Transcribed from the 1870 W. H. Bartlett and Co. edition by David Price, email [email protected]

LAY HELP THE CHURCH’S
PRESENT NEED.

A PAPER READ AT ST. MARY’S SCHOOLS,

WEST BROMPTON,

ON THE EVENING OF NOVEMBER 17th, 1870.

BY WILLIAM BAIRD, M.A.

VICAR OF HOMERTON, MIDDLESEX.

PUBLISHED BY REQUEST.

LONDON:
W. H. BARTLETT AND CO.  186, FLEET STREET.

1870.

NOTICE.

This paper is printed in obedience to the wishes of Lord Lawrence and others, who heard it.  It was originally drawn up without any view to publication, and was read at more than one of the Conferences held in different parts of London under the auspices of the Diocesan Association of Lay-helpers.  The writer could not but yield to the urgent request of those who asked him to print the paper, but at the same time he does so with a full consciousness of its defective and fragmentary character.  Such as it is, he ventures to commend it to the charitable consideration of his fellow-churchmen, and trusts that it may, by God’s blessing, be a means of promoting the practical good at which the revived organization of Lay-help aims.

The Vicarage, Homerton.
         Nov. 1870.

THE NEED OF LAY HELP, AND HOW TO DRAW IT OUT.

It is needless for me to enlarge on the vast importance of the subject which we are gathered together to consider to-night, for that importance is on all hands confessed.  Differ as we may on other points, English Churchmen, Roman Catholics, and Protestant Dissenters feel equally that one of the great questions of our age is how to call out and to regulate Lay-help.  It may be that in this recognition of a common want we may dimly discern the fact that, if ever the scattered portions of the Church are to be united in one, it must be not only on the basis of the common profession of abstract truth, however valuable such profession may be, but rather on the basis of common work for Christ.  My object to-night, however, is not to set before you any mere speculations, but to put into shape some thoughts, which may be helpful to us in any work which we undertake for the glory of God and the good of His Church.

I believe you will find on reference to Ecclesiastical history that the most healthy periods of the Church’s life have been those, in which there has been the largest development of Lay activity.  The Apostolic Church was one great community of workers.  True love to Christ found its vent in active ministries of love towards the suffering members of His spiritual Body, and in increased earnestness in carrying the message of salvation to perishing souls.  Throughout the Apostolic age the link runs unbroken, “Epaphras our dear fellow-helper,” “the beloved Persis, who laboured much in the Lord,” “Euodias and Syntyche,” though not always of the same mind, yet striving to forget their differences in a common work.  “Clement and other fellow-workers whose names” were “in the Book of Life”—these and many another, whether ecclesiastic or lay-workers, whose names swell the goodly list of Apostolic greetings at the conclusion of each Epistle, show that the Early Church was a community of living workers striving to spread the faith of a living Lord, not only by words but by deeds.  So in succeeding ages, whenever the Church’s life