. But the perfect work of education will effect something of a far higher stamp ; and manliness combined with religion, generosity dis- ciplined by personal denial, independence leavened by humility, will be more truly great and admirable results than we are often in the habit of contem- plating. There is nothing abstractedly great or admirable in the youth who despises his mother who denies any consciousness of a tender affection to the brother and companion of his childhood who utters an oath to a schoolfellow, and laughs at saintliness of character evinced by acts of holiness and watchfulness. Still some men have fallen into the habit of admiring all this ; and even the good will sometimes wink at its grossness, or admire its seeming vigour and manliness, simply because this PAROCHIAL WORK. 261 kind of result has been seen in contrast with systems of educations, which, from their imperfect working, have resulted in producing a dwarfed and hypocri- tical character. And since any thing approaching to hypocrisy and meanness is despicable and odious, men will sometimes admire what is only good by contrast, and mistake it for abstract perfection. Any thing morbid, affected, or unhealthy in moral development, is odious ; and nothing so tends to pro- duce these as a partial effort to cultivate the moral constitution. We could not bear intense light ; it would be painful, not pleasing. We need shadows ; and certain elements of character brought out, to the exclusion of others, produce actual injury, and a painful effect. Religious life in boys has continually resulted in an affected and restrained manner an unhealthy and morbid exterior the absence alike of the reality of the Christian, the cheerfulness of the boy, or the generosity and openness of the youth ; and this result has been attributed to the effort at religious life at all; while the fault does not lie here, but in the mode in which religious education has been attempted, either by applying a system utterly alien to the character ; as, for instance, the attempt to graft habits suited to the Italian mind on an English youth ; or by such injudicious attention to the individual case as tends, by excessive cultiva- tion, to produce in the subject a manner full of con- sciousness, vanity, and unreality. I have thus tried to shew the need of the parti- cular study of individual character in education, 262 PAROCHIAL WORK. made the more important from the fact of our regenerate condition ; and to answer an objection often raised, founded on the dread of the formation of an unreal and over-conscious exterior. There are one or two further points, to which I would refer, affecting commonly adopted modes of edu- cation. It is important to consider the delicacy with which the principles of love and fear should be ap- plied in education. There is no essential advantage in compulsion, nor is there any superiority in the obedience which results from coercion exercised on an unwilling subject, over that which is produced by the spirit of love. Corporal punishment is a necessary evil, and must be acknowledged to be so by those who count it needful. It appeals to in- ferior principles and feelings within us ; feelings which are not intended to be called into play until those of a higher order have been appealed to un- successfully. The genuine love produced by grati- tude, sympathy, or admiration, the love of appro- bation, respect for the approval of the good, are all of them feelings which rank higher than those of fear and shame ; and where these are used, the result on the general moral character will be, to produce a very much more elevated tone than is produced by these latter principles. This lower order of moral feelings is placed in us to effect the work which higher ones cannot ; but to prefer the former is inverting the order of nature. It really PAROCHIAL WORK. 263 seems wonderful that men should prefer working by means of inferior instruments. Contrast the two characters which will be the effect of these contrasted systems. In the one case, we shall find a boy viewing his instructor in the light of a natural enemy and an object of terror, instead of feeling towards him as one whose very presence inspires confidence and affection : his object will be to avoid and shun him, and to form a double life, a two-faced existence, one which may be assumed to meet the eye of him whose disapprobation is a matter of terror, but whose regard is undesired and unaimed at ; the other face will be his real one, which he presents to his schoolfellows, and which expresses his true self. There can be no advantage in a double cha- racter ; it is and must be an essential evil. This feeling existing towards the instructor, a distaste is created for all the subjects in which he is brought into connection with him knowledge becomes uninteresting, and all study insipid. The very objects which should excite the keenest in- terest, and would do so, if not placed before the attention in a mode which inspires aversion and distrust, become dull and irksome. There may be a certain apparently rough man- liness produced by this treatment ; but is this to be gained at the cost of all the higher and better parts of the human character, confidence, gene- rosity, and truth? Besides which, the contrary mode of dealing is perfectly consistent with all we can desire of severity and vigour of mind. 264 PAROCHIAL WORK. One result of this state of things will be repre- sented by the following illustration : A boy comes to school with every holy feeling in embryo, en- crusted in natural diffidence and boyish reserve ; he finds no one to sympathize with the faint efforts at expression which these latent feelings seek, since distance and fear have been at once established between himself and his teacher. It needs the deepest trust to enable him to refer his feelings to another ; and this trust is the last feeling which that distance has inspired. The seed of good soon dies within him ; he feels repulsed, checked, and thwarted, instead of led on and encouraged ; and the calls to every vile sin and profligate course to which the open vice of his schoolfellows invites him, find a ready response from a mind already prone to evil and conceived in sin. This boy, full of tender feelings of aifection, of delicate respect, of a keen conscientiousness, which has been nourished with care by a parent's hand at home, would still love the objects which naturally attract his affections, and still pay deference where it was due ; but he comes to school and all these tendencies are crushed and blighted. His affections for home and the ties of family become objects of ridicule ; he dare not express them ; he soon himself joins in the laugh against the very feelings in another which were laughed out of himself; and yet, strange to say, there is not one of the whole band of scoffers, or the object of their scorn, who does not feel himself inwardly conscious of the very same affections they PAROCHIAL WORK. 265 are leagued to decry, and which, if taken singly, and transplanted from the soil of school, they would again express, and perhaps glory in. Where is the use of this unreality this mockery of the guiding hand of God within us ? There follows a stiff, restrained, formal demeanour before his superior, which becomes the cause, as it has been the result, of suspicion, a natural aversion for his presence and control, a countenance which expresses, or but ill conceals, dislike, contempt, and an intention to deceive. It is rare that, through life, such a boy recovers any feeling of real regard for his master. He may look at him with a certain satisfaction, resulting both from the conviction that he is no longer in his power, and from the natural grati- fication every one feels in finding that he who has been the object of fear consents at length to recog- nise some common interest with him. But that is all. All this is unreal, false, and inferior. There is a higher condition for boyhood ; there are higher relations which can be attained between the in- structor and the taught. This is the effect of co- ercion, not of influence ; of fear, not of love ; it is a system of working through inferior motives, and appealing to inferior principles. In the same way that very boy who would feel drawn towards the aged, the person in authority, or the afflicted, with feelings of deference and respect, is induced to violate all these feelings, and to count himself worthy of his position as a boy, in propor- tion as he succeeds in damping and dwarfing them ; 266 PAROCHIAL WORK. and this is the result of school-life generally ; and this heartless state of things, the absence of personal sympathy and affection in the educator has promoted. It does not follow that the allowing natural tenden- cies to come out will effeminate and weaken the cha- racter. It is morally impossible that the following out the very hints and guidings of the Divine creative hand in a child should injure and destroy that child's mind. It must be manifest to the most heedless that Nature does not guide towards an end that is fatal to her own object. " Nature does nothing in vain ;" still less does she implant tendencies in her highest subject-matter, the human heart, without definite intentions of good to the final character. It cannot be that the heeding these internal traits, the permission of affections, the full recognition of every more delicate feeling, should really injure or enervate the final whole ; it must be the fault of the educator if this be the result ; either he has developed one germ without attention to others which are intended to blend and counterbalance, or he has treated them all unhealthily and unadvisedly. No man can think it a right state of things for a boy to make a mock of, or at least to slight, those very sensations which, in his calm moments, he approves and thinks right. This must result in duplicity ; and the fault here does much rest with the mode in which education is worked. Is it not, as we said above, that men seem to have felt it a necessary part of education to inspire an awe and distance at the first beginning of intercourse ? And PAROCHIAL WORK. 267 is not this a sign and confession of weakness and inability to achieve the object in view by the na- tural means ? Respect and obedience are gained at once by moral worth and the dignity of goodness, added to the authority of position. The instructor who assumes a cold distance and stiff reserve to- wards his pupil seems to admit that he is too weak to work with real weapons, and that he must resort to the substitute of fictitious ones. What is the result ? The loss of all ease and confidence at the time, and the nearly certain effect of indignantly bursting from restraint when a boy has seen through the flimsy veil, and found out the unreality of the adopted and fictitious power. The educator must have moral weight ; of course there must be offi- cial dignity and intense respect inspired by position, but these must in no shape be the substitute for weight of personal character. The attempt to make it so will result in a poor patchwork. It is an anomaly to speak of a man without moral weight attempting the work of education. There is nothing more ruinous to a boy than the discovery of having been deceived, or made a victim. The result is to drive him into the worst excess of the opposite extreme to that from which it has been the educator's aim to divert him. On the other hand, where a master makes a boy feel he cares for him and loves him, and does not shew a desire to create a distance between them where he inspires confidence and respect, by shewing a sympathy with every portion of a boy's character, 268 PAROCHIAL WORK. the character which will result will have a very dif- ferent complexion to the one described above. There will be an ease and freedom of manner, which always recommends itself to every lover of truth, and which is inspired by trust and a desire to be trusted, and, on the other hand, an absence of any over-intimacy and disrespect, from the real regard created by ap- preciation of motive and character. There will be a feeling that as no resistance is offered, as a matter of course no resistance need be opposed, and the de- sire to please will, from the very constitution of our nature, take the place of the desire to resist. The more irksome parts of study will become lightened, by their being new channels to the approbation of the instructor. Thus will a certain delicacy of refinement be produced, which only the appeal to high inward principle could produce ; and an open- ness and freedom of face and eye, which can only exist where there is perfect unity of character. There will not be the same excess of obsequious deference, because there will be no necessity to make efforts to shew what is known to exist. A boy will feel encou- raged to confide his most interior difficulties to his master, unhindered by reserve or shame, because he knows he will not meet with repulse and distance. The sinful influence of companions will thus be- come counteracted by the far stronger one of the moral instructor and guide ; school will be divested of many of its worst and most alarming characteris- tics, and the embryo seed of Baptismal Grace will find a fitting soil for growth and perfection. The PAROCHIAL WORK. 269 result that will be attained will be that of order without force, discipline from moral influence, not from compulsory control. It is only by such personal influence that the minute and delicate attention can be given which will check slight deviations to evil, without injuring or violating high and good feelings ; which will care- fully avoid giving blame where blame is not deserved, and always give encouragement where encourage- ment is needed ; which will equal the punishment in- flicted on a sin with the amount of that sin itself, and shrink from treating as equally heinous the accidental destruction of property and a breach of the Eighth Commandment. Nothing is worse than to allow a boy to feel that he is unjustly blamed. He is con- scious that the amonnt of blame is disproportioned, and this impression once created, soon works on to entire self- exculpation ; our evil nature is ready enough to shelter itself under plausible excuse ; the sinful heart uses no sound logic in the deductions it draws from the premises offered, and entire self- exculpation is no uncommon conclusion arrived at from the premises offered by disproportioned blame. Of all species of correction, that which evokes the feeling of shame is, when misapplied, the most inju- rious. To call up the sensation of shame, when the intention of youth has been good, when the fault is one of accidental carelessness or natural infirmity, is of all mistakes the most fatal to true education. While misapplied blame is injurious, withheld en- couragement and approval is equally so ; our na- 270 PAROCHIAL WORK. tures often need encouragement as much as check ; diffidence is as common as confidence ; distrust in possessed powers as frequent as overtrust in them. We often see these mistakes most fatal where youths are urged in a course of work utterly alien to their taste and capacities, and yet judged by the standard of those who are proficients in it. The importance need hardly be pointed out of studying carefully the particular turns of each boy for the pursuits of after-life ; for manifestly that to which he has a direct tendency is the line by which he will probably most efficiently do his work as a member of the human society. By the help of this kind of discrimination, many feelings which are now poorly and meagrely gained through force, would spring up freely and spontane- ously; and respect, obedience, courtesy, value for what was truly great, kindness, and self-denial, would be the natural offspring of the heart, and flourish with a health, a freedom, and an ease, which would present a striking contrast with the stiff and often hypocritical appearances of those which we so often see among youths of every rank in English society. Of course, this mode of dealing requires effort, labour, and trouble ; but what subject-matter on earth so deserves that trouble as the mind of a Christian youth ? There is one object also which surely should be kept especially in view in education, and that one which the practical teaching of the day, it is to PAROCHIAL WORK. 271 be feared, but little recognises or aims at ; I mean, the preservation of baptismal innocence. Surely, it may be, that a boy has never left God since he left the font ; has never wilfully persisted in the violation of conscience for one whole day ; Holy Scripture, and the voice of the Church of all times, would lead as to expect this. And there can, I should imagine, be none who have with any attention studied human nature, who have not known cases where prayer had never been given up, where the slightest deviation from the narrow road was always repented of with real sorrow, and where the mind, which had never been darkened by the shadows of accustomed sin, was living on in unconsciousness, governed by Grace as by an instinct, and present- ing an almost astonishing simplicity from the mere ignorance of sin. In expecting to find such charac- ters, surely Holy Scripture and every other autho- ritative voice would justify us ; and that such con- ditions do exist, the personal experience of many must have discovered. The blessing of such characters in and to the Church is incalculable ; and may-be the reason we have so few saints among us, and so little elevated purity of motive, is, that we have so little made it our object to discover, preserve, and cherish the in- nocence of boyhood. How appalling it is to think of the wreck there must take place of this condition of mind in our great schools, where, in a few days, the purity of a child, which has been hitherto pre- served by a parent's earnest care, is suddenly ex- 272 PAROCHIAL WORK. posed to all the diabolical influence of unblushing lust and unrestrained vice. The close and tender attention such cases require can hardly be known, except by those who are used to the work of a deep religious education. The need there is of due discrimination ; of caution, lest a consciousness should be produced where al- ready there is an instinct far above consciousness : the exceeding importance of avoiding the imputation of a fault where there was really none intended, and thereby destroying the exquisitely simple structure of the moral power : these are all parts in the pro- cess of the guidance of the innocent, which require the most calm, patient, and anxious attention, and freedom from those fearfully antagonistic principles which every large school presents. There will be a simplicity about this kind of cha- racter which will be most astonishing to an unprac- tised eye ; and that so childlike, as to lead to the impression that it must be affected : whereas it is, in truth, that childlike mind of which our Blessed Lord has so awfully spoken as the essential Chris- tian attribute. This spirit has been, in the darkest day and the most neglected condition, preserved, and has resulted in a similar character in the man to that which had begun in the child. How im- portant it is that such characters should be pre- served and cherished for the Church, standing in such need as she does in this our day and this our land ! It is an alarming contemplation, that God's work should be so marred, as it must often be, by PAROCHIAL WORK. 273 neglect and carelessness on the part of those into whose hands the work has been committed, and of whom, "when He comes again," He will re- quire it. In the same way, there are features in the cha- racter of the penitent which need the calmest and closest attention and care. There are intense yearn- ings after self-devotion and self-abnegation, strong desires to own utter worthlessness, in the hearts of boys who have fallen, which, if heeded, watched, and guided, may result in the intense love of St. Mary Meigdalene or St. Peter ; while, if left, as they generally are, to themselves, they will wear out presently, and, from the mere fact of their having existed, will leave the mind seven times worse than they found it. The force of ridicule, the impossi- bility of finding sympathy, the ignorance of the meaning of their condition, the natural reserve of boyhood, will all co-operate in raising a barrier which only the most anxious care can hope to destroy. How awful it is to think of these desires and feel- ings being implanted by God, with a command to His ministers and educators to heed them, and yet to know that, in nine hundred and ninety cases out of a thousand, they are never heeded, and, from neglect, never find that object for which He intend- ed them ! Of whom will they be required ? Who will be responsible ? Surely those to whom the charge has been given, " Feed My lambs." For although His grace alone can effect this work, still T 274 PAROCHIAL WORK. it need not be shewn to any one that His grace operates ordinarily through channels which are in our hands, and for the use of which we are an- swerable. It may be objected to all this, that the experience of the past has been sufficient to shew that boys will not bear the freedom of treatment which I have advocated, that they will abuse so large an amount of confidence, and that the attainment of any effec- tive discipline will be incompatible with such a prin- ciple of trust. But surely the answer may be given with truth, that it is but in few instances that this system has had fair play. So strong has been the impression that it will fail in attaining the desired object, that scarcely more than a few educators have had the courage to break through the limits imposed on them by prestige. A few instances are on record of singular suc- cess in the work of education, where that word has been taken in its highest sense, viz. the forma- tion of moral habits, and inducing the will to ad- mire and choose what is good, and to pursue it for its own sake. In each of these cases the slightest attention will shew, that in proportion as the work has been successful, it has been through the ap- plication of a strong personal influence, by the illus- tration of the inculcated principle in the life and conduct of the educator. The names of Arnold, Wordsworth, and Coleridge are still not only fresh in memory, but represent, in some of the cases, men who are still living to give energy to their work. PAROCHIAL WORK. 275 Most men who feel greatly indebted to a public school education will discover that that result was at least as much owing to the individual teacher as to the system ; or, to speak more truly, it was the system applied and illustrated by the educator, that did its work. There is in some minds a dread of the acknowledged principle of personal influence ; but systems the most perfect are, and must be, substitutes after all. They cannot have the elasti- city of life ; they must be inferior in their power of working to the direct application of the human mind. They are substitutes, though, perhaps, ne- cessary substitutes, where human infirmity, secon- dariness of purpose, and a thousand other incidents are taken into consideration. They must be viewed in the light of a code of laws and rules which are drawn up on the largest possible plan, and the best system will be that which admits of the largest elas- ticity consistent with discipline. But, after all, they do resolve themselves into rules made by men for the government of man ; so that, according to this view, we come to two kinds of education through the aid of personal influence : that which is struck out by the mind in immediate and direct collision with its object, and that which only reaches it through the medium of a code of rules which are professedly substitutes for a more direct inter- course. Take the schemes of education which have been invented and set afloat in different days by minds of the highest order, and which at times have been 276 PAROCHIAL WORK. worked most efficiently, whether in colleges, schools, or other institutions more or less ecclesiastical ; we shall find that they did their work efficiently exactly in the proportion as they were in the hands of men, to work and apply them, who were adequate to their task ; and that there have been times when they have shrunk up into a mere barren and empty husk, without life or energy, when they became unreal, and their existence well-nigh the cause of irreverence, from the fact of their being extended to the cases of youths who, while embraced by an exalted system, were leading debased and depraved lives. Of course, the individual must always work through a system for his own protection and de- fence ; he must reduce his own work to systematic and methodised action he will not work desulto- rily. But what is objected against here is, that which seems a prevailing tendency in the education of the day, that if a certain scheme is formed and set afloat, it will work itself out, even though little place or scope be given to individual influence. The life of true education is the personal influence and example of the teacher ; and in support of this, I appeal to facts as well as a priori reasoning. Facts instanced in the cases of the palmy days of great schools, which have ever been the result of the great minds and exalted lives which immediately influenced them ; and a priori reasoning, drawn from the expectation that the living mind must be better able to work on a fellow -mind than a set of PAROCHIAL WORK. 277 rules, however elastic, well digested, and compre- hensive. Personal influence has always done the great work of the world, and it is to the power of living examples we attribute all the great move- ments, re-actions, and changes in the intellectual and moral creation. And if such changes are at- tributed to the existence, though well-nigh dormant, of schemes invented ages ago, and which have run parallel with the stream of human corruption, it will, I think, be seen that such systems have only really effected their purpose when they have been filled out by the lives and examples of the men of a passing generation. I do not object to system it is self-protective but to its being considered as any thing more than a machinery through which the educator applies his powers, his principles, and his energies. It is hard to love abstractions, still harder for youths whose minds are undisciplined to love a mere frame-work, however beautiful : we need something more tangible and visible before we can willingly love the path of discipline. It seems that the whole theory of God's dealing with us recognises this truth, whether in our moral or social life. The parent influences the child, not the scheme of domestic rule ; this is to be used but as a substitute, and must recede in proportion as the parental influence can be brought into personal con- tact. Men must be governed by system when taken in the mass, simply because men cannot be brought into contact with individuals on the broad stage of life : the subject-matter of religion itself descended 278 PAROCHIAL WORK. from abstracts when our nature was assumed by our Blessed Lord. It may be objected, men are fallible ; good men are few ; fitting men are fewer still ; there must be system which may outlive men, which may give per- manence, and be proof against changeableness, which may suggest truth to the mind, which might forget it. This is no doubt true ; but what I wish to urge is, that whenever such system exists alone or promi- nently, it should be looked upon merely as for the time a necessary substitute, acknowledging inferi- ority and weakness, and that the less it appears throughout the history of every work of guidance, government, or education, the better. It will be objected, all this will place the educator in a dangerous position. It certainly does ; but is not every man who occupies a high office of trust in a dangerous position ? Is not the priest of the Church in a place equally difficult ? and is that diffi- culty a reason for his deserting his post ? to which may be added the fact, that the greater proportion of educators are priests. It is true, beyond con- troversy, that he who undertakes the office I have suggested is in a place where every word must be weighed, and every action measured. But there is grace given ; and can any educator's position be viewed independently of its relation to God's aiding grace ? It is true that the chance of failure from false judgment, or from inconsistent life, is greater in the case of an individual than in that of a sys- tem. But in any fair average, is there not a greater PAROCHIAL WORK. 279 amount of actual danger from the deadness of an antiquated system, than from the chances of an in- dividual failure ? As a matter of experience, has the opposite plan been free of harm ? Have the systems of collegiate life, however good in their conception, prevented the walls within which they have been worked from witnessing the darkest profligacy, rebellion, and irre- verence ? and has there not been a continual danger of sin, from the fact of the constant opportunities offered, through holy forms and holy services, to those who were leading unholy and reckless lives ? while, on the other hand, has not personal influence, when brought into play, always done its work in in- ducing goodness and morality ; and through scenes of vice, have not good men walked, and shed light into the darkest corners? I cannot feel that there is much force in any ob- jection which might be raised, on the score of the evils which the fall of individual educators might cause. There must be infirmity in all human acts ; and, do what we will, we dwell daily amid the choice of evils. High responsibilities call out ener- gies and powers. Men become more elevated in life in proportion as they occupy high position ; their standard becomes raised ; leaning on system tends to depress the man. We are so made, that we are induced to rouse ourselves in proportion as we are expected to rise. It is, of course, after all, but one step in a ladder towards the only really in- fluencing power, God's grace : but we must ascend 280 PAROCHIAL WORK. by degrees, and while human influence may be many steps short of the highest one, mere system is a step lower still. Every means is short of the highest one ; but if personal influence is to be suspected and thrust aside on the score of its being short of God's grace, and of its tendency to eclipse Him, the same may be said of every human effort. It is, after all, in this view, a question of degrees, and among these, personal influence does but take a higher position than barren system. It is the edu- cator who is in fault if he suffers himself to stand between God and the individual soul ; and, after all, the same will be seen in every form of administra- tion in which human operation enters as a medium. It is perfectly true, the Church is herself in part a system; but individuals, in one sense, give her active and effective life. She is the necessary chan- nel of a greater grace, through her sacraments ; but they are beyond our present analogy, since they form a step in the ladder nearer to God than His priest is ; but in other views of the Church system, it is undeniably true that her active energy has de- pended on the men who have ministered her offices, and swelled out her frame-work. The objection to personal influence reaches no further than to the fact that, however good, this mode of education is difficult of application, and so that where it cannot be worked, of course system must supply its place. But there is no valid objec- tion in this to the principle of individual influence in itself, but simply to the difficulty of its opera- PAROCHIAL WORK. 281 tion. It should be applied and carried out where it can be ; it must not be paralysed, and crippled, and discountenanced, merely because it is difficult of application. Let each educator use it in his own sphere, and apply it where he can in the parochial school, in the boarding-house of the public school, in private tuition, and in the relation of the college tutor to the student, it has been, and it can be, worked with full effect. Once tried by the few, it will soon be worked by the many ; the light of one man will be the fire from which twenty others will kindle their own lamps ; the idea once suggested, and the plan once seen as possible and successful, we little know how many are prepared to follow it. Men are injured by imagined impossibilities ; they need to be shewn that things are not impossible. What man has done man may do. We must act more on faith ; we must be less deterred by ap- parent difficulties. God will bless ventures made for His sake, and against the probability of worldly success. We little know what store of Grace He has in His treasury reserved for a more energetic life and walk of faithful ministration. To the at- tentive eye the page of educational history is rife with vivid interest attached to names of men who, from time to time, have given life to sleeping sys- tems have raised by their example a depressed standard, and, by the application of a vigorous personal influence, given a new turn to the edu- cational energy of their day. And noble is the field on which such an edu- 282 PAROCHIAL WORK. cator is called to play his part. The age of youth and childhood is the great nursery, the vast trea- sure-house of the Church of future days ; she has committed them to our care ; she wants all, she has a place for all, she has a work for all : the place must remain empty, the work must be un- fulfilled, if her baptized children are not prepared to fill them. She needs the innocent, the penitent, and the disciplined. She has her work which only the innocent can do ; she has her place which only the disciplined can fill. And the Church on earth is but the portrait of the Church of eternity ; there are various places there, and there are only certain of her children who can fill them. Those who were suited for a distinct sphere here, will probably find a similar one above. The Church wants all kinds and shades of dis- position to fill her places, and to do her service. The bold and the retiring, the loving and the cal- culating, the energetic and the cautious, all alike have a sphere within her system. They are hers ; she sent them with these dispositions in germ, from the baptismal font, she sent them back to the world strengthened and nourished by the Grace of the ever- blessed Spirit, and she said to ministers, pa- rents, sponsors, and teachers : " Go, prepare these various characters and traits to do my work here- after." And how little is it being done ! It is sad that human nature, though the greatest of all sub- ject matters, is not more carefully considered ; and PAROCHIAL WORK. 283 while the material and intellectual worlds are made the subjects of vast and accurate scientific arrange- ment, the moral state of man alone, by far the highest of all, is left to the most irregular treat- ment. The present day seems likely to present to our eye no small application of enlarged systems of education ; and already we have seen the effects of example set no long time ago working surely and safely on to a happy *and hopeful end. The pre- sent seems the age of the regeneration of educa- tion ; the life of the boy at school points to a brighter destiny than it did in the days of our fathers. There is a vast heaving underground ; what it will result in, it is for other days to see ; that it should be watched and used by the Church is beyond controversy. The larger, deeper view of education, the appli- cation of individual influence, and the attempt to meet the most latent sympathies and yearnings of youth, are points which are now daily and suc- cessfully aimed at. It will be done by the Socialist and the teacher of heretical bias, if it is not done by the Church. It is no longer a matter of choice. The more effective mode is in use ; and if we do not apply it through our own machinery, we shall lose our standing. This is a day of close struggle ; every inch of ground must be contested ; and the nineteenth century is not the age in which any thing like unreality and superficial systems will be 284 PAROCHIAL WOKK. tolerated. The same spirit is at work through every muscle and vein of our social and political body. Education will no more bear the continuance of the unreal than any other part of human government. It is not the day when disease, ignorance, or holy offices can be made the means of accumulating wealth and earning a livelihood. A clear and steady ray of light has pierced the deepest recesses of the home of society ; and whether for good or for evil, each object is brought out in vivid colouring to the eyes of millions. The hand which weighs ac- tions and motives, holds the scale with a firmness which past generations have not been accustomed to. May the Church take up her position ! It seems the day when all the powers of the world are on the march to occupy their portion of the ground on which they are to play their part in some near and impending struggle a struggle from which no single portion of society will be ex- cluded. Education will be one great weapon of the contest ; and if the Church is to do her work, it must be by wielding that weapon. It is true that many places seem unfurling her banner, and occupying in her name their position in the edu- cational field. Winchester and Eton are in many respects following the steps of the educational energy of a sister public school. We are justified in expecting to add Harrow to their number. The name of Uppingham is already reminding us of the latent power too long hidden within the walls of our old grammar-schools, and is raising the stand- PAROCHIAL WORK. 285 ard of a deep, religious, and real education. St. Columba and Radley shew us that the power to create and give energy to the created system is re- viving among us. We hail with gratitude and joy all these tokens ; they are among the first sounds of the trumpet with which the Church among us seems preparing to rouse herself to take her stand ; and may we not sanguinely hope that the re-echo of their notes will ere long tell us that in our great Universities, in all our public schools, and many a grammar-school long forgotten, men are prepar- ing to assert boldly their allegiance to the Church, and, by a close, anxious, and vigorous education, to send forth her children armed for the approaching conflict, in which they shall either live to assert her principles, or die to defend her right. OXFORD : PRINTED BY I. SHRIMPTOtf. 14 DAY USE RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED LOAN DEPT. This book is due on the last date stamped below, or on the date to which renewed. Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. 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