Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

Quite frequently one encounters the sneer at the bitter partisanship inside the Church. Be at peace amongst yourselves, says some one, before you expect to persuade us. Very popular and plausible and utterly contradicted by experience is this fallacy. Pressed to its necessary conclusion relentlessly it leads to the solitude which is called peace. Struggle and hostile warfare are not synonymous. The human soul and mind are struggling in a continual battle against external attacks and temptations and internal limitations. Each of us is to "continue Christ's faithful soldier and servant " unto his life's end. We seem to remember quite clearly that among the members of the Twelve there was a strife as to which should be greatest. There was the early Council at Jerusalem to fight through the questions raised by the judaizing party. There comes to mind a part of the early Church where one said, I am of Apollos, another, I am of Cephas, another, I am of Paul, yet another, I am of Christ. Yet points could be cleared up so long as there was no breach of fellowship with the Apostles and no denying the Risen Jesus.

[ocr errors]

Seventy years ago the Church of England emerged from a superficial peace to the storm of the Catholic Revival. The former was lethargy, the latter the working of vitality. Somewhat more than forty-five years ago the so-called "anti-ritual canon passed at the Baltimore General Convention seemed to many to threaten the integrity of the Church in the United States. The storm gradually cleared the air and when the clouds dissolved men had a clearer vision and the statute was found to be a mistake and was repealed. Now we have controversies on the Ministry, the Sacraments, the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, Reservation of the Sacrament of the Altar, and so on. Other bodies around us are quite free from such disputes. The points under discussion have to do with principles worth struggling for. Where there are no positive, definite principles in religion, there need be, there can be no partisanship. Nothing hinders the entrance upon a state of lethargy. There is nothing to keep one awake.

It is extraordinary to note, but with fear and trembling, that only once for a brief period has the Church in England experi

enced a schism which carried with it representatives of the Episcopate the Non-juring Schism of the late seventeenth century, which was for political, not theological reasons. And only once in the history of our American Church has one of its Bishops left the communion of his brother Bishops to set up another, the "Reformed Episcopal," organization. The crisis turned on an essential point, Regeneration in the Sacrament of Holy Baptism, and that was an issue involving the Incarnation and all its consequences.

It would be well for those who are seriously troubled by this fallacy to try to get a clear understanding of St. Paul's assertion, "For this cause there shall be heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you." What shall be said as to the general state of loss of intercommunion which is the outstanding phase of the present disunity in Christ's Holy Catholic Church? The subject is too vast for our consideration here and now. The historian remembers that schisms in the Church are essentially different from schisms from the Church, and he recalls instances of the former occurring quite early and soon healed. As the centuries go by and the Church extends, such breaches are healed more slowly and after longer intervals and in providential ways, rather than by human schemes. Our own Communion has inherited the situation of the separation of the eleventh century between the Greek East and Latin West, and it was more sinned against than sinning in the breach between the National English Church and the papacy in the sixteenth century. It was the victim of the Lutheran and Calvinistic schism from the Western Church in the sixteenth century, and to some extent to blame for perpetuating the conditions which confronted the Wesleys in the seventeenth century. But in truth much has been done already to rectify that for which we may be charged as culpable. The allegation that we acquiesce in this loss of visible unity falls to the ground on examination. But we cannot surrender essentials nor be satisfied with mere negations or outward uniformity.

In conclusion, we may give utterance to a thought which is ever in mind touching the relations of children to their Mother Church. We must not adopt the fallacious attitude of being

merely critics of her and her actions. Possibly she does not possess some of those advantitious attractions which are more artificial than natural. Surely she will not disown her own family heritage. Humbly she remains loyal to the "goodness and mercy that have followed "her all the days of her life. And she cannot divorce herself from her supernatural Bridegroom. We must throw ourselves into her cause heart and soul, as history shows us her sons and daughters whom she loves to honor have done through the centuries. We must live her life, teach her truth, worship her Head, with all our heart and mind and soul and strength. In the language of Hugh James Rose to Newman in 1836, when the latter was already beginning to waver and become the cold critic of the Church of England, "You must let me not endure, but love and warmly and passionately – my Mother Church."

P

Arthur Whipple Jenks.

Sunday School Opportunities

ERHAPS nothing connected with Christian activity has received so much detailed treatment in books as Sunday

Schools for the past decade. Teacher training,1 institutes, S. S. Unions, and all the paraphernalia including interdenominational" efficiency "courses and the advice of experts are thrust upon us from all sides. It is not of all that that I wish to speak but rather of certain opportunities which the possession of a Sunday School to manage gives to the pastor.

Within the fold of the church children would probably learn more of what most of us want and all of us ought to teach them if there were no Sunday Schools, and if we could have our children in Church at the time the Canons contemplate, and catechize them. But although the conditions among poor children and apprentices which moved Robert Raikes to found Sunday Schools are things of the rather remote past, the schools remain and they have, as we have abundance of evidence, received a

[ocr errors]

1 A thoroughly practical and excellent little handbook to put in the hands of S. S. teachers is The Sunday School Teacher's Pupils," Rev. H. T. Musselman,-American Baptist Pub. Soc'y, Phila. It is wholly free from denominational bias.

tremendous impetus of late through the application of "efficiency "to them. This has even progressed so far as to produce the sectarian slogan: "Everybody in the Sunday School," and we see its organization carried out to the extent that cripples and bedridden old ladies have their weekly lessons carried to them by the messenger service of the Home Department. We should have to run the risk of having our Church children join denominational schools if we abandoned the Sunday School and went back to the canonical catechising. We have the schools and the children in them, often many from families outside the Church's sphere of influence, and there are a few things which usually are not thought of, but which we might teach those children who sit passive before us for one hour out of every one hundred and sixty-eight.

Here is a wonderful chance to start in making the Churchmen of the next ecclesiastical generation. Most of the children in our Sunday Schools do not attend Church services. In a school of more than four hundred children I once found that only eight had ever been present at a communion service, and of these, five had been confirmed. In another school of sixty-eight children, only three had ever witnessed the chief service of the Church, and all three had been confirmed. One way to meet this condition is to begin having a children's Eucharist, once a month, at the regular hour for meeting, which, common-sense and 66 experts agree, should be in the morning, preferably not long after nine o'clock. If you can command the services of another clergyman this is delightfully easy. One celebrates and the other gives the instructions. These can be infinitely varied. They might well begin with detailed instruction, which could be continued throughout a Sunday School year. The celebrant can give opportunity between the various parts of the liturgy for a few words of instructive explanation, made by the catechist who serves or takes the deacon's part. For example, before the service the catechist speaks to the children and tells them where the service begins, and sees that the places are found, the teachers, of course, coöperating. Then he tells them in a few words what an introit is. "This is the Second Sunday after Easter, and the introit will be the 70th psalm."'

They find it, rise, and repeat it all together. "We will all kneel down now while the priest makes his preparation. He says the Lord's prayer alone this time."

After a year or so of this, ordinarily intelligent children will become familiar with the service and understand something of its meaning. Then the detailed instruction can be dropped, to be resumed in another year, perhaps, and a five-minute address can take the place of the other kind of instruction. Even a single priest can manage it, for there is usually a devout layman who can be drilled into competence in giving the detailed instructions, which may even be written out for him to hold in his Prayer Book if his intelligence does not equal his devotion. Here, too, is the place to introduce any ceremonial with which you would like to familiarize your children so that it will be natural to them when they are vestrymen and mothers of families later on. Ceremonial which you may not care to use at other services may be used at the children's Eucharist, usually without even eliciting a comment from the critical members of your congregation. Sometimes, too, older people like to come to this service for the instruction or for devotional reasons, and they may learn from it more than they ever knew before, an experience common enough among grown people who attend children's missions. This kind of instruction is infinitely more valuable in the Sunday School than such matters as the relative geographical locations of Lystra and Derbe or even the construction of model Palestinian dwellings out of cardboard and clay.

Another thing in Sunday Schools which ought to be done is the explanation of the clauses of the creed. It would be safe to wager that not one child out of a thousand in Church Sunday Schools has the faintest conception of what the Communion of Saints, glibly recited, really means. The creed is of course the highly concentrated essence of the entire Christian faith. It is the whole Bible boiled down to a compact and usable working plan. It is utterly absurd to have children recite the creed, as they do in probably every Church Sunday School in the world, unless they know thoroughly what they are talking about. It is really worse than reciting the catechism parrot-like, a matter

« AnteriorContinuar »