Edward Hoare

“ Without that element of truth there would be no power in the error. This principle is in perfect harmony with all we see around us. In everything there are certain proportions, and nothing can compensate for their loss. ”

“ And in our own peaceful and parochial work we must not disturb our people by needless changes, even though some of them may seem to ourselves to be improvements; and we must take good heed that, while all things are ordered as becometh the house of God, the great law of proportion is observed, and the minds of our young people not drawn off by the form and furniture of worship. I was deeply impressed not long ago by the importance of this principle in its bearing upon missions. In missions you have a great reality that fills the Scriptures. ”

“ As He is perfect in every detail, so is He perfect in the proportions of His attributes. Every attribute is in its place, and every attribute perfect; and all are so beautifully fitted together, that the highest desire of the heart thirsting for God is to come “to the perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.”
So it is with the faith, or God’s great plan of life, continued and carried out in His own boundless love, for the salvation of His people. Of course in this plan there are many parts,—incarnation, life, atonement, resurrection, mediation, etc. ”

“ Some, e.g., of us who are deeply interested in prophetic inquiry, may carry the subject too far, and become too much absorbed by an intense interest of the study; while other dear brethren have been so much impressed by our mistakes, that they think it wiser to neglect the subject altogether; and thus it comes to pass that the proportion of truth is missed by us both. ”

“ In art the painter may mix his colours in the most perfect combination; he may bring out each feature with all the power of a Rembrandt, but if the head is twice too large for the body, or the nose for the face, his beautiful painting becomes nothing better than a ridiculous caricature.
p. 4In nature God has fitted the parts of each tree in beautiful proportion. Each part—the root, the stem, the branch, the leaf,—does its work in perfect harmony. And many a beautiful tree bears nothing, simply because an ignorant gardener, by what he calls pruning, has disturbed the proportions of its parts. ”

“ No one denies for one moment that it was written by many authors, and that the fragments, as they are called, were written at intervals, extending on the whole over more than 1500 years. No one denies that in the several writings you discern the several minds and characters of the several writers. No one denies that the historical accuracy of one man, the poetic genius of another, the affectionate pastoral earnestness of a third, and the argumentative faculty of a fourth, are all employed, and all appear with undisguised individuality. ”

“ If men believe that, it is vain to argue with them. But this much we may safely conclude,—that if these be the only arguments that can be produced, the men who urged them must have been very hard up for an authority. Our conclusion therefore remains untouched, that the whole of the New Testament is occupied by the great realities of the Gospel of Christ; and that, so far as Scripture is concerned, there is not even a hint as to ritual. ”

“ It is impossible for twelve men to meet together and worship God decently and in order without a ritual of some kind or other. Nay, I would go further, and say it is impossible for any one, even alone, to pour out his heart before God without a certain amount of ritual or form. ”

“ There must be a certain ritual, or external action, in harmony with the spiritual or internal movements of the soul. But though you cannot have reality without ritual, you may have ritual without reality. You may have an elaborate form, notwithstanding the total absence of the weightier matters of the law. It becomes therefore a matter of deep interest for us to consider what is the relative position of ritual in the Christian system, and what place it occupies in sacred Scripture. ”

“ I am not arguing against men taking up particular subjects and becoming absorbed in them. I believe that if this were not done nothing great would be accomplished, for no one mind is big enough for the whole. ”

“ We want not merely to look at the completed system, but at all that God appointed to prepare the way for it, and then without reserve, and without preference, yield ourselves to the Divine teaching, and make it our earnest prayer that in all His proportions, and in all His perfections, we may be taught of God to exhibit Christ. ”

“ We may be perfectly sound upon each point, and able in the most satisfactory manner to prove each point from Scripture, but still while maintaining truth we may be exhibiting a partial view of truth: we may be presenting only certain colours of the spectrum, and failing to produce the perfect light; we may be playing p. 12only the bass notes, and so losing the harmony of our music.
If this be the case, we shall not be drawn together by an eager maintenance of our own particular subject, but by fixing our thoughts on the whole. ”

“ Again some subjects may cover a greater space in Scripture, and still be of less importance than other short passages which have been solemnly uttered as containing the very essentials of salvation. The broadest band in the prism is not the brightest, and the brightness of the one is quite as important as the breadth of the other. ”

“ There are some subjects in which our opinions are formed from historical reference to the practice of the early Church, such as Episcopal Government and infant baptism, and however important they may appear, they must clearly be put in a different category from those where we have the clear command of God, or the clear declaration that they concern the essentials of life eternal. ”

“ So that, taking into account the gifts to particular dioceses, as well as those to the general fund, the total contributed by the seven churches to foreign missions, through the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, amounted to £13 7s. And yet the incumbent of one or them (St. Andrew’s, Wells Street) stated in evidence before the Ritual Commission, that the cost of his choir alone was “about £1000 a year.” Is it not high time that men lay to heart the proportion to be observed between ritual and the reality of religion? ”

“ I am fully alive to our defects in organization, and I believe you will always find such defects amongst persons trained as we are to think for ourselves, and to act on our own responsibility; but I believe there is a vast amount of real loving Christian brotherhood p. 10amongst us, and I doubt whether in the whole world you would find five hundred thinking men more completely of one heart and one mind than that loving band of brethren who meet year after year in this hall, under the presidency of our venerable friend. ”

“ But our point is that there is no appearance of accident or confusion, but that all these various authors have been employed to bring out one perfect whole; that the historian, the poet, the biographer, the letter writer, and the logician, have all their exact place, and have all, by God’s inspiration, exactly filled it. What some men regard as a difficulty we regard as the wonder of the Book. We see many rays in the spectrum, but all are blended so as to give one perfect light, and when we think on p. ”

“ Is it not surely this,—that if we would keep to the proportions of truth we must not allow the thoughts to be led off by ritual, but must keep well in view the great realities of life and death, of forgiveness, of purification, new life, and everlasting salvation: the great things of the Gospel, the weighty matters revealed in the Word of God. Even when contending p. 16against innovation we must not allow the interest of the contest to draw our thoughts from great realities. ”