Henry Edward Manning

“ It has been our habit too long to look for help abroad when we ought to find it at home. It is strange and sad to see, with what unconsciousness of anything amiss, rich people and wealthy parishes, when they have a new church to build, or an old one to restore, or a school to form, or some such local, and almost personal duty to fulfil, begin by asking how much they can obtain from this or the other society, and by sending far and near for aids to relieve them of their own obligations. ”

“ We have a noble work before us, if we have but faith to set our hand to it. We are upon a manifest trial to see whether or no we have the heart to take up the gage which is thus cast down to us, and to charge ourselves with the Christian education and spiritual care of the people of England. Let us have faith in the divine character and commission of the Church, whose servants we are. How should other men have faith in her, if we have it not ourselves? ”

“ When any one talks to us of dangers and divisions, let the extension of our communion suffice to show, that what are mistaken for dangers and divisions, are chiefly the efforts of inward power necessary to all great actions and movements of the Church. I am firmly persuaded that the last three centuries have opened a new era, so to speak, in the history of Christendom; and that the basis of doctrine and discipline which has been vindicated by this branch of the Church Catholic is destined to be the basis of unity to the Church of the next ages. ”

“ It seems then, first, to be absolutely necessary that we should make the Church felt to be not a name, a paper system, a theory of hierarchical government, but a living, earnest, beneficent reality. The people with whom we have to do are a real and earnest people. The wants and cravings of their intellectual and spiritual natures are also real; they abhor forms without life, and usages without a meaning. ”

“ The clergy of England are the catechists of England; and this is the true basis of all national education in this country. Any scheme which thwarts or entangles the free exercise of the catechetical office of the Church is, so far, a pure evil; any scheme which excludes or slights it is shallow and feeble, and certain of defeat. Who can foretell what a work may be done in a generation by the united action of the whole English clergy acting as the catechists of the nation; what an order of light and purity may arise out of the darkness and corruption of our mines and factories ”

“ What men want is a reality which will solve their own perplexed being, guide their repentance, bring them into fellowship with Christ our Redeemer, console them in sorrow, stay them up in the season of temptation, in the hour of death, in the day of judgment. If we will but give such a Church to them, they will defend it by the earnest practical controversy of loving and obeying it. ”

“ If men will not worship at the same altar, is it to be thought they will entrust their children to the same religious education? Surely we should think less well of them if they would. Laxity is a thing worthy of no respect: rather it is worthy of all condemnation. When men are irreconcileably divided in the highest article of conscience and duty, a willingness to compromise in detail, or in the persons of their children, is no sign of good. It is a poor evidence of reality and earnestness ”

“ It is a waste of money to spend in building churches and schools the revenues that would maintain pastors and teachers. What can be more fallacious than to measure the spiritual condition of our population by the capacity of stone walls? What does the breadth of area in a parish church signify when the parish priest is inefficient or alone? What is needed first is a body of men devoted to Christ's service, who will penetrate into the destitute masses of our neglected people, and in gentleness, self-denial, and prayer, live and die for the poor and outcast of Christ's flock. ”

“ Points must be disputed or doubted, or at least cannot be self-evident, cannot be seen and felt in action and energy, if they need to be discussed and proved by syllogisms: and no syllogisms in the world will make people cling to a system which does not attest its mission by the powers and virtues which heal the spiritual wounds of mankind. Neither will any syllogism detach or estrange men from a system which they know and feel to be a source of healing and benediction to their inmost life. ”

“ It is framed in accordance with the universal nature of mankind; it is endowed with virtues of the Holy Ghost to heal all human ills; to counterwork the fall of the world in all its consequents and causes; its doctrine is a perfect harmony with the illuminated reason, being a reflection of the Eternal Truth; it is in universal sympathy with the whole being of mankind in all acts and sufferings of soul and body, being the channel and expression of the perfect sympathy of Him, "who for us men and for our salvation ... was made Man," and "learned obedience by the things that He suffered." ”

“ It is perfectly true that a middle class has existed among us for at least two centuries and a half; and that the same class has ever been the seat of an active spirit which, in times of excitement, has before now been found opposed to the Church. At this day the middle class has attained to a measure of wealth and numbers, and to a vigour of understanding and energy of character, unequalled in earlier times. But it is not penetrated by the pastoral ministry—as the upper class by kindred and association, and the lower by direct instruction and oversight. ”

“ Believing, then, that we are servants of a system divinely appointed to organize and unite mankind on the basis of truth, and in relations of charity and peace, we can have no doubt that it is precisely such a system as is most needed in the classes I have spoken of; and that, when it has scope to use its free persuasions to unity and truth, it will prevail. We may confidently expect, if no unforeseen antagonists arise to overthrow our public peace, that the Church is destined to redress the divisions, and to heal the sores of these kingdoms. ”

“ As a matter of political economy education is absolutely required to repress crime, and to imprint the great laws of immutable morality and of natural justice upon a people; and this, if the Church fail, a Government must do in mere self-defence. It is the duty of the civil powers, so long as they profess to maintain relations of amity and communion with the Church, to abstain carefully, in the course of legislation, from all acts which can, even by remote consequences, endanger the purity of its doctrine or discipline. ”

“ Most mischievous would be any measure which should throw back this reviving sense of duty; most pernicious to the very life of the Church, if we were again drawn off from our own energies and self-denying efforts, to rest upon grants from societies and from Parliament. The work of church-extension, as it is called, is a duty attaching locally to every lord of the soil, to every possessor of wealth, to every holder of land, to every employer of labour. ”

“ Now it is most certain that the outward relations and worldly circumstances of the Church of England have, within our memory, undergone extensive changes: and we have entered upon an earnest contest with conflicting sects and principles, in which formularies and systems on paper, our traditionary precedence and national character, the number of our people, and the public recognition of our clergy, will avail us little. These are not our weapons, but our positions; we have not to contend with them, but for them: they are points of vantage, but they must be defended ”

“ The moral arrear into which we are every year falling is a fearful thought. The kingdom of Satan tarries neither day nor night, confirming its sway of death over our perishing brethren. Every year will they become more impure, estranged, opposed. Let the Church enter upon the field of its spiritual warfare, in apostolic poverty, so it be with apostolic zeal. What she needs at this crisis of her trial is not acts of legislature, and grants of money, but living men, full of the Holy Ghost and of faith, wise in the truth, gentle in ruling, makers of peace ”

“ What a homestead of Christian peace may you make for yourselves, for the aged and poor, the sick and weary, the widowed and world-worn, in your Parish Church, and the sacred precincts which compass it about. ”

“ Of all things the least likely to win the hearts of such a people as the English is a church without the energies of charity and the cross. It is not by controversies, nor by sermons on disputed claims, but by love and self-denial, that we must expound the meaning of Christ's Gospel and the duty of visible unity. We must he the thing we preach, before they will believe us. ”

“ If we are ever again united, this is a pledge of a close and tenacious unity: a lax people must always be divided. Now the discussion of 1839 proved, once for all, that no system of education can be established in this country which is not based on religion, and presided over by the Church. And the discussion of this year has made equally clear that no measure fulfilling these two conditions will satisfy those that are in separation from our communion. The conclusion then is plain, that no combined system of education is practicable. ”

“ There can be no doubt, indeed, of the duty of a Christian legislature to apply the revenues of a Christian country to extend the knowledge of Christianity: that I conceive is an axiom. But it is a sound principle to obtain first from the existing ecclesiastical endowments, whether by re-adjustment or by better administration, an increase, if possible, of temporal means for the maintenance and extension of the Faith: in fact the Christian Church has, at all times, acted upon this principle. ”

“ But the Church of England is the Church of the English people. The millions of our countrymen are, by inheritance, our spiritual flock; and it is an inconsiderate and unreasonable expectation to think that all the manifold antagonist powers, and all the evil agencies of these latter days, now at work to detach our people from us, shall not succeed in a few, aye in many, instances. ”

“ But we are in no danger of mistaking the outward array for the inner life of the Church, of putting architectural exactness for the sacrifice of a devout spirit, and zeal about points of order for living fellowship with God and earnest toil for the elect's sake Christian art is a beautiful thing, and worthy of our attention; and great care in these lesser things pledges us to greater care for greater things. If we bestow so much diligence on the form, what ought we not to give to the life itself? ”

“ If education be essentially a religious "work, as it is at length fully acknowledged to be, it does not readily appear where the Church can find a tribunal upon earth to dispense with her obligations to educate her own children. If education be the parental office, guided by the pastoral ministry, I know of no authority that can release parents and pastors from their joint charge, and empower them to devolve their office upon any other agents, howsoever efficient or forward to undertake it. ”

“ We are short-sighted, and can only see just before us, and even that imperfectly. What we see in our day we believe to be unlike all that has been until now; that now is the crisis to which other times were but tame preludes. ”

“ If we would promote the education of children, we must ensure the religious instruction of their parents: in a word, if we would have schools, we must build churches. It is beginning at the wrong end to talk of schools for Manchester and Birmingham, until men that are dying day by day possess the means of salvation. Churches draw schools after them. One church in a populous town will soon surround itself with schools of all sorts. ”

“ The office of ruling and presiding over the flock is very different from the office of a parochial cure; the office of spiritual guide is very different from the office of teacher, and so on; and it will often happen that the most efficient parish-priest, and the most experienced spiritual director, may be but indifferently gifted with the peculiar class of abilities which is related to the management of schools; and the best manager of a system of education may. in like manner, be very scantily furnished with the powers and moral qualities needed for a cure of souls. ”

“ In a number of upwards of two hundred men, all cannot be alike; all will not have the same knowledge of their office, the same sense of duty, the same religious feeling for the House and worship of God. ”