THE OXFORD MOVEMENT.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 12 July 1933, Page 6

THE OXFORD MOVEMENT.

CENTENARY CELEBRATION THIS WEEK. The cable news this week refers to the commencement in England .of the celebration of the centenary of • the Oxford Movement, that remarkable revival of religious fervour which a hundred years ago infused the Church of England with new enthusiasms and led it into other channels than Evangelicalism. A committee appointed by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York d::ew up the programme of celebrations, the object being to unite all members of the Church of England in the commemoration, and a strong hope is expressed that the outcome will be a better understanding and greater unity among men of seemingly divergent views, but with one loyalty, in the Church of England. The centenary was kept on Sunday, July 9th, and those who made their Communion on that day were asked to pray-for the peace and unity of the Church. At home, the Archbishop of Canterbury was to preach in his cathedral,the Archbishop of York at Westminster Abbey. On Friday, July 14th, the actual centenary of Keble's famous Assize sermon at Oxford, which is regarded by many as the actual beginning of the movemerf, the celebrations naturally centre in Oxford itself. The Holy Communion is to be celebrated in the quadrangle of the college, built and endowed in memory of John Keble. This is to be followed by a visit to Dr. Pusey's tomb in Christ Church, and by a sermon in the University Church, St. Mary's. The official programme ends with a commemoration at Winchester Cathedral, and a visit to Keble's grave at Hursley. The Church Choniele, writing on the Bubjeef, says: —''We in New Zealand have a share in the centenary, for it •was the spirit of the movement that sent Selwyn to New Zealand, where he "brought its influence to bear on the life of the church of missionary days. He left England for his far-distant and far-flung diocese while the movement was in full work and before it was shocked by the secession, of Newman and others, a secession that many thought it would not survive, but it did survive, for .the Holy Spirit of God was in it. We are not concerned with its later developments; we are not prepared to say that the originators of the movement would have gone all the way with some of their would-be followers; what we are concerned with at this point is the gifts that they have given to us. "'The Oxford Movement had as its 'background the Evangelical Revival, and it had also the teaching of the Caroline school, and it combined what was best in both. It revitalised the Church that needed new life and set her out upon a path of one thought of service. In its origin it was not concerned, jwith ceremonial tame when the movement passed with

its teaching out of Oxford and touched the life of those who needed a setting for its teaching. It was -concerned rather with a quickened appreciation of worship—and corporate worship, dignified and real. It was concerned with the nature of the worshippers and the preparation for worship by selfdiscipline and the constant use of all fhat leads to worship, the Church's tioly days and fasts. It strove and strove with all its power for the banishment of the spirit of lethargy. This' the leaders say could only be brought about by the quickening of the sense of membership of the Holy Catholic Church, of which the Church of England- was an integral part. She had ever from the beginning striven for this, and for this she had struggled from the beginning right through the [Reformation. It was being" lost sight of and the movement brought it into living reality again. Their books of devotion, their hymns, their poetry, notably Keble's 'The Christian Year,' are a heritage for all time. They appealed to the past; they appealed to authority, to the conciliar decisions of the undivided Church —and they emphasised the doctrine of the Apostolical Succession.

"Two more points stand out. In season and out of season did they insist on the spiritual power of the Holy Sacraments. Sacramental life was indeed running at a low ebb. Tfte communicants at a great festival in St. Paul's Cathedral could be counted on a man's fingers, and the Holy Eucharist was celebrated as a kind of appendix to Matins in one of the smaller chapels. By word and by example they changed men's views of the value of corporate sacramental life. Further, in their teaching of the Incarnation they emphasised the implications of that teaching, the right of every man to have the care of the Church for his body as well as for his soul. They fought with earnestness against the Latitudinarianisms that threatened to 'reduce' the Christian heritage of belief and of life. "In 1842—only nine years after the Assize Sermon —Edward Denison, Bishop of Salisbury, told his clergy how much had been contributed already:— 'They have been the chief instruments in reviving the study of sound theology in an unlearned age. They have raised the standard of the ministerial character by teaching, men to trace the commissions of the clergy, through the Apostles, ; up to our Blessed Lord Himself, and to see in this the sure Avarrant for their ,work. They have impressed upon the clergy the obligations of walking orderly, according to the regulations of the Church in which they are commissioned to minister. They have successfully vindicated, the important truth of the nature and constitution of the Church from the vagae and lax no-