degree, when the needs of the East-end and the poor transpontine parishes are more widely known.  The Twelve Days’ Mission brought us some help from educated laymen in suburban districts, and I can not only testify personally to the value of that help, but I am thankful to say, that in more than one case it has established a link which it would take a great power to sunder.  The real aim of our Association then is to put earnest laymen in the way of getting work by giving them, on their first arrival in London, introductions to clergymen in need of help.  It attempts no restraint on the parish priest.  It merely offers you the privilege of feeling that in your work you are at one with the chief pastor of your diocese, and that you have the comfort of knowing that he prays for and sanctions your work.  In a less degree, it is the same blessing which the clergy have from Episcopal supervision, and with you, as with us, if rightly valued, will act as a bond of union.

Before concluding, let me say that I believe this to be one of the most important ecclesiastical movements of modern times.  It is occupying the thoughts of some of the most distinguished clergymen and laymen of our day, and formed the subject of the prayer of the Archbishop of this province, when he lay upon what we then feared was the bed of death.  The next few years will probably see the question, whether we are to continue the National Church of this land, fought out in our legislature.  If we make good our claim, it will not be by the prestige of our historical position or by the associations of the past.  It will be by the living work of the present that we must elect to be tested, and if our laity realise their responsibility in time, I firmly believe that all will yet be well.  Remember, however, that our present proportion of lay-workers is miserably small, and that every lay-helper has need not only to work himself, but to be a kind of missionary to persuade others to work—a recruiting sergeant for the great army, which comes “to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty.”  Not only must we all, clergy and laity, work, but we must say that, God being our helper, we will not rest till every churchman, whatever his social position, feels that he has a responsibility, a work and a stake in our National Church.

Note.—I cannot resist calling the reader’s attention to the following words of my friend the Rev. W. D. Maclagan, in his essay in The Church and the Age (Murray).

“The Associations and Unions, Guilds and Confraternities, Sisterhoods and Brotherhoods, which are springing up every day, are surely not only testimonies to a great truth so long forgotten, that every member of the Body of Christ has its special powers and special duties, but also preparation for the recognition and realisation of another truth equally ignored, that the Church itself ought really to be one vast Association of Lay-helpers, one glorious Brotherhood and Sisterhood, combined in one, one great Confraternity of Faith, Hope, and Love, labouring together with Christ in the extension of His Kingdom.”

CHISWICK PRESS:—PRINTED BY WHITTINGHAM AND WILKINS,
TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE.

FOOTNOTES

[11a]  See “Sermons on the Poorer Classes of London, preached before the University of Oxford,” by Robert Gregory, M.A., Canon of St. Paul’s, and Vicar of St. Mary the Less, Lambeth.