190 CHUECH OF ST. JUST-IN- PENWITH. 



And now to close what I hope has not been an altogether 

 wearisome paper. I have spoken to you this afternoon only of an 

 obscure western parish, and of a church of which probably nine 

 hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand of the people 

 of this country have never so much even as heard : and yet, 

 rightly considered, is not the history of each parish the history 

 of the church at large ? Have we not seen how each parish 

 was formerly self-supporting, and how as time went on great 

 central associations, either colleges or monasteries, were deemed 

 of more importance than the parishes, the large funds which 

 were in the middle ages diverted to them having since passed, 

 some into lay hands, and some to other church bodies, but 

 in either case leaving the parish itself shorn of its proper 

 income ? Again, the parish is now becoming every day more 

 and more important, and, if it were not for the cathedral 

 as a centre of the diocese, there would be great danger of 

 absolute disintegration. I said at the commencement that the 

 history of the church was a valuable illustration of the history of 

 the nation ; has not an almost exactly similar experience been that 

 of the state on its secular side ? — first freedom locally, then over 

 centralisation, then a revulsion to an opposite extreme, so that any 

 interference from the central government is by many members of 

 local authorities resented as an undue derogation from the liberty 

 of the people ? "We have seen, too, in this little parish the same 

 disputes over doctrines and tythes and other matters as have from 

 time to time troubled the whole church, disputes on which the 

 disputants have imagined the future of the world to hang, while 

 all the time the great body of the church has gone calmly on, 

 adapting itself, from age to age, to the varying circumstances of 

 the times, unaffected by these disputes and soon forgetting the 

 disputants, the great heart of the nation rising above the petty 

 details of ritual, and ignoring the angry attempts of fussy people 

 to force on it their solutions of problems which are insoluble. 

 The fabric of the church has from time to time much changed its 

 outward form, its methods and its rites have undergone great 

 alterations ; but these are but feeble efforts to express great 

 truths, which are the same yesterday as to-day, the same to-day 

 as yesterday. Is there no lesson in this for the angry disputants 

 of to-day, who in their stupid quibbling over the method of 

 expression, lose sight altogether of the message which they would 

 convey, losing sight of the forest behind the trees ? 



