From The Works of the Rt. Rev. Charles C. Grafton
(Volume 8),
edited by B. Talbot Rogers, New York: Longmans, Green, 1914, pp. 397-408
SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH
Be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh
you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear. I.
Pet. III: 15.
I
THE Christian religion is a reasonable religion. St.
Paul desired that his converts should be able to give to others a reason for
the Faith that was in them. If it was a duty then, it is more necessary now,
when Christians are unfortunately so divided. The divisions among Christians must be painful to our
Lord, who prayed that His followers might be one. For the original causes of
division, we who are living are not responsible. We are responsible, however,
for aggravating them, and not seeking after union. One great cause of our mutual estrangement is our
ignorance of one another's teaching. Nothing will so do away with prejudice and
develop charity as a true understanding of each other. Each Christian body
emphasizes some neglected truth and each has suffered some losses. It is now an especial duty that we
all strive to learn our own defects and others' goodness and to learn of one
another and be able to give an intelligent reason for the faith that is in us.
II
The Anglican or
Episcopal Church rests for its faith on Jesus Christ. What He was and said and did
is the revelation of God to man. He is not to us a mere historical person, who
lived 1900 years ago, but a living person dwelling in His Church. For He
promised not only to send the Holy Ghost, but Himself to be with us, and to abide in His Church to the
end of the world. Unlike all other religious teachers, He not only abides with
us, but gives Himself to us. Thus He promised to come unto us and make His
abode with us. It is the personal knowledge of an indwelling
Christ that is the basis of our Faith.
We not only believe in Him, but surrendering
ourselves to Him, come to know Him. Our Church brings out thus as a basis of
Faith the present and indwelling Christ.
III
How are we to know what He taught and would have us believe? There was a theory, amongst
non-Catholics, that each person was to study the Bible for himself, and believe
what he there discovered. But printing on paper was not discovered until the
fifteenth century, and the Bible could not have been generally in the hands of the people. This rule
also is shown by experience not to have worked very well, as men with the best
intentions and scholarship have become divided as to the meaning of Holy
Scripture. It is not thus the rule given by Christ. His rule was, "Hear the Church." The Church
teaches her children. The Bible is seen by them to corroborate her teaching.
IV
It is a safe
rule if we desire to know what Christ taught, to listen to the teaching of His
Church in which He dwells by His Spirit, and through which He speaks. We all know that on the
day of Pentecost, the Holy Ghost came down and dwelt in the Church. He came not
only on the Apostles, but on the whole body of Christians. It is thus not to
the Ministry alone we are to look as our sole guide and teacher, but to the whole body of the
Church, clergy and laity. It is what the whole Church has from the beginning
and throughout the ages, and to-day agrees in; what in other words the general
Christian consciousness declares to be true, and to be Christian teaching, and
has experimentally found to be so, -that is our safe guide. For it would be impossible to
believe in our Lord as a divine Teacher, and believe that He had so imperfectly
taught, or not guided His Church that it had permanently and wholly fallen into
error.
V
Do we ask where we may find the record of this teaching?
The practical answer is, it is to be found in the universally accepted Creeds,
that is, the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds, and set forth in the Sacraments which
witness to the Faith, and
bring its grace to us. What is thus certified to us by the whole Church is
Catholic Doctrine. We can so rest upon it, assured that it is infallible truth.
At the same time, what is not so witnessed and declared to be of the essential
faith, we may regard as matters of pious private opinion,
about which Christians may lawfully differ.
It is upon this broad, strong position the Anglican
Church stands and authoritatively teaches. She is at once Catholic and also
liberal.
VI
Also in the Anglican Church we find a harmonious combination of authority
and reason. They are not found, as is sometimes supposed, to be contrary one to
the other. Our Church teaches us with authority, but with maternal authority.
She is our Mother. She does not come to us with a big stick, and say: "You've got to believe
this, because I say so, or you'll be damned!" but she shows to us the
reasonableness of the truth she has been authorized to transmit. She teaches as
our Blessed Lord taught. She tries to put her spiritual children in the right relation to the Faith. She
enables them through grace to see the Truth for themselves, and so embracing it
through their own reason and will, it becomes their own possession and a joy to
their hearts.
VII
Another characteristic
of the Anglican Church is that its authoritative teaching
does not conflict with the discoveries of modern science. The Calvinistic and
Puritan and Protestant systems of theology had so taught the mechanical
inspiration of Holy Scripture, as to lay portions of it open to attack
from a scientific view-point. A wave of infidelity passed over the country in
the last century, aided by the eloquence of Colonel Ingersoll. The theological
systems of the Protestant sects crumbled under the attack. Our Church does not place herself in opposition to science. The revelation
that God makes to' us through the natural and material world is one with the
moral revelation He makes to the Church through the Bible. We cannot here, in
our limited space, mention the many misunderstandings of Holy Scripture which an ultra-Protestantism put
upon it, but for instance the Bible does not say that the sun and moon stood
still at the prayer of Joshua. It is not in the Bible, but in the book of
Warsongs where the poet is indulging his Homeric fancy. The fact was that Joshua, wanting to make a
night attack, desired and prayed that the daylight might be delayed. His prayer
was answered by the coming up of a storm. The poet magnified this into his
making the sun and moon stand still. The possibility of Jonah being swallowed by a large fish has been
proved by the finding of fishes sixty feet long in the Mediterranean,
having a sack in their jaws, where a man might lie in a state of coma, and
remain some days alive.
The Bible again does not state that the world was
made in six days of twenty-four hours each. For the sun and moon are said to
appear on the fourth day. Consequently the preceding days were not those of
twenty-four hours' duration.
The world was progressively formed, and was probably
millions of years in its development. The discovery of the
progressive way in which the world developed, and which is called evolution,
only shows the progressive method of its development under the guidance of
Almighty wisdom and power. Our Church has made no error, as Rome
has, by the condemnation of Galileo, who discovered the diurnal revolution of
the World. She welcomes all scientific research in the department of material
things, or in the construction of the written Word.
VIII
Again, the
Anglican Church preserves, as no
other body, the rights of both clergy and laity. She believes that the laity
are sharers in the priesthood, royalty, and prophetical power of Christ.
The laity have thus a choice for their vestries and
officers in the selection of their pastors. The laity and clergy assemble yearly together in
Diocesan Council, and pass their own canons, regulating the government and
discipline of the Diocese. The clergy and laity can vote separately, and thus
have a veto power on each other. The Bishop is not appointed, as
in the Romish Church, by a foreign ecclesiastic, but elected by the clergy and
laity of their own Diocese. The Bishop cannot govern autocratically, but must
govern along with the Council of Advice elected by the clergy and laity. If we examine the government, we see the Church is not thus
under an absolute ecclesiastical papal monarch, but has her own free
government, in which the rights of the clergy and laity and bishops are
preserved. She combines in herself the advantages of the Congregational, Presbyterian, and Episcopal systems, and the
latter, thus modified, has come down to us from Apostolic times.
IX
The Church, in
the administration of her discipline, seeks to train souls in sanctity by the
exercise of their own consciences. She does not treat them as children in a school, giving them
laws, which they must under ecclesiastical compulsion obey. She instructs her
children in great moral principles, leaving it to them to apply them in their
own individual lives. In other words, she trusts them. She does not say, "You must not go to
the theater, or play cards, or dance, or go to social entertainments." She
leaves these matters to their individual consciences. "Whatever," she
teaches, "is found to come in between the soul and God, and hinder union between the. two is to be avoided," but
each person is to be judge for himself, and refrain from judging others. Thus
the conscience and the will are individually trained, as being, not under the
law, but under grace. In like manner, the Church does not put her
ban upon secret societies. She trusts her children, and leaves them to act on
their own responsibility. She does not condemn, i.e., the Free Masons, or like
Associations, nor does she interfere in any way with her members' politics. She believes that the Church and State should be kept apart,
and a free American citizen should not be dictated to by any religious body how
to vote. If this were the case, the whole country might come under the
influence, silently exerted, of a foreign power.
The Church believes also in a free system of education,
and would have men and women so trained intellectually as to be able to
investigate all matters, including religion, for themselves. She believes that
the welfare of republican institutions depends upon a free and educated citizenship.
X
Again: our Church offers her Eucharistic worship in the
common tongue. This was the scriptural and ancient method. It might be well
enough in Western Europe at the time when Latin was a
common language, to have it in Latin, but unquestionably it is better now to have it in a
language which people can understand and follow, and thus make their worship a
united one.
We have then the Mass, as it is commonly called, in
English. The people do not say their own private prayers, but unite with the Priest in a common offering to
Almighty God. Our Church acts thus like a wise mother. True to her ancient
heritage, she preserves the ancient practice of the first thousand years, and
gives the Blessed Sacrament to the laity in both kinds.
The argument in opposition to this practice is that
it exposes the Blessed Sacrament to irreverence, but our answer is that we may
safely trust our Lord's own direction, "Drink ye all of it."
The sittings in our church are free to all, rich and
poor alike. The Church makes no distinction before her Altars. She lays no tax
on her people for the receiving of any of the Sacraments. She demands no
Peter's Pence to support the Pope in the dignity and state of a temporal king, and seeing that the Italian
Government offers to him $650,000 a year, if he will take it, there seems no
necessity for it.
Our Church, believing that Matrimony is a holy
estate, and a means of grace, does not deprive the clergy of it. It is the high moral standard, as well as
scholarship that is to be found among our clergy that has given confidence to
the laity, along with loyalty to their priests.
XI
Again; it is in
no spirit of boasting that we may point to the practical working of the
Church's system.
The Church has ever been on the side of human rights
and projects for the uplift of humanity. It may be remembered that the great
English Magna Charta, which stands as the basis of our civil and religious
liberties, was signed by English churchmen,
with Archbishop Stephen Langton their leader. King John in his wickedness had
acknowledged that he held England
from the Pope, and the Pope upheld him, and condemned our Archbishop. Our
American Declaration of Independence was signed largely by churchmen, with George Washington at their head.
To-day during the strife between labor and capital, our English Bishops have
frequently been called to act as arbitrators. In the struggle between capital
and labor, the American
Church
has a society, of which I am one of the Vice-Presidents, for the
protection of labor's rights. Capital, we all admit, has its rights as well as
duties, but the rule which should govern the relation between capital and labor
is the Golden Rule. Our Church tries to impress on all their duties to a common Father, and their
unity in the Brotherhood of Man.
XII
Lastly the
Church trains souls in sanctity, and points them to the way of perfection. With
a Mother's tender care, she takes the little ones up in her arms, even as Christ did, and blesses them with Holy Baptism. Just at
the time when temptations begin to invade the youthful soul, she comes with the
gift of the Holy Ghost in Confirmation. She does not leave the young to wander
as they will without her care, hoping that in some way they may be converted, but she trains them
up as baptized children of the Lord. She comes to the adults who have learned
to feel their weakness or failure or sins with the absolving grace of the
Precious Blood. She comforts and transforms souls growing in grace with the Blessed Body and Blood given
in the Holy Eucharist. She bestows her blessing on the holy married estate, and
when souls are departing, comforts them with the Viaticum, and Holy Unction.
She brings thus not merely truth, but help and power and grace to her children, and, to those who
are so called, points to a higher state of perfection as found in the Religious
Life.
In her worship, she has preserved the ancient
scriptural ceremonial. She adorns her Altars with lights, symbolizing Christ as the Light of the World, uses incense as the
symbol of prayer, and the application of Christ's merits to individual souls,
clothes her priests in vestments which mark the Church's continuity from
Apostolic times, and doing all things decently and in order, offers all in a dignified and devotional
service.
Her ritual is not, as is often mistakenly supposed,
taken from the Roman Church. We do not in any way seek to imitate her. All that
we have and use is our legitimate heritage. All these things belong to us as part of the Holy Catholic Church. We use
them for the glory of God, and because they are our own.
These are some of the characteristics which endear
the Anglican Church to her members. The more they know her, the more they love
her, and that love, generated by Divine Grace, goes out to all who
call themselves Christians. She rejoices in the zeal and devotion found in
Roman Catholics, and with them, loves and practices all that is Catholic. She
believes all the baptized to be members of the
Church of
Christ,
and loving them in Christ, prays for their full enlightenment. She labors for
peace, and prays, and waits the full accomplishment of our Lord's prayer, that
all Christians, "may be one."
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