Edward Stuart Talbot

“ And now, brethren, I say the same to you about the new Chapel. What you make its Services, that they are likely to remain. What generation of freshmen is to undertake the task of making hearty a Service which you should hand down to them lukewarm or silent? But, brethren, I am persuaded better things. I must indeed frankly say this much, that I think our responses have grown rather weaker lately; that you lean too much on the Choir; that there are too many mouths shut, too many whose look of indifference must make it harder for others (I find it so myself) to be earnest. ”

“ Such teaching, so radical, so thorough, so unmistakeable in its spirituality, sets us all, according to the characteristic power of truth, free. So long as it is held and remembered, we are free to take with safety those externals of worship which, without it, for fear of falling into bondage to them, it might be wise to leave. ”

“ The doctrine that God is a Spirit could be perfectly accepted when it came from the lips of God made man. The purest truth of spiritual worship could be endured when in the light of that Incarnation it was realized that the spiritual stands in no contrast, but in the most absolute accord with the real and the human. ”

“ And if we find that we have been beguiled, all or any of us, into prizing too highly external things, it may indeed be well to discipline ourselves by some abandonment of them; but the real cure lies in the other direction, in seeking a more real and living faith in the spiritual centre of worship. It is only when we are dull to the Divine Presence, that we are in danger of being too much occupied with its shrine.
I love, brethren, to ground Christian practice upon Christian principle. ”

“ I hope that we shall not be ashamed to have and to shew such feelings; nor allow the fashion of putting criticism before admiration, to rob us of a natural and honourable enthusiasm: the occasions for it which life brings are not so many that we can afford to waste them. ”

“ I am sure, as I do not doubt some of you know from experience, that such individual demonstrations of reverence cause difficulties in the way of temptation to self-consciousness to those who practise them; while in the common worship of a society they minister to division and distraction, and so tend to mar the unity which is the first condition of reverence. ”

“ A Service outwardly reverent in a building suitably arranged and adorned, and at the same time entirely congregational, is an almost unique peculiarity of England and its Church. How lamentably have we often fallen short in practice of this English ideal! ”

“ How seldom we enter a Church where the congregation respond as if they were not ashamed of their faith and of their prayers! It is in this that we have a great opportunity of setting a type and example, which may do good far beyond the walls of our own College. ”

“ As we part to-morrow from this little simple House of God in which we have worshipped, and some of us so often, there is not one of us who thinks seriously at all, but will have some thought of sorrow that he has not made more use of its Services and borne his part in them more devoutly, some wish to do better in the new and greater one. ”

“ And, brethren, this is the truth handed down to us with the signature of the Church of the Upper Chamber and of the Catacombs, that worship knows no dependence upon outward ceremonial nor local privilege, because the society which offers it is itself the temple in which God dwells, in which He is present Himself to prompt, Himself to offer, Himself to accept the sacrifice of its worship. ”

“ Maybe the enquiry will discover to some an inward indifference or rebellion towards that which is expressed by the words which a Service of Christian worship puts into their mouths; and they will find that their silence was an instinctive shrinking from the further sin of hypocrisy; that half unconsciously, their conscience kept them from a lie. If so, the reform must begin deeper. Man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart. No work could be more appropriate to the remainder of this holy season. ”

“ So long as we keep our faith in Christ, we are free to offer the very costly ointment of spikenard, without fear lest we should come to think that its price of three hundred pence, or its alabaster box, should be the reason which gives it any value in His eyes. ”

“ I believe we have, on the whole, done well in this Chapel: and now we have our promotion: we are called to harder work: it will take more effort to make a hearty congregational Service which will fill a building like that, than has been needed here. ”