A 11 - Conclusion

Ryder PLHV: 11 Conclusion of Priesthood of Laity

CONCLUSION “O laikoj anqrwpoj toij laikoij prostagmasin dedetai”

ST. CLEMENT OF ROME, Corinthians, xl.

Priesthood, accordingly, can and ought to be exercised in the so-called worldly daily calling, even in business, so that there are many kinds of works all in one congregation, for the furtherance of body and soul, even as the members of the body all serve one another.

LUTHER, quoted by Dr. Dorner, Hist, of Prot. Theol.y vol. i. p. 172.

XI CONCLUSION As the Father hath sent Me, even so send I you. ST. John 20:21. IN drawing to a close the present series of lectures on the Priesthood of the Laity, I desire to address myself more directly to the younger members of my audience. I see before me a number of students who will, I trust, take honoured and distinguished positions in society. The roll of honour of Trinity College, Dublin, contains the names of renowned men of letters, of eminent administrators, great thinkers, distinguished men of science, honoured statesmen, and of many who in less prominent ways have contributed nobly to the world’s work. I have no doubt that those present will uphold the honour of their beloved Alma Mater in similar ways. But from the point of view of the present lectures, what a reservoir of spiritual power may be found in such a band of students! Purification of university life; Students’Voluntary Movement; the source of missionary power! To you, the men of the future, I have a message for your mission. The motto I give you is the noble sentence of Clement of Rome, " The layman is bound by the layman’s ordinances (O laikoj anqrwpoj toij laikoij prostagmasin dedetai)." In the fullest Christian sense, you too are bound by the layman’s ordinances. Never forget that you too are God’s ministers. It is true that it is from the ranks of the laity that the clergy are called. It is true that the Christian home does more in the moulding of the true ministerial priest than any other human agency. It is true the laity react on the clergy. Like people, like priest. But I am taking the more spiritual view, that you share with us this priesthood. It is a fact that the clergy cannot discharge their spiritual functions aright without the laity. The people are every whit as necessary to corporate worship as the ministers (and that not merely as represented by him, or as listeners and lookers-on). Without your active co-operation the office and authority of the ministerial priesthood is a thing meaningless, inconsistent not only with the idea of a Church, but with the idea of Christianity. We have reason to be thankful that the Anglican Church has so plainly marked her sense of this truth in the Book of Common Prayer. It has been suggestively pointed out that the daily offices cannot properly be said without a congregation. This implies not that the clergy should give up daily services, but that the people should go to them. In the great service of all, the priesthood of the laity is emphasised with no uncertain sound. The service of Holy Communion not only may not, but cannot be celebrated without people as well as minister. The service is a service of responses. Mutual intercession is required: "The Lord be with you" is earnestly answered in the words, "And with thy spirit."

If you, my brethren of the laity, have a right to your part in the ministry of worship, with its corresponding obligation, you have a still more undoubted part in the ministry of conversion the apostolic office of evangelising all the world, both at home and abroad. You stand a priesthood to represent God to a heathen world and an unbelieving world, and make His holiness diffusive. You have the unconverted world on your heart to plead for it before God, and to work that God may be truly known. I do not suggest that it is everybody’s duty to give up their lives to definite social and religious work. For many people it might be a desertion of duty. The daily work of the world has to be kept going. The great majority of men and women are bound first to earn their own living, and then to serve those few whom God has put close to them in the world, "to make on the whole a family happier by their presence." Most of us are called by minding our own business (in a true and noble sense) to do the work of evangelising. "Show piety at home." A Christian life is the best argument for the truth of Christianity as a creed. It is the only argument that unconverted humanity will attend to. It may be that unconverted humanity is right. A Christian life lived in normal circumstances is more impressive and encouraging than one lived in special conditions. The genuine layman has an advantage over the professional clergyman and philanthropist. If your lot calls you to live in our great administered colonies or dependencies, live as true Christians; if at home as men of science or law, show God to man (cf. Romans 13:4). The magistrate may be God’s minister to men for good. The official ministers of God should teach the layman that he too is God’s minister but teach at the same time that he can serve God in any calling, that there is an intellectual service of the Church, of which there is a growing need, that he serves God truly who seeks to remove the hindrances that keep men from Christ. On the Bench of Magistrates, on County and Borough Councils, on Boards of Guardians, also as medical men, and as men of science, Christian gentlemen are needed to uphold justice, righteousness, and truth. He who will take pains to understand what we call social questions, and will act strongly, fearing only God, may be helping in a high degree to extend the Kingdom of Christ on earth.

It has often been said that the best missionaries in India are the high lay officials whose shining lives have been daily witness to their Christian faith. This is also true of life at home. To be a Christian in any genuine sense is to preach the Gospel, and that perhaps in the hardest and most difficult way. "Ye shall be witnesses unto Me." The apostolate of the laity may find, and if the spirit is there inevitably will find, directer methods. Mackay of Uganda, General Gordon, and many a graduate of this university, such as your own Pilkington, have in lay life proved their ministry to the full. The right attitude of mind towards our fellow creatures discovers opportunities of service. Service gives the unresented claim to speak a word in season. The true reason why the Christian laity is necessary, in order to fulfil the purpose of the Incarnation and to justify the existence of the Christian Church, is the equal value of every soul to God equal value and equal responsibility. A State may be wise if its government is wise, and brave if its soldiers are brave. It is different with righteousness. This must be everywhere or nowhere. It must exist by the co-operation of all classes and individuals. It is the relation of class to class, and man to man, and of the whole society to the Divine Principle immanent and transcendent. A society cannot be properly religious because part of it is religious. The true purpose of a Christian society is set forth by St. Paul: "That we may grow up in all things into Him, who is the head, even Christ; from whom all the body fitly framed and knit together through that which every joint supplieth, according to the working in due measure of each several part, maketh increase of the body unto the building up of itself in love." It has been said of the laity that, while they are quick to resent clerical dictation and encroachment, yet they have a tendency to let the clergy perform at least part of their duty for them. The great monasteries in the Middle Ages appointed poor priests for the discharge of their religious duties. The laity in many instances make the clergy their vicars. It is not safe to neglect one part of what claims the whole life. To omit the outward realisation of the communion of saints is to weaken its influence upon thought and action. People who are content to go to church by deputy may well be tempted to think they can depute other activities of the Christian life as well. If the clergy cannot rightly offer public worship to God on your behalf without you, much less can any ministry of theirs take the place of your private prayer and conscious communion with God, which is the spring and renewal of your spiritual life. Nothing can take the place of that. It is possible to be so busy with well-doing as not to do it well. You can be anxious and troubled about many things, and miss the one thing needful, the gracious presence of the Master. No man can deliver his brother, nor make agreement with God for him. We shall not be asked in that great day whether we have been priests or laymen for there will not be a different rule and measure for one and another but whether we have tried to mould our lives as disciples of Christ, and to be true brethren of all men. There will be a very stringent test of orthodoxy for those who are to be saved, but it will be this: whether we have grown to be like Him, when we shall see Him as He is. The outcome of true belief is right action. The test of acceptance or rejection will be the " Inasmuch as ye did it (or did it not) unto the least of My brethren (or sisters), ye have done it (or done it not) unto Me." The inwardness is that it is given in Christ’s name in love to God and to man through Him. The act of service is the outward form of the sacrament of a love in Christ and for Christ.

I have spoken of the judgment as future; but it is more probable and quite as true to think of it being pronounced on our lives, daily and hourly, in the present. We are asked now as we shall be asked then if we are doing our best to make the world Christian by being Christians ourselves, in the deep and not in the shallow sense. We are called to personal priesthood in baptism; the brook by the wayside is the refreshment of Holy Communion. The first sacramental gift must be met by conscious repentance and renovation; the second by rightly and duly, and with faith, receiving those holy mysteries. In public prayer, sincere faith must give voice to confession, and earnest ness to creed. May I remind my younger brethren of an advice given by a great Greek orator to his countrymen in a time of struggle and disappointment? His counsel to them was a constant repetition not to trust to mercenaries, but to go to the field as a nation. He said to them that it was the secret of success take the field in person (autouj strateuesqai). In spiritual matters I leave the same advice with you. You are enrolled soldiers of Christ. Take your full share in all the work of His Kingdom and act together as a body even the elect body. In our beloved Church of Ireland you have a noble heritage.

Many of the causes which led to the gradual separation of clergy and people were natural, and, in their working, justifiable. While in the earliest age a presbyter or deacon would have his trade to follow if he were free, as the Church grew towards maturity the increase of clerical responsibilities made it necessary to provide a special maintenance for the clergy; the clergy took a stated share of the monthly offerings of the faithful. The effect of this arrangement was that in turn all church officers came to stand on the footing claimed by St. Paul as permissible to an apostle: preaching the Gospel they lived by the Gospel. Yet even when this step was taken, and the line of division between cleric and layman became visible as a professional distinction, there was much in early church life which tended to preserve the conception of Christian unity. Within the church walls the differences of function brought the distinction between the orders into prominence; but in daily life it was less obvious. Moreover, the lines of hierarchical division were crossed by other distinctions. The possession of a spiritual gift, such as prophecy, might lend one layman more weight than he would have had as presbyter or deacon; another as confessor or martyr might wield an authority almost as great as that of a bishop; another as a scholar might be found preaching and teaching even where the higher clergy were present to sit under him. Further, for several centuries the laity retained their place in corporate functions of vital importance, such as the election of clergy and bishops, or conciliar deliberation. But little by little, causes that were rational combining with many that were perverse, the laity lost their ground. The clergy became more and more official and professional, and with the specialisation of clerical work came the lowering of the ideals of the laity. As bishops, priests, deacons, and the rest passed clean away from secular life into a sphere of their own, and the clerical profession, the clerical world, came into being, so little by little it began to be felt that the layman’s was a lower vocation and a lower responsibility, that he might wear a lighter cross and tread an easier path; and from this root sprang all that lamentable classification of Christian callings more deadly perhaps than any schism which put the monastic life highest of all, the clerical vocation next, and lowest that of the mere Christian, the mere layman. Shall we ever retrace and reverse the story of this miserable degeneration? Will the time ever come when to be baptized, confirmed, and a communicant is felt to be in itself the highest of all vocations? We feel and speak now as if the difference between man and priest, priest and layman, were a difference in kind, whereas that between Christian and non- Christian were only a difference in degree. Shall we ever come again to feel that to be in or out of the body of Christ is an alternative so tremendous that in comparison with it the difference between priest and layman dwindles almost into insignificance? If that apostolic conception ever returns, then I will dare to suggest that it may bring with it not only life to the dead bones, but also the return of one other feature of the apostolic age. It is the feeling that all who love the Lord in sincerity belong to the body of Christ. It has been said that we should think imperially. The definition of such an idea comprises the sense of duty, responsibility, sympathy, self-sacrifice. These ideas be long also to the empire of Christ. Were such ideas our rule in life we should realise more fully the idea of Christian unity, and hasten the day for which our Saviour prayed: "Neither for these only do I pray, but for them also that believe on Me through their word; that they may all be one; even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be in Us;... And the glory which Thou hast given Me I have given unto them; that they may be one, even as We are one; I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be perfected into one; that the world may know that Thou didst send Me, and lovedst them, even as Thou lovedst Me " (St. John 27:20-23).