CALL TO THE CLERGY

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 118, 14 November 1925, Page 7

CALL TO THE CLERGY

POOR SERMONS IN ENGLISH

CHURCH

ARCHBISHOP'S ADMONITION

LESS THOUGHTFUL PREACHING.

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

LONDON, 9th October.

In a sermon addressed to the Church Congress at Eastbourne, the Archbishop of Canterbury condemned the inadequacy of present-day services in the Church of England.

''ft is not too much to say that the congregation of an English parish church to-day is in a different field from that in which our fathers spoke or listened," said the Archbishop. "Beyond question the preacher's place in that field is ofteh very poorly filled. Complaints of the inadequacy of our sermons are rife, and the fact of the inadequacy is beyond dispute. Every clerical meeting harps on the fact of our sparser congregations. There are many reasons for that. Bicycles, motors, char-a-bancs contribute. So does golf. So do Sundny newspapers. But personally I put among first causes the fact that our average Church of England sermons have not kept pace with educational advance, or with the average man and woman's wider interest in all sorts of human knowledge and world affairs.

"The increased intelligence, thoughtfulness, and knowledge possessed by the average citizen, male and female, calls peremptorily for something better. It can easily be described aa intolerable that, we clergy, to whom responsibility is given, should leave it to the daily newspapers or the popular novelist lo give guidance and to suggest sturdy thought. lam glad they do suggest and supply it, but where are we who have been accredited to the duty? The taunt, whether sad or scornful, Is quite easy! But it is. not altogether fair. I have no doiabt at all that the average prfcaching to-day is less thoughtful, less painstaking than it was in our fathers' days. And for mending the lack we need more midnight oil, or, what is better, more forenoon.hours With closed doors, steady, if miscellaneous, study, and big notebooks. . ■ -

WHAT THE EDUCATED HEARER

, RESENTS.

''With all my soul I would urge upon those whose ministry is still young and plastic that they should turn not thoughts only but efforts that way. But I honestly think that the explanation of what we. now see and hear is partly a senae on the preachers' part of the vostness of the new fields of knowledge and of tho 'impossibility that a man who has many other duties can attain the level of knowledge on which he ought to be standing if he is to be a teacher at such a time as the present. Ho has a right to tlie sympathy of those whose studies, technical or other, have given them a platform of knowledge whereon their own fathers never stood. In old days the preacher as an educated man stood naturally on a higher level than his hearer* "That is so no longer, and the disheartened parish priest falls back naturally upon what seems to him the easier task of talking about the Gospel meisage or the Church's message in perhaps the very simplest words. If they are merely simple, without much bthind them, they may degenerate into the very thinness of thought which the educated hearer, not Unfairly, resents. But; let no man think that that need be so.

STIRRED BY FRIENDLY RIVALRY.

"When we speak to-day we have to speak to those who have been taught u> think, and who, as certainly as any generation which ever lived, are ready to listen wholeheartedly to the man who stands there, not because he has to say something, but because he has something to say. Somethihg which he has won at ft great price. I think some of the more thoughtful of our preachers are being Stirred by the friendly rivalry, both in England and Scotland, of ministerial brethren not of our Communion, wh6, as the results show, hare appreciated better than many among ourselves what is wanted, and what ia welcomed, and what will really help our British manhood—-yes, specially our manhood— in these anxious pOBt-war years." All this, said the Archbishop, forced upon them in overwhelming thought the paramount necessity, the clamant duty which rests upon all in Ehglish homes and schools and colleges, to see to it that the ministry was rightly manned. On the Bttbject of worship the Archbishop said that it might easily becOnie disproportionately astir . in English Church thought if they grew fussily absorbed in the minor details of services and their incidents. Details and particularities of manner and form were means to an end, and the end was life.

SOMETHING BETTER MUST BE

PAIRFOK.

I'Tlie search for religious truth, 1 that is acquiring a new force as the inadequacy of merely political schemes to enrich the life of man is more dearly perceived, breeds impatience with illdigested and ill-delivered discourses. But," says "The Times," "if something better is desired it must bo paid for. The clergy of to-day are not idle. They are busy about many things, and often bliow an admirable energy in social work and in the performance 6f ritual duties. This, it would seem, they are willing to give for the pittanco which is allotted to them. A cultivated and an intellectual priesthood requires leisure, a More spacious life, and many books. If it is to be recovered, the means for its recovery must be produced by those Who demand it. The ministry will never be rightly manned till the lajr people show, in the only really convincing way, their sense of its importance to the age in which we live."

A CHURCH TRADITION.

The "Daily Chronicle" considers that the Archbishop's complaint BUggests that one Anglican tradition is weakening. "Churchmen used to be rather proud of the' fact that in their services the sermon was of less account than among the Nonconformists. This feeling has not died out, and the Archbishop will probably find that some good churchmen aro entirely out of sympathy with his plea for stronger preaching. )But thnt by the way, though it does explain to some extent why the Church has not risen to the height of her opportunity in the pulpit. If ri prime test of ihe parson's efficiency is to be his quality as a preacher, that must be kept in miml before ordination. It is no use complaining that the 'clergy arc ineffective in the pulpit if sufficient care is not taken to make sure that young men called to the vocation are intellectually and .temperamentally equipped for their gvealest function,"

85, Fleet atteet. ,