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to suit the speaker- to Eucharists at one particular hour, or a modernized Prayer-book, or extempore prayer, or congregational singing, or the abolition of pew-rents, or the reduction of Episcopal incomes, or the establishment of Church Councils. Such matters, or some such, are doubtless important in their various degrees. But to account them primary, to imagine that you are really going to re-Christianize England by recourse to any or all of such devices, to encourage the belief as we are doing just now, for instance, by the controversy about Reservation that the main interest of the Church in these tremendous days is absorbed by ecclesiastical details and disputes - this is surely to hinder rather than to help that task of feeding the multitudes. It hinders because it strengthens the idea that the Church and all it can supply-its idiom, its methods, its interests have no sort of relationship with the real needs of the average man.

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But, again, it may be said "The parallel you attempt to draw between to-day's situation and the Gospel scene is unfair. The great company which Christ saw was at least conscious of its hunger and ready to welcome the ministrations of those who came to feed it. To-day the Church's chief difficulty is the people's lack of a sense of need. They are indifferent; they do not want to be fed; they show no spiritual hunger." Well, any such statement can only be met, I think, with a flat denial of its truth. I am convinced, on the contrary, that, taking our people as a whole, their spiritual appetite, the craving of the soul for food, was never stronger than now. The war has made them face the ultimate problems of human existence. They long quite passionately for faith and comfort. Even the ordinary talk you may hear in the drawing-room, the Club, the mess, gives some evidence of that. If people do not turn to the Church, the fact does not mean that they feel no hunger, but simply that they doubt the Church's ability to satisfy it. The Church, they think, is too engrossed over the distribution of loaves and fishes among its own disciples to care for the great company beyond. So they look elsewhere. They will listen to any new creed which promises to give them what they seek; they will turn to spiritualism,

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for example. Again, the apparent indifference of the great industrial movement to Christianity really means this - that the movement itself is used to provide a substitute for religion. In it the corporate spirit and the sense of brotherhood find a satisfaction which, through our own fault, they have failed to find in the Church.

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What, then, must we do? When we have achieved the first stage, when we have discerned the great company and their claims upon us, how are we to feed them? First and beyond all else, we have to set Christ Himself before the English people not as a mere Figure of history, but as a living Presence, as an imperishable Power. We want to bring the anxious, wistful men and women of to-day-for anxious and wistful they areinto His Presence, and to leave them face to face with Him. And as we see the transcendent need of this and the relative unimportance of all else, as we gain a cleared sense of proportion, a new Broad Church movement may begin — by which I do not mean the creation of a new "party," or a development of the views commonly associated with the term "Broad Church" to-day, but a movement in which people of every diverse ecclesiastical views may unite. There will still be many opinions on subsidiary points from which we shall love to differ; there will be none from which we shall not differ in love. We shall look forward to a time in this life when every one will come round to our way of thinking; we shall not even desire such a day. For we shall know that the whole truth must always transcend the particular aspect of it which alone is visible to any one person or party. We shall admit the relativity of knowledge. We shall own that doctrinal differences will endure to the end of time. To the end of time, also, there will be, we shall admit frankly, no one "correct," or even best, kind of service or ritual. They are quite ancillary; their value is simply to aid our communion with God, and, while human temperaments differ, the type of ceremonial and devotional observances that help the spiritual life of one man will not be those that prove most helpful to another. All such things we shall relegate to their rightful secondary place. The power and love of our living Saviour

- ah! it is these that matter, it is these that must overcome the world.

So we shall face the great company. And, gigantic as our task appears, there are certain avenues of approach which seem to be specially open to us just now. Here I must be content merely to indicate them. First, this war has quickened the keen desire for faith in the persistence of life through death, a desire which the Gospel of the Risen Lord can satisfy as nothing else can. Secondly, there is a strong sense of duty, which will find its best fulfillment in Christian discipleship, if we emphasize not merely man's need of God, but God's need of man. Finally, we shall utilize that corporate spirit, the growth of which is so characteristic of our age. We shall show how the Church and its Sacramental system appeal to that spirit; we shall admit our past mistakes in this respect, we shall confess that a merely individualistic religion is not the religion of Christ. And, by every practical means, we shall try to make actual the concept of the Church as Christ's Society, as a brotherhood both human and Divine, as the means through which the corporate spirit will find its inspiration, its sanction, and its crown. Shunning the folly of figuring as a partisan in industrial disputes, the Church will create the atmosphere in which such disputes have their best chance of adjustment. It will preach fearlessly to rich and poor alike. But, following its Master's example, it will encourage often and rebuke seldom. It will show how essential to the enrichment of life religion is, how without it human nature remains stunted and incomplete. The ecclesia will grow when mere ecclesiasticism dies an unlamented death. And, while providing for the individual needs of each soul, it will unite men in the brotherhood of Jesus Christ our Lord. It will see things in their true perspective. It will concern itself far less than hitherto with Committees, and far more with character; its aim will be to make not machinery, but men. And so may this great Church of ours become again the Church of the English people.

Does all this seem but a far-off vision? Let us set ourselves, my friends for both clergy and laity must take their parts

let us set ourselves, in God's Name, to turn the vision into reality. The need is urgent. The crisis is real. The great company is before our eyes. And we will not hesitate, you and I, because our personal equipment for our little share in the task, our few loaves and fishes - our influence and opportunities — seem so small. Rather, relying on our Master's power, we will strive with a single purpose to fulfil His command, and, blessed by Him, we shall not strive in vain.

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The Sabbath for Man

From The London Times

HE letters on Sunday observance which have appeared lately in The Times manifest a real cleavage of opinion on the nature of the claim that day has on Christians. All are agreed that Sunday is to be observed as a day of rest and worship, but it is obvious that men derive their sanction for this belief from different sources. With regard to the Fourth Commandant some urge that while Christians are justified in observing the first day of the week instead of the seventh, the law of the Sabbath rest is still valid for the Christian Sunday.

On the other hand, there are many who, while acknowledging that the Sabbath was divinely ordained for the Jews, claim that its purpose cannot be identified with the object for which Sunday observance was instituted, and that therefore the modes of observing the two days must be different. The Christian Sunday is a weekly commemoration of the Ressurrection. The Lord rose from the dead on the first day of the week, and from the beginning the disciples gathered together on that day to worship Him. Jewish Christians continued to keep the Sabbath as the weekly day of rest, while they observed Sunday by a special act of united worship with fellow-disciples of the Risen Christ. The Sabbath was never recognized by Gentile Christians. Cessation from work on that day was not required from Christians, nor was it possible for most of them. It was not a

public holiday, and Christians had to be content to meet together in the early morning for the Eucharist before going to their accustomed labors. Gradually, with the growing influence of Christianity, the Lord's Day became more and more a rest day, but it was not until Constantine ordered abstention from all work on Sunday, except in agriculture, that this became the law of the Church.

In pre-Reformation times in this country Sunday was observed with considerable strictness so far as trade and labour were concerned, but national games and sports, such as archery, were not only allowed, but encouraged by the authorities in Church and State. When the Puritans gained supremacy they did everything possible to make the English Sunday approximate to the Jewish Sabbath. They not only found in the Fourth Commandment the law of abstention from work on Sunday, but the method of Sabbatizing the Sunday was peculiar to this country, and was quite unknown among the Churches of the Reformation on the Continent.

No doubt the recitation of the Ten Commandments introduced into the Communion Service in 1552 did much to maintain the Puritanical Sunday, and it is worth noticing that those who deprecate the Archbishop of Canterbury's sanction of Sunday labour in the present distress point out the inconsistency of reciting the Fourth Commandment at the Sacrament, when it is understood that the worshippers an hour or two later may be working in the fields, with the approval of their spiritual guides, in plain contradiction of the literal statement of the Sabbath law. This may suggest the inexpediency of reciting the Commandments in the Communion Office, but it cannot determine the law of Sunday observance.

Even if the Christian Sunday and the Jewish Sabbath were identical, or more closely associated than they are, it would appear that labour on that day to secure an adequate supply of food in times of urgent need is more than justified. "The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath." It is worth recalling the fact that this declaration was made when the disciples were going through the cornfields on the Sabbath

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