CALL FOR UNITED EFFORT

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before us, for the accomplishment of the mighty task committed to us, for the development and maintenance of the strenuous efforts which are required of us, there must be enkindled a universal spirit of enthusiasm for Church extension. The country needs to be organised from end to end. Every parish should have its own missionary association. Every parish should strive to have at least one representative labouring in the mission field. The bicentenary of our oldest missionary society -which for two centuries has made it its first endeavour to follow the British flag and to make the Church of the nation the gospeller of the empire-affords a splendid opportunity for quickened zeal and redoubled efforts. The record of the next two years will go far to show how far Churchmen are prepared to emulate the spirit of sacrifice which animates the empire at a moment of crisis when the call goes forth for an army of volunteers for active service. The extent of the response made by Churchmen to the call will be the measure of our ability to claim for our National Church the title of the Church of the British Empire.

XIII.

The Anglican Spirit in

Literature

By H. C. BEECHING, M.A.

M

ANY people must have felt that there is about the best religious writings of the Church of England a tone and temper proper to it, and distinguishable from those of other communions. Whether this temper can be precisely described as well as distinguished, whether in any attempted analysis so volatile a spirit would not escape, is another matter. The attempt at least to indicate it seems worth making, because at the present day there prevails in some quarters a disposition to deny to our Church any peculiar characteristics of its own, other than a certain cold formalism, due to its connection with the State; which Erastian coldness it is considered to be the duty of loyal Churchmen to qualify by an infusion from the literature and ritual of warmer climes. Against such ill-instructed loyalty the following pages may serve as a protest. Their aim is to call attention, in the literature of the great period when our Church started upon her independent career, to the reasonable faith, the wide intellectual sympathy, the reserved enthusiasm, the reverent piety, which inspire those writings; qualities which were no merely accidental reaction against Romanism on the

THE AGES OF FAITH

395 one hand and Puritanism on the other, though they define themselves constantly by reference to those, but an ideal that was framed by a study of Scripture and the primitive Church; and reflected as it was in the dignified simplicity of the reformed ritual, was found capable of satisfying the instinct alike for conduct, belief, and worship of the best Englishmen in that generation.

It was remarked many years ago by a writer in Tracts for the Times, that our English Prayer-book was pitched in a much more sober key than the Latin services from which it was compiled; and he hazarded the opinion that this was a providential disposition to adapt the Prayerbook to the days of the Anglican revival, when a graver and more penitential spirit was abroad in the churches. A simpler suggestion would be that at all times when the spirit of a Church is deeply stirred or comes to itself after a period of slumber, its mood is grave, and requires a serious expression; because, though "joy in the Lord" is beyond doubt the true expression of a Christian's perfected faith, there is a joy springing from much nearer the surface which may have to be sacrificed for the sake of what lies deeper. Selden tells us in the Table Talk, "There never was a merry world since the parson left conjuring”; and it is not difficult to imagine how life, for all but the best spirits, might pass without anxiety if the only chance of things going wrong in the next world was a sudden death which would deprive the Churchman of the effectual ministrations of his priest in articulo mortis. The English race in the "ages of faith" was in its childhood, and it is natural to childhood to be merry and unconcerned. Writing on St. Nicholas's day, I am reminded of that curious business, so incredible to us now, of the boy-bishop, which gave a note of gaiety, almost of farce, to what we now account the solemn season of Advent. The picturesque mummery must have served in its day some useful purpose,

so far as the boys were concerned, or Colet would not have approved it in his statutes for St. Paul's School;* but its popularity clearly indicates the childish gaiety of the pre-Reformation religious spirit, just as the popularity of St. Nicholas himself, proved by the number of churches dedicated to him, shows the childish appetite for marvel. The temper of mind which the Oxford Movement in our own century laboured to correct and deepen, while it had not the excuse of childishness, was as superficially at peace with itself. It had narrowed down religion to respectability, qualified by a formal assent to the doctrine of the Atonement and a regular hearing of sermons upon it; so that religion had become, in a different sense, a matter of the parson's conjuring, and the lay people could afford to have easy minds. It will be understood, then, why one recognisable note of Anglicanism, whether of the seventeenth or the nineteenth century, is its seriousness. It is the note of times when it has been seen that religion lays its claim upon the whole life, and is not a matter that can satisfactorily be deputed to a factor, whether priest or preacher.

This note of gravity, however, was common to all parties alike in the religious movement of the Reformation. The peculiar distinction of Anglicanism lay in three points. The first was that the English Church deepened its seriousness into devotion. The natural outcome of years of religious controversy is the decay of reverence and godly fear. When the deepest mysteries of religion are debated at every street corner, however serious the intention, the result must be that the object of such ceaseless speculation ceases to be an object of worship. From our

* "All these chyldren shall every Chyldermasse day come to paulis church and here the Chylde Bisshoppis sermon and after be at the hye masse, and eche of them to offer a jd to the childe bisshopp." The boy-bishop was abolished by Henry VIII., restored by Queen Mary, and finally abolished by Elizabeth.

THREE NOTES OF ANGLICANISM

397

recent experience in England of the disastrous effect that a polemical handling of sacred subjects has upon the spirit of religion, we are able to sympathise more keenly with the endeavour of Bishop Andrewes and those who followed him to emphasise worship as being the first duty of a Churchman, and to ensure that the public services of the Church should be orderly and befitting.

In the second place, the seriousness of Anglicanism took the form of a patient investigation into the creed and ritual of the primitive Church. All that common sense and the light of nature could do in exposing the corruptions and abuses of the Roman system had already been done. It was not possible, without going back to antiquity, to distinguish what in the Roman creed was Catholic from what was merely medieval or modern. Accordingly, while the Puritan was content to oppose the ipse dixit of Calvin to the definitions of the Council of Trent, English Churchmen set to work to study the Fathers. The effect of this new learning may be seen by the most cursory glance at any catena of Anglican authorities on points of doctrine. Much of their effort is devoted to showing that the passages quoted from time immemorial in favour of Roman doctrines had, in their original context, no such bearing. In this way the appeal to antiquity, as against the dogmas of both Rome and Geneva, became part of the recognised apologetic of the Church of England. This care for primitive authority cooperated with the care for worship in reinspiring in the minds of Churchmen the spirit of reverence. The state of mind in religious matters of the ordinary Englishman of the upper class at the beginning of the seventeenth century was apt to be one of aggressive independence, as of a man who had freed his neck from an intolerable yoke, and was in no mood to bend it beneath any other. It was the part of the English Church to teach him, first, that