Page:Place & Influence of Church Congresses.djvu/15

 appellations are generally taken as symbolical of antagonism—as the titles of rival parties—and I cannot deny the accuracy of the imputation. But they may in another light be regarded with truth and charity as names indicative, not of oppugnancy but of gradation. High Church and Low Church both presuppose a Church. The very word 'gradation' involves the metaphor of a staircase or ladder. So a High Churchman may be described as one who goes up the ladder as high as he can to get the best look-out, but not so high as to risk falling over; while a Low Churchman, equally desirous of a sufficient look-out, and equally fearful of the fall over, also attempts what he considers the utmost safe altitude, which, however, happens to be some rungs under that of his compeer. I do not offer this as a perfect metaphor, but it grows naturally out of the vocables in question, and serves to place the two parties in that amicable attitude which they deserve to assume relatively to Church Congresses. If any man be asked truthfully to recapitulate the most crying shortcomings of the Church in the Georgian age, he would, quite irrespective of party, reckon personal isolation among them. This has absolutely nothing to do with High or Low. The country vicar may have been basking in the afterglow of Non-juring divinity, or in the newer light of evangelical activity, but still he was for practical purposes fighting his own battle with only his own arm to help him. The Church movement had brought the two schools within each other's scope intellectually, and now the Church Congress enables them to meet personally. Their members are both of them Churchmen belonging to one Church, that Church being the Church of England. That Church accepts episcopal regimen; it is served by a threefold ministry set apart by the imposition of the Bishop's hands; it worships God in forms of antique significance; it renders glory, honour, and praise to the Sacraments of Christ, as among the chiefest of God's good gifts