CHURCH REVIVAL

Southland Times, Issue 22070, 18 July 1933, Page 7

CHURCH REVIVAL

OXFORD MOVEMENT CENTENARY OBSERVED IN ENGLAND HIGH MASS CELEBRATED (United Press Assn.—Telegraph Copyright.) London, July 16. England’s Anglo-Catholics prayed last night for fine weather for to-day’s High Mass at the White City Stadium, terminating the centenary celebrations of the Oxford Movement. Fifty thousand attended the largest service held in England, beginning at 11.30, dog racers leaving the vacated stadium twelve hours previously. Hymn numbers instead of betting figures were displayed on the totalisator board, and sunlight glittered on the gold, crimson, black and white robes of the Bishop of St. Albans, who presided over other prelates, priests, and choristers, and illuminated the gilded altar canopy and the Gospel and Epistle pulpits. Loud speakers amplified the prayers and chants. A huge kite bearing yellow streamers inscribed: “The Protestant Alliance declares High Mass illegal” floated over the stadium until the wind dropped. The police kept the alliance’s counterdemonstration constantly moving outside.

Rain fell in torrents at 11.50 and priests in drenched surplices stood bareheaded, only one opening an umbrella. A roar of thunder accompanied the Bishop of Colombo’s final blessing after the celebration of Mass in which four trumpeters heralded the elevation of the Host. Seven laymen in mackintoshes besides the priests were the only communicants. Mr J. Kensit, of the Protestant Truth Society, presided over a congregation of 500 at Spurgeon’s Tabernacle, repudiating the Oxford Movement as “a return to the cave of mediaeval superstition.” ORIGIN OF MOVEMENT SERMON BY ARCHBISHOP. REVITALIZING OF RELIGION. A special service in commemoration of the centenary of the great religious revival known as the Oxford Movement was held in St. Mary’s Cathedral, Auckland, last Thursday evening. Archbishop Averill, who preached the sermon, said the commemoration of the movement had suffered as much at the hands of its would-be friends as its avowed enemies. There was always a danger of misrepresentation and exaggeration when men discarded the historical sense in favour of narrow party bias. It was a libel upon the Oxford Movement to describe it as a deliberate attack upon the principles and work of the Reformation, or a movement with an intentional Romanizing tendency, just as it was a libel to say that the Evangelical Movement which preceded it was a failure and that the church was dead at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The real cause of the Oxford Movement was the growing attempt on the part of the State to usurp the rights of the Church and to regard it as an unimportant department of the State. Keble’s Assize sermon on “National Apostasy,” preached in St. Mary’s Church, Oxford, on July 14, 1833, was not really the beginning of the movement, but the match which served to explode the pent-up feelings of many faithful and loyal churchmen. The time was ripe for a revival of vital religion in the Church of England. The Oxford revival was not the promulgation of anything new, continued Archbishop Averill, but a renaissance—a return to the standard and teaching of the Prayer Book, which had been shamefully neglected. It did not profess to add anything to what already existed, but sought to rouse the Church of England to a realization of her noble heritage as an integral part of the Holy Catholic Church. The Church continuously strove to maintain her freedom and independence of foreign control, and by many Acts of Parliament, in addition to the great Magna Charta in the reign of King John, which proclaimed that the Church of England should be free, protested against foreign domination. The Reformation would have taken place if Henry VIII had never existed, for it was the logical outcome of the Anglican Church’s struggle to develop along the lines which she belived that God intended for her. The Church of England after the Reformation, which was the work of a century more than the mere stroke of a pen, still retained the apostolic ministry, the creeds and the sacraments, and gained the open Bible and the Prayer Book in a language understood by the people. Among the blessings which the Church of England owed to the Oxford Movement was the revival of the great Scriptual truth of the Church as the body of Christ; the revival of the Prayer Book ideal of the ministry, as contained in the preface to the Ordinal, thus moving bishops and clergy to magnify their office and carry out regularly and earnestly the duties of their sacred calling; the revival of the whole system of the Prayer Book, with a breaking away from the humdrum age of humdrum weekly services and occasional Communions; the emphasis that slovenliness was incompatible with reverence and reality in worship; the restoration of cathedrals and parish churches; the inspiration of art and literature; the fostering of community life; the encouragement of missionary work; and, best of all, the removal of the veil from the face of God himself. These were matters of earnest thanksgiving. Referring to Newman’s secession to the Roman Catholic Church, Archbishop Averill said his defection was no reflection upon his or his companions’ ideals. His mental and spiritual calibre was very different from that of Keble and Pusey. He lacked their clear vision and inexhaustible patience. It had been said that to the Oxford Movement Newman gave genius. Pusey learning and Keble character, and certainly the character of Keble was the real inspiration and mainstay of the movement.

“To say that there were no exaggerations in the days of the Oxford Movement and afterward would, of course, be absurd,” said his Grace. “There were men like Froude and Wilfrid Ward and Newman in his later days who undoubtedly had Romanizing tendencies, just as there are men to-day, but exaggeration does not detract. from the real purpose and ideals of the movement. The few disloyal Romanizers whose doings and sayings receive far more publicity and attention than they deserve cannot blind the eyes of men and women to the blessings which the whole Church owes to the movement we are commemorating.

“We are not true followers of the real Oxford revivalists if we attempt to minimize the position which the Church of England has held, and holds to-day, as a true exponent of the Catholic faith or seek openly or surreptitiously to revive the discarded excrescences of the Church of Rome," the speaker added. “If the Church of England is to use her great opportunity for reconciling a divided Christendom and restoring the broken Body of Christ, she

must be true to herself and her Gcdgiven position and tradition. “The greatest need of the Anglican communion is internal unity, the avoidance of narrow-mindedness and party spirit, and perhaps a little more of the Divine virtue of humility,” he concluded. “No section of the Church has a monopoly of the truth, but each emphasizes something which is lacking or is inadequately expressed in the teaching and standpoint of the other. If is only in the united body that the spirit of the Living Christ can effectively speak to-day.”

The centenary of the Oxford Movement was celebrated locally at St. John’s last evening, when a church service took place. The Revs. J. A. Lush, A. R. Wallace and J. Simpson, assisted by Messrs Eric and G. Digby Wilson, conducted the service, while the Rev. W. A. Curzon-Siggers. of Dunedin, delivered a most interesting address on the aims of the movement. Following the service an informal social function was held, there being present a representative gathering of clergy and laymen. Short addresses were delivered by Mr Lush and Mr Curzon-Siggers. Mr C. E. Watts, in his speech, said that if the movement tended to bring the people together as it had that night, it was well serving its purpose.