OXFORD MOVEMENT.

Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20647, 9 September 1932, Page 6

OXFORD MOVEMENT.

THE PART OF THE LAITY. ADDRESS BY MR S. R. CUMING. The series of leetures in connexion with the Oxford Movement was continued last night when Mr S. K. Cuming addressed a fair-sized audience in the Jellicoe Hall on the subject of "The Oxford Movement and the Laity." - • The state of affairs in the Church before the beginning of the Movement was traced by Mr Cuming, who stated that things were so bad that in 1717 Bishop Butler declined the Archbishopric of Canterbury on the ground that it was "too late for him to support a falling Church." It was not strictly accurate 11 say that the Movemen began in 1833. It really began in the sixteenth century, when the English Church repudiated the Papacy, but claimed that its members were "as good Catholic children of God as in any realm Christened." But Keble's assize sermon marked very definitely the beginning of new life in the Church of England. No movement had reason to be prouder of its founders than the Oxford Movement, who were among the finest scholars and most rarely gifted spirits in England. They were, besides KebJ' T Hugh James Rose, William Palmer, Aidiur Perceval, and Eichard Hurrell Froude. The doctrines of the Movement were developed and popularised by '' Tracts for the Times." Great Laymen. A devoted son of the Oxford Movement was William Ewart Gladstone, who protested against Pusey's suspension, and continued unflinching in his loyalty to its principles. "My mind is quite made up.'' be wrote, "that if belief in the Eucharist as a reality is proscribed by law in the Church of England all I hold dear in life shall be given and devoted to oversetting and tearing in pieces such law, whatever consequences of whatever kind may follow." Gladstone aided the Movement in many ways, and was described '»y Lord Salisbury as "a great Christian.''

But the Movement owed even more to Lord Halifax, one of the founders and for over 50 years (18G8-.1919) the president of the English Church Union, the most influential AngloCathplic Society. He sacrificed a brilliant political career to lead the Movement, and last year, at the age of 01, he was re-elected _to the office which ho had graced for so long. He was declared Mr Cuming, by common consent the leading layman of the Anglican communion. His son, Lord Irwin, was appointed Vir'roy of India in 1920. Although he had won fame in Jhe world of politics, Lord Irwin had shared to the full tho religious views and enthusiasms of his father, and the Indians at once conceived a respect for a raro Englishman who refused to misuse the most sacred day of the Christian year with a public reception when he arrived to take up office on Good Friday. Lord Sankcy was also a supporter of the Movement.

The English Church Union. Founded in 1859 tho English Church Union aimed "to defend and maintain unimpaired the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England," which it claimed to bo an integral part of the whole Catholic Church of Christ. The Movoment was not seeking to foist upon an unwilling people the system of another Church. It was merely asking them to be loyal to tho system of their own Church. But the activities of tho union were not confined to ritual, and it had laboured with zeal to preserve tho Church's marriage laws and schools. Unlike tho Protestant societies, it had never persecuted. Among the many benefactors of the Movement, Mr Cuming mentioned j Charlotte Yonge, tho novelist, who for tho profits of her best-known book, "Tho Heir of Eedclyffe," provided Bishop Selwyn with the schooner Southorn Cross for the Melanesion Mission. • With the £2OOO she received from her next novel, "The Daisy Chain," she founded St. John's Missionary Collogo at Auckland. But Charlotte Yonge had gone out when bicycles had como in though soldiers in the Crimean trenches had wept over "The Heir of Eedclyffe." Marion Eebccca Hughes, who died in 1912, became the first professed sister in the Church of England 71 years before. When she died there were between 50 and CO different orders for women and over 2000 sisters —three times as many as there were at the time of the dissolution of the religious houses in the sixteenth century. The Church of England was indebted to the Oxford Movement for many orders and institutions, though these were not established without a struggle, and the first sisters who appeared in tho streets had their veils torn to shreds. But when Florence Nightingale went out to the Crimea with her 38 nurses, 14 of them were Anglican Sisters of Mercy. The Movement was making a strong appeal to youth, who did not suffer from the prejudices of their parents and grandparents. The Oxford Movement offered to the world a more vivid, more romantic, more adventurous, more living religion than any other. For thousands of people in all parts of the world to whom the barren negations of Protestantism were spiritual destitution, but to whom life in the Eoman Catholic Church would be impossible, it had provided a religion and a worship which satisfied completely all the needs of their intellectual, ecsthetic, doctrinal, and moral life. ; the conclusion of Mr Cuming's address the Eev. Charles Perry moved a vote of thanks. Dr. F. V. BevanBrown was in the chair.