Page:Place & Influence of Church Congresses.djvu/20

 working mankind—not the Church of England dissecting rubrics in Commission and Law Court, but joining in psalm and anthem, and united prayer, or listening to grave words of earnest teaching, or kneeling round the altar, with one heart—I fully believe that a blessing must attend. To its outward effect I can bear witness. It was not with discourtesy, or even indifference, but with marked respect and co-operative kindness, that hard men of business and Dissenting corporators received and even took their part in manifestations which must have seemed to them so strange as those of long processions of choirs and clergy and prelates gowned and surpliced and robed, chanting as they wended their way from trysting place to sanctuary. I know that these are but external matters; but I know also that it is as false a philosophy to underrate as to overvalue externals; and in the sense in which I wish for the moment to consider Church Congresses—that of a politic instrument in the sustentation of our Church among the foremost institutions of the realm—I consider that the evidence of such spectacles has a very decided significance.

Deeper feelings gather round these services; without them the Congress might degenerate into a battlefield of intellectual prowess. Sanctified as it is by the incense of prayer, and praise, and Sacrament, it becomes in a degree a season of spiritual refreshment This refreshment, I venture to say, does not lose in healthiness because it is, as it were, incidental, and combined with practical action. It would be plainly impossible to bring together so large a number from such distances for a simply spiritual gathering, and if the attempt were made, the resultant might be the feverish excitement of Revivalism. The Congress, with its special topics inviting discussion, is the corrective element. Far be it from me to deprecate the machinery of extraordinary occasions of unusual devotion, wisely conceived. I was, during the last autumn, myself present at such an occasion,