OXFORD MOVEMENT

Taranaki Daily News, 18 July 1933, Page 11

OXFORD MOVEMENT

CENTENARY SERVICE REVITALISING OF RELIGION. REAL PLACE OF THE CHURCH. A special service in commemoration of the centenary of the great religious revival known as the Oxford Movement wag held in St. Mary’s Cathedral, Auckland, on Thursday evening. It was attended by nearly all the Anglican clergy in Auckland. 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 Romanising ■ tendency, just an 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. ORIGIN OF THE MOVEMENT. 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 1, 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-pro-mulgation 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 fess to add anything to what already existed, but sought to rouse the Church of England to a realisation 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 lhe ; 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 believed 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 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 Scriptural 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; we emphasis that slovenliness was incompatiable with reverence and reality m 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 seccession 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 char- , acter of Keble was the real inspiration and mainstay of the movement. 1 “ROMANISING TENDENCIES.”. “To say that there were no exaggerations in the days of the Oxford Movement and afterward would, of course, be absurd,” said His “There-Were men like Froude and Wilfrid Ward .-nd Newman in his later days who undoubtedly had Romanising 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. Romanisers whose doings and sayings' receive far more publicity an attention than they deserve faimot hbnd 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 minimise 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. ‘lf the Church ,of Rigland is to use her great opportunity for ciling a divided Christendom and restoring the broken Body of must be true to herself and her God given position and tradition. “The greatest need of the Anglica communion is internal unity, the avoidance of narrow-mindedness and party St, and perhaps a little more of the Divine virtue of humility, ie . c ? eluded. “No section of the church has a monopoly of the truth, but each, emphasises something which is lacking o Stadequaldy m the intf and standpoint of the other., It X “ theunfed body ihal the of the living Christ cm effectively speak to-day.” ' .