FAMOUS SERMON

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 103, 25 January 1933, Page 8

FAMOUS SERMON

John Keble’s Centenary OXFORD MOVEMENT Event of 1833 Recalled (Reuter —Letter from London) The Primate and the Archbishop of Canterbury are putting themselves at the head of the observance of the centenary of John Keble’s famous sermon, which marked the beginning of the Oxford movement. This centenary falls this year. , Keble, the English poet and divine, is still remembered as the author or that collection of meditative lyrics called “The Christian Year, but it is probable that he is not so well known to-day as one of the great Tractanans, and the leader of the Anglican movement which now has expression in the English Church Union. John Keble was the son of a Gloucestershire vicar, and was born on April 25, 1792. ur ' ing a distinguished career at Oxford he was associated with Davison, V hatley, Arnold, Pusey, and Newman, who afterward became Cardinal Newman. Catholic Emancipation. Political spirit and Church feeling had been aroused at Oxford by the Catholic emancipation and the first Reform Bill. In this atmosphere Keble preached a sermon which marked the starting point o£ a great Church reviral which has afforded a precedent for similar movements since that time the one now being carried ou by university men is an example. Keble was appointed to preach the Summer Assize Sermon at Oxford on Sunday, July 14, 1833, and it was published under the title “National Apostasy.” It was based on what Keble ‘considered to be the suppression by Earl Grey’s reform ministry of the ten Irish bishoprics. Keble asserted the claim of the Church to a heavenly origin and divine prerogative. Leading spirits in Oxford were stimulated by Keble’s sermon to start the movement for revival of High Church principles and the ancient patristic theology, and thus advance the defence of the Church and raise the tone and standard of Christian life in England. Cardinal Newman wrote of this sermon: “I have ever considered it and kept the day as the start of the religious movement in 1833.” Tracts for the Tinies. Tracts were published for promulgation of the new doctrine and entitled ‘Tracts for the Times.” The authors and publishers were called “‘Tractarians,” and “Puseyism” became a label for the movement —but Newman always maintained that Keble was its leader. In 1841, when the publication of the tracts came to an abrupt end through the storm aroused by Newman’s “Tract No. 90,” Keble came forward to share the opprobrium because, he said, he saw the tract before publication ami approved of it. This storm brought Keble’s professorship of poetry at Oxford to a close. Keble was deeply affected by Newman’s secession to the Church of Rome in 1845, and his subsequent endeavours were in support of Pusey in conselling their followers and preventing them from following in the path of Newman while at the same time maintaining the rights of the Church against State encroachments. Keble died on March 29, 1866, at Bournemouth, where he had gone from Hursley vicarage in Hampshire, because of the delicate health of his wife.