• Biographical booklet
• Altar Card
• Golden Jubilee Book

• Rome the Goal of the Oxford Movement
• Loyalty to the Church of England
• The Cart of Abinadab
• Benediction in the Church of England
• Canterbury and York: Two Provinces of Rome

• Meditations on the Spiritual Life
• The Sacrament of Orders
• What is Catholic Authority?
• The Holy Ghost the Source of Infallibility
• The Popes and The Bible
• The Bishops of London and Benediction

General Introduction.

We think of the Oxford writers with profound gratitude to Almighty God. They were His gift to England and to the Church. While we recognise the personal gifts, intellectual and moral, of that brilliant galaxy of theological genius, we are even more alive to the Goodness of God for that Movement of the Holy Ghost, which in a hundred years has changed the religion of England from self-satisfied Protestantism to at least a colourable imitation of Catholicism, and which has given, us many sons and daughters at home and in the Colonies who are as good Catholics as can be found anywhere in Catholic Christendom. The most cursory survey of the past hundred years forces to our lips an acknowledgment of God's work and we say, "What hath God wrought?"

Looking around us at the present time our view is liable to be obscured by those "Evils" which force themselves upon our attention. They neither diminish our gratitude nor impair our confidence, nor damp our ardour.

We see the Modernists with the trappings of Catholicism denying that Jesus is God : sidetracking His Godhead or making re-statements which short-circuit the Verities of Faith, practising asceticism without a basis of Faith, making a show of Self-denial as a cloak for the denial of the Truth : following the doctrines and commandments of men : making a show of wisdom in Will-Worship, and Humility, and neglecting the body, and carrying out silly practices which have not even the honour of satisfying the flesh, worshipping the false god named Science.

With them go the inventors of New Theories to justify separation from Rome : plotting by Prayer Book Revision to put Catholics on the wrong side of The Act of Uniformity, seeking by legislation to justify their own infractions of the Law : and making Catholics rebels by rubrics.

Then there is the revival of Erastianism : teaching that Membership in the Church of England has a basis different from that of Holy Baptism, the Divinely Given means of entrance : Making the Citizenship in the Empire the all-sufficient cause of Membership in the Church, making" Parliament and its creation, The Assembly, the Method of Government and denying that Our Lord settled, not only the doctrine, but also the Form of Government of His Very Own Church.

So that multitudes are led into error by regarding the Head of the State, whether King or President, as the Head of the Church, not holding the Godmade Head under Whom all Government belongs.

These things do not affright us, for if God be with us who can be against us-but God's enemies? and of them one of us shall chase a thousand, and they shall all perish at the Presence of God. "Arise, O God, and let Thine enemies be scattered. Let them also that hate Him flee before Him."

Such difficulties are. allowed by God to develop empowers against evil : and as the bird makes progress by over-coming the resistance of the air, so we go forward by gaining the support of those whose hearts God turns.

This is the spirit in which we approach our consideration of the Oxford Movement. It is a Spirit of thankfulness for the past, of courage for the future, and confidence in God in the present. The God Who has brought us so far can carry us ail the. way to our goal. We must have a stout heart and a mind fixed on God.

So shall we go forward in a steady Movement back to our God-made Head.

I.- The Oxford Movement is not a Religion.

There are signs of a tendency to treat the Oxford Movement as a Religion. Where this is being-done the Professors of this New Religion resent anything which goes beyond the Standard of Truth, Doctrine, Ritual, or even of ascetic practice which was attained by Pusey and Keble. According to them the Church of England is to be regarded as a sort of Middle Way between Rome and Geneva; a Compromise which retains Catholics and Protestants in the same Establishment. By the Oxford Stereotypers our Religion is spoken of as a School of Thought, or as something of a certain colour as though it were a kind of politic, of no binding power, but such as every man is free to accept or reject at will. They speak as though Protestants and Modernists could be looked upon .as Red, Catholics as White, Agnostics as Yellow, and Church of England as Blue; leaving various shades of green for the changing hues of the chameleons who have no real religion but their own changing views and their own sweet will.

Many who are steeped in the Tracts for the Times have no conception of Catholic Truth beyond the Truth as they think it was held by Pusey and Keble. They are Stereotypers. They want to stay the Movement. They would crystalize Truth at a point chosen by themselves. Some stop short at Confession. Others are content if they have Benediction. Some will not accept Transubstantiation. They would crystalise Words used by the Tractarians although the more Catholic words are now more generally used.

They would prefer Comprecation of Saints to Invocation of Saints, and the Intermediate State rather than Purgatory. They shy at the words Mother of God : while they prate of the danger of Mariolatry. They prefer the discussion of Truth to the firm holding- of it. They want to crystalise half-truths, to stereotype a Movement, so as to make it a Religion. What they really do is to make it a stagnant pond in which they stand up to their waists.

To all this it is to be said in reply that the Whole Catholic Church has already done all the stereotyping- that is needed. .She alone can crystalize Truth in definitions. The Oxford Men did not claim to make a New Religion. They set a Movement going-, and a Movement must move. 'It is a progress from point to point. They themselves moved towards the more Catholic terms and definitions. For us the tact that it is still a Movement implies that we have not yet attained. There is a goal to be sought, a terminus ahead. We seek a City.

We are movers, although, and even because, we have with us no fixed Catholic Truth. We are fundamentalists inasmuch as we are like the man who builds his house of Truth on the Rock. The rains descend, the winds blow, the floods come, and the elements beat on that house and it does not fall because it is founded on the Rock. The gibe of being-Fundamentalists falls without effect on those who are on the Foundation of Christ and the Catholic Church. The only difference between us and our Modernist critics is that then house is built upon the shifting- sands of the scientific opinion of the day, and we know that all science will vanish away. Truth is as often in the extremes as in the middle. There may be a Via Media in Morals, but the Church is not a Via Media. It is a City at Unity in itself. It is the Body of Christ filled by the Holy Ghost. It is a Living- Thing-. Christ is no Via Media. He is the One Way.

So that for us this is a Centenary of a Movement, not the Centenary of a Discovery or of a Revival' of a Religion. We are still Moving-. And we must move till we gain Catholic Unity. Founded on the Rock as we are we maintain our union with Christ. But we are conscious that we are out of the Visible Unity of the Church. Towards the Mark of Unity we press. It is the Mark of our high calling- in Christ Jesus Our Lord. We would grow up into the fullness of the stature of Christ : and this is only possible in the World-wide Unity of the Catholic Church.

II.-What is the Oxford Movement in Substance ?

It was a revival in England of the ancient Faith : it was a return to Catholic Truth : it was a recall of the Church of England to her true nature as Two Provinces of the Catholic Church. In the writings of Newman, and especially of Pusey, there is no note struck so often and so firmly as that of Unity. Pusey, in his Sermons, in his Eirenicon, and in his translation of St. Cyril, harps on Our Lord's words : That they may be one even as we are one.''

Distinctions must be made among' the Tractarians in regard to their views on the Church. There were some who had always been Catholics. They always believed in the Church. Others had been brought up as Protestants and the Church was for them a Discovery. In the latter category we must place Newman, Ward, Faber, Manning" and the Wilberforces. They "went over." These men were disoverers of the Catholic Faith. They were not at first conscious of possessing the Church. Of those who already had the Faith, and who already believed in the Church, we-n-lay name John and Thomas Keble, Hugh James Rose, Hurrell Froude, Dr. Pusey, and Isaac Williams. They stuck where God put them, in the Church of England. The Discoverers sought Unity by Individual Submission. The. Catholics sought the Unity of the Whole Body of Christians in England. We are the Successors of The Real Oxford Movers. We seek Corporate Unity. We Stay where put. We claim to be in the succession of those who always believed in the Church. We follow Pusey, Keble, Hurrell Froude, and Isaac Williams.

Every large-hearted Christian desires our Lord's Church Unity. England is the House of Division. Every Parish sports divers colours and various forms of the Christian Religion; most of them such caricatures that an Apostle would be most uncomfortable among them. A Frenchman said that England had only one sauce but three hundred religions. This disorder has its roots in the Church of Eng-land, with its Schools of Thought, its Parties, and its Compromises. AH the Sects broke away from the Church of England. They felt they had as much right as the Reformers to make New Religions to suit themselves. They had as much right to reject the new angledness of the Reformed Religion as the Reformers had to reject the True Religion of the Mother Church of Rome. They thought that if Rome could be wrong- anyone else might be right, and every man should please himself. Such was the disastrous consequence of shaking men's faith in the Divine Order of Ruling. When the Tractarians came on the scene England was a City of Confusion in which strange doctrines and new and old errors were taught and encouraged.

The Tracts for the Times show us the essential nature of the Movement. The Titles of the Tracts for the Times indicate the heresies which the Waiters set out to destroy, as they show forth the great Catholic Truths which they desired to make current. Their teaching was positive. From their positive teaching we can gather what were the heresies they were combating. There were Tracts on-

The Apostolic Succession,
The Athanasian Creed,
The Advantage of Public Prayer,
The Benefit of Feasting-,
Baptismal Regeneration,
And Prayers for the Dead.

In Tract XC. Newman, Pusey and Keble together weathered a storm which threatened to become a hurricane, and which raged over England around the teaching of that Tract. The ^Subjects were boldly faced by Pusey in the Preface ; by Newman in the body of the Tract ; and by Keble in the Casuistry about the Subscription to the XXXIX. Articles ; in which he showed how a Catholic could honestly subscribe to them. The Subjects of this Tract included-

Purgatory,
Pardons,
Worship of Images and Relics,
The Invocation of Saints,
The Mass,
Transubstantiatlon, and

The Visible Church.

The Truths here opened up were treated in a Catholic way and with the view to more perfect definition. You can see from this cursory list the great Truths for the acceptance of which the Tractarians opened the way.

It is to be feared that these great matters are being widely ignored. It is for us to follow them up : and to carry the work of the Tractarians to its logical issue.

In their day the Church of England was Non-Sacramental. The Doctrines of Grace as taught by heretics like Calvin and Luther held the ground. Intellectuals were repelled. Intellectuals who have not been inside a Catholic Church in all their lives, nor for forty years inside any Church, are still the guiding posts to the heresies of those days. They are still beating the dead horse. The Church they rejected does not exist todav. The doctrine-; which they repudiate are no longer held' in the Church of England. They are rejecting the heresies which were rampant in early Victorian times : but which the Oxford Movement killed long since. The Tractarians brought back the Sacraments as Powers to change the Soul, so "that the Old Controversy between Free W7!!! and Irresistible Grace and Predestination have no meaning for our Catholic Young-Folk. They do not know anything- about Calvinism and Armmiamsm, but nevertheless, Arnold Bennett beat the Protestant drum till his death ; and Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russell and Wells still keep on the din of their tom-toms while they thump the old tub of Calvinism. The Tractarian movement has not touched them because they have no knowledge of it.

Pusey and his fellows were raised up by Almighty God to restore and consolidate in the Church of England the Sacramental System as being of the very Essence of Christianity.

None but Pusey could have grafted Catholicism upon the prevailing- Evangelicanism of his day. Without him I cannot see how the Movement could give the hope of winning the Church of England to Catholicism.

He was a man for his day. His Vocation as a Peacemaker and as a Uniter required that he himself should be subject to certain limitations. His limitations were of God. He had no need to resort to subterfuge : nor to hide some ulterior purpose. He held firmly to the Faith once delivered o and he communicated it fearlessly and generously. God has blessed his honesty, his steadfastness and his integrity by causing the Truth he sowed to bear much fruit.

It is not to be wondered at that Dr. Pusey, saint and theologian though he was, had a limited and unsatisfactory view of the Divine Right of the Papacy to govern. It is no true following- of him for us to stop where Crod called a halt for him. Then was a time to halt. Now is the time to go-forward. Remember that he passed through those turbulent days of 1869 and 1870 when all Europe and the World resounded to the clash of dialectics while the Vatican Council sat at Rome. Bear in mind how we were all misled later on by the Letters of Quirinius which Lord Acton had some-thing to do with; by Mr. Gladstone who was misled by Dr. Dollinger; and still later by Dr. Salmon, of Trinity College,, Dublin. They were all honourable men. How could Dr. Pusey escape the contagion when so many leading men were infected with it? It would have been a miracle had Dr. Pusey favoured the Vatican decisions, when quite one hundred Roman Bishops got leave of absence from the final session, so as to avoid voting against it. What I want to say is that Pusey would now be in the van leading the New Move to Rome. The Essence of the Movement is Sacramental, and its very nature requires the Authority such as the Pope alone gives. It needs the Papal signature.

Dr. Pusey would, if alive today, hold to the Definition of The Immaculate Conception as made in 1854, and to that of the Infallibility made in 1870. I think he would do so for the following reasons. His way of looking at Truth would lead him to it. Again and again in his Spiritual Letters (a first rate book on Ascetical and on Moral Theology) he closes discussions by such phrases as: "The Church teaches," "God does not deceive His Church, and she has said."

So far, Dr. Pusey. Now we say the Church has said that Mary is Immaculate ; and that "the Pope is Infallible. Therefore, on Dr. Pusey's principles, they are true.

He would agree to this statement for a second reason, namely, that the time for discussion is drawing to a close. A longer space must be allowed to men in the Church of England for discussion of these truths than can be accorded to Roman Catholics. Because the Church of England was not represented at the Councils of 1854 and 1870. Dr. Pusey was then and always in advance of the Church of England, and we may be sure he would be a leader now, and the head of the-advance.

A third reason for the belief that Dr. Pusey would hold with the Immaculate Conception and with Papal Infallibility is afforded by watching the course of development of those men who owe the foundations of their Catholicism to Dr. Pusey, and who have, under God, built upon his foundation. They find themselves ready believers in both of the dogmas in question, and so do we.

I am not disturbed by what Roman Catholics say about the futility of the Oxford Movement, and of those Catholics who wish to move the Church on to Rome. We don't mind what they say. The reasons for my imperturbability are few and satisfying. The fact is the Roman Catholics are unaware of what we really hold. They are accustomed to Foreign Protestants ; and they rank us with the Geneva Invaders. They are prejudiced against us. They do not know what we have. We know that we have the power of the Keys, and of Consecrating : and we have the Priesthood and power over the Real Body of Christ, and they do not know what we are. We are the product of Sacraments. The reports they rely upon are the reports of those who have left us : and mostly of those who left before they knew the Catholics in the Church of England. The majority of those who went over did not know Catholicism till they found it in Rome.

A man once said to me that if the Church of England could, without true Sacraments, produce the same results as the Romans produce with the Sacraments, then there is no need for anyone to be concerned as to whether they have Sacraments or not. The sound logical conclusion, and the obvious fact is, that where the same Sacramental results are seen, the same Sacramental causes are at work.

The Oxford Movers taught that the Church of England formally professes the Catholic Faith : that she is in Com-munion with the Catholic Hierarchy ; and that she is nourished with the. Catholic Sacraments.

They never taught the contrary. They were aware that to deny her Catholic Status is to commit Ecclesiastic suicide. It would be to saw off the branch on which she is perched.

in Faith,
in Morals and Practice,
and in Church Government.

It is a Movement towards Unity.

For ourselves we take Newman's Motto spoken to the young bloods of his day who were trying- to hurry him on to Rome- " Spartam nactus es : hanc exorna." "Thou wast born at Sparta: adorn her."

God put you in the Church of England : adorn and beautify her. Do not forsake her. We stay where put. Alas ! that later on Newman acted against his earlier dictum.

III.-Whither Does the Movement Tend ?

In treating of this point it is good for us to think of our .own position. We are the product of the Movement. And we are not satisfied with our position in the Catholic World. It behoves us to assure ourselves that the goal we seek is not suggested by our own dissatisfaction, but that it is really the -divinely intended End of the Movement. WE know whither the Movement tends. But did the Movers know that they were tending" towards Rome? It is now being- denied that the Oxford Movers were Romanisers. On the contrary, I hold that Rome was the goal, whether they were conscious of it or not.

Let me place before you a few facts which will show yon the truth of the matter : which is briefly that Rome was not at first intended : but the goal of Union with Rome was revealed as the Movement made progress.

The first fact I would name is that Keble was the teacher oof Hurrell Fronde. Hurrell Froude was, prior to 1830, the man who taught Newman about Rome. All' three-Keble, Newman and Froude-were at Oriel College, Oxford, which was really the home of the Movement. It was also Pusey's College. Hurrell F'roude was the connecting- link between Keble and Newman. Remember that for Keble the Church was his guide. New-man's outlook was individual and speculative. Newman said that Hurrell Froude taught him " to look with admiration towards the Church of Rome, and m the same degree to dislike the Reformation." He " fixed -deep in me the idea of devotion to the Blessed Virgin ; and he led me gradually to believe in the Real Presence." WTiile he remained loyal to the Church of Engand and he died in her Communion, Hurrell Froude was in heart and soul all for Rome : and ,he was the one man among brilliant men who could meet Newman on fairly equal terms. Newman admits and puts on record the great influence which Froude had upoa him in his own movement towards Rome. Although Hurreil Froude never seceeded from the Church of England, he was the' sower of the seed which sprang up in Newman and which took him to Rome. Love of Rome kept Froude where he was because he already believed in the Church. While it took Newman to Rome to discover the Church.

That Rome was consciously or unconsciously the goal of the Movement is made clear by Newman's own statement as shown in his Apologia. The spell of Rome was laid on him in a visit to the Holy City in 1833. He did not resist it nor shake it off Recovering from a fever which brought him to the gates of death, he felt he had a Mission from Divine Providence, and he cried out : " I shall not die, I have not sinned against the Light." His Mission was to lead England to Rome. He was then tending Romewards. It was at this time that he wrote the " Marching Song " of the Tractarian Movement, " Lead Kindly Light." And that light eventually led him to Rome. On recovering from his illness, Newman arrived from Rome in time for Keble's Assize Sermon on National Apostasy, on June i4th, 1833. And now we are being guided by the Holy Ghost to seek Corporate Union with Rome as the proper goal of Newman's work. His Mission is still in progress.

There is another fact that proves the same thing. In Dean Church's Book on "The Oxford Movement," he says that " a great and momentous change came over the Oxford-Movement between the years 1833 and 1840.'' The Oxford Movement started from the Anti-Roman feelings aroused in Englishmen by the Catholic Emancipation Bill. The Movement was at first Anti-Roman, Anti-Sectarian, and Anti-Erastian. It was a blind Movement to save the English Church- o as a separate and self-going concern. It was un-Catholic to that extent. It was to avert the danger of people becoming-Romanists from ignorance of Church principles. Then there came what Church calls a great and momentous change. The Movers began to examine Roman Claims. Church goes on to sav that "The fundamental conceptions and assumptions were revealed. It was not the Roman Church but the English Church which was now put on trial." They found that the " English Church had fallen unpardonably below the standard and below'- the practical system of Rome." " From this point the object of the Movement was no longer to-elevate and improve an independent English Church, but to approximate it as far as possible to what was assumed to be the undeniable and the perfect Catholicity of Rome."

Church's Quotation ends.

That the Oxford Movement had Reunion with Rome as its ultimate aim is indicated in Morley's Life of Gladstone :

"Gladstone was surprised, nay, startled, to find that the-Oxford Writers and their friends look not merely to the renewal and development of the Catholic idea within the Church of England, but they seem to consider that the-main condition of that development, and of all health, some say of all life, to be Reunion with the Church of Rome as the See of Peter. They require authority in the Church of England, and they abide in her to seek fulfillment of this Work of Reunion. It is the sole object of Oakley's life. As a means to that end they have in view no order of proceedings. They only think of Catholicising the minds of members of the Church of England." (Quotation from. Gladstone ends.)

Protestants have always charged us with leading to Rome. Every Catholic priest has had it thrown at him, as though it could be a crime to reunite with the Mother Church. Nevertheless, the Tractarians may not have. had the defined object of Unity with Rome as their goal. The Oxford Movers formed a group of the most thoughtful and intelligent men of then-time. It is inconceivable that they alone were insensible to their tendency towards Rome. The Holy City must have-come up on their horizon as a possibility. Thomas Moselev, in his Work on Oriel College, says: "The opponents of the Movement, one and all, pronounced us on our way to Rome. Very few of us could say where we meant to stop."

Walsh in his " Secret History of the Oxford Movement," says that from its very birth in 1833 the great object was Corporate Reunion with Rome, and that the Movers were always opposed to individual secession. They themselves said : "It is much better to go on working- where we are. Were we to go, England would be lost to Catholicism. It is only through the Church of England that England can be Catholicised." " Here we have the real heart and soul of the Movement, this is the centre from which its pulsations vibrate, and from which its life-blood flows."Union Review for 1867.

Lord Halifax has said over and over again that " Union with Rome is the Crown and Completion of that great Movement which has transformed the Church of England."

It was urged ad nauseam that the surest road to union with Rome is to make the Church of England as Catholic in her hierarchy and in her members as she is in her formularies.

In 1833 Newman says that people called him a Papist to his face; and Keble said that "Protestantism, though allowable three centuries since, is "dangerous now."

We note two tendencies which strengthened, as light came to the Movers. One tendency was of hatred for tile Reformers, and the other was of love of Rome.

Hurrell Froude said, "As for the Reformers, I think worse and worse of them. Jewel's Defence of his Apology disgusted me more than almost any work 1 have read." I felt exactly that way when I read Jewel's work myself. This hatred was shared by many of the other Movers.

Keble said that " anything that separates the present Church from the Reformers I should hail' as a great good." He said they were not to be trusted on theological and Church questions.

As to the other tendency, the growth of love for Rome, Keble said in 1843: "Certainly there is a great yearning even after Rome in many parts of the Church, which seems to be accompanied with so much good that one hopes, if it be right, it will be allowed to gain strength."

Mr. Gladstone, though himself regarding Romanising as an exaggeration of the Catholic Movement, was candid enough to admit that it was a cause for rejoicing that "these excellent persons abide in the Church to enlighten it by the Holy Example of their lives."

Mr. Gladstone indignantly protested against attempts to make " such persons quit the Church and so drive them into sin " ; and he said that the attempt to drive them out of the Church of England "constitutes an unwarrantable invasion of the liberty which the Church herself has intended for them."

Pusey said that he was frightened to hear Rome called Anti-Christ. He said : " I believe Anti-Christ will be infidel and he will arise out of what calls itself Protestantism, and then Rome and England will be united in one to oppose it. Protestantism is infidel or verging towards it." Written ninety years ago, do we not see how true it is becoming? To-day our intellectual masters are mostly infidel, and infidelity is rampant in the Church of England. Our hope lies in the union which he also prophesied between England and Rome.

At the same period in the year 1844, Pusey wrote thanking Archdeacon Manning for his charge ; and he wrote : " While it is in a cheering tone, is there quite love enough for the Roman Church? I only desiderate more love for Rome." - Life of Dr. Pusey, Vol. II., p. 454.

Pusey said he was " from much reading of Roman books much impressed with the Superiority of their teaching."

I think that Pusey, in 1844, may be fairly described as being in love with Rome, but not as Newman was-that is to say Pusey's love was such as should be deep in the heart of every English Churchman, and not divorced from love of the Church of England. I believe that Dr. Pusey would say now precisely what w-'e are repeating after him. He believed that the Church of England will not be allowed to fail, and he said that he looked to a reunion of the Church as the end, and the means and way must be in the Hands of God. He wished that there were as many prayers among us for re-union with Rome as there were then in Rome for that same purpose.

The only reason for labouring the point is that so many people whose knowledge of this subject is culled from little "handbooks and snippets, are brazenly denying that the Movement was, or is now, towards Rome. That their Movement was Romewards was recognised sooner or later by the Movers themselves it was charged upon them by violent opponents and by the Bishops, and because of it they 'lost many excellent friends, like Palmer and Hook, who then stood about where the Anglo-Catholics stand to-day neither here nor there-but wdth one foot in England and the 'other in the English Channel. If they were three-legged they would put the third foot in Lutheran Germany.

IV.- Why Must the Oxford Movement lead to Rome ?

Because the Oxford Movers loved the Holy Will of God : and it is God's Will that all His Followers should be 'One, as Our Lord and His Father are one.

The Oneness of the Church can only be achieved by Union with Rome. The Church of England cannot be a Mediator of Unity, because she is not at unity in herself. The Church of England is abnormal. For 380 years she has been in captivity. The Spiritual Powers, the Bishops, are bound as Prisoners in the chariot of Politicians. The chief offices of the Church are filled by the State. The Bishops are nominees of Political Parties. Many Bishops were made by Lloyd George, a Baptist, and others by Macdonald, a Methodist. It is a scandal to all Catholics, and even to Free Churchmen that the Church of England ocannot move of her own will, but must be dictated to by Secular bodies like the House of Lords and the House of Commons. The Church of England is not free to choose her own Head. In the sight of all men the Head of the Church of England is the King. The Reformers were unable to conceive of a Church without a Head. They were brought up as Catholics. When they dismissed the Pope they castabout for a Head to take his place. They found that the King was the only conceivable substitute to rule instead of the Pope In this slavery to King- and Parliament the Church of England is still enthralled. This is not the mind of Christ. It is an insult to the Founder that His choice of Peter should be set aside in favour of Rulers who are not consecrated and who are not subject to any Spiritual Power.

The Church of England is abnormal because she is a small fraction of the Church running counter to and independent of that Vast Body of Christ. At the most she is but one-tenth of the Whole Body. Whether you test her by East or by West she is a freak. Neither East nor West recognise her as a true Church. She is a Self-constituted and Independent Body which neither desires nor conceives that Oneness in which our Lord constituted His Church. She will not learn from the East, she will not learn from the Pope. She has been dubbed "The Anglican Paddock." She deserves the name as long as she barricades herself within an enclosure, which fences her and her people off from the One Fold of Christ.

The noblest task of the Successors of the Oxford Movers is to carry to all members of the Church of England the conviction that their position in Christendom is abnormal and ugly. Everyone can help by arousing themselves to the true state of England. In the Providence of God we are essentially Western. While we desire union with the East we must be on our guard that that desire have not the poisonous thought behind that a union of England and Russia would embarrass the papacy, and drive Roman Catholics to modify their dogmas to suit our vague Lambeth Resolutions.

For World unity our Union with the Papacy can do a great deal. Canterbury with Rome can work wonders. England is a Colonizing Power. United with Rome the English people could do a World-wide Missionary Work.

I am sorry to say that some influential persons are advocating the formation by Anglo-Catholics of a Non-Papal Church. A Non-Papal Church cannot be a Catholic Church. The Church is a Family. The Pope is the Head of that Family as the Successor of Peter, and He is in the place of Christ. Without the Vicar of Christ as Head your New Church would be an offence to the great Head Who wants all to be One under the Ruler appointed by Him. He wants One Fold and One Shepherd.

We don't boggle over the term Head Of the Church. All Saviours arc valued in proportion as they set forth the supreme claims of Our Saviour Christ. All Fatherhood is derived from God. All Priests show forth the Priesthood of the Great High Priest. And so the Holy Father sets forth in fact the Supreme Fatherhood : as he sets forth the Supreme Head as Vicar of Christ the Head, and He is Supreme Ruler of the Church on earth. Our anomalous state can only be remedied by our return to Catholic Unity, because the Headship of the Pope over all Bishops is the only way of securing the same religion in every diocese.

The way back is made less arduous because the Church of England is irrevocably committed to the Whole Catholic Faith : and, therefore, to the Primacy. Her appeal is to Scripture, Tradition, and the Living Voice. Without the Living Voice her appeal is vain. On paper her Rule of Faith is the same as East and West. It is an appeal to Scripture as interpreted by the Fathers and Doctors of the Church and defined in General Councils. Last time she spoke she appealed to six. After three hundred years' silence when she speaks again she may adopt the Councils of Trent and of the Vatican. We must be unshakably certain of our essentially Catholic Status or we can neither perceive our absurd abnormality and deformation, nor work confidently for re-instatement in our true Home at the Table of the Holy Father. Presbyterians do not want a Pope : Methodists are incapable of perceiving their loss : and Baptists are unconscious that they are a headless corpse. Because all these are Sacramentally dead. We are Sacramtentally alive. And so we hate our isolation and we loathe our deformity. It is because we have the Sacraments that we desire that Unity in which Our Lord settled St. Peter the Rock.

Once again we say with all the emphasis in our power that for us Anglicans, Catholic Union means union with the Holy See. When our Bishops sound the Catholic tocsin we must respond to their call. The Lambeth Fathers at three Lambeth Conferences extending over thirty years, have kept on asserting their longing for Unity with Rome. They have " given long and anxious thought to the whole Problem o Unity." They repeat Our Lord's Words that " they may be One as we are One." And then they solemnly place on record their deliberate conviction that "there can be no fulfilment of the Divine Purpose in any scheme of reunion which does not include the great Latin Church of the West."

No one can doubt that the Holy Ghost is the Author of this desire for Union with Rome. When three hundred Bishops, from all parts of the globe, express their conviction that without Unity with Rome there can be no fulfillment of the Divine Purpose of one, Church, it would be temerarious for any Anglican to deny it : and very reprehensible for any Bishop to be so callous to the Fulfillment of the Divine Purpose as to neglect or ignore it.

The Lambeth Resolution is a clarion call to Union With Rome. They expect us to take it up and repeat it: and. to work. for Union with the Holy See.

The great reason why the Movement must lead to Rome is that it is the Will of the Holy Ghost that the Church of England as a Whole be united with Rome. We recognise the work of the Holy Ghost in the Lambeth Resolution on Unity. We think that the Lambeth Bishops were guided by the Third Person to utter the Will of the Second Person. The Holy Ghost is the Spirit of Love and Peace. There can be no love between England and Rome so long as they are in separation and rivalry. The jealousy now is by no means only on one side. We know that Anglicans are jealous. So are the Romans : they hate seeing us regaining Catholicism, they gibe at our Sacraments. It is God's Will that this Separation be caused to cease. Jealousy burns like fire : and consumes those whose hearts are aflame with it.

We are not in organic schism : but we are suffering from a functional disability, which only Union with Rome can remedy.

Individual Secession only increases our weakness by withdrawing from us the power and help of our best friends who are the Anglican Papal-minded Clergy and Laity. And we should not grudge them if Rome really needed them. They are needed where they are. Let them stay where put.

As inheritors of the Oxford Tradition we stand for the Union of England with Rome, that is the union again of Two separated Provinces with the Head of the Church.

We have neither the purpose nor the power to prepare a section or a group for secession to Rome. There should be: no secession Irom the Church of England on the part of thos ewho carry on the work of Pusey and Keble, of Church and Liddon, and of Lord Halifax.

We utterly and entirely repudiate the notion that we Anglican Catholics are distinct from the Church of England. We desire no such distinction. We do not seek Uniate jurisdiction. Our business is with the Church of England. Newman said long ago, and it is as true to-day as it was then, that England can be saved from infidelity only by the Church of England. I say that she can do it only in so far as she is in union with Rome. That is one great reason we have, for our purpose of bringing the whole Church of England into Union with the Holy See. For the Holy See needs the Church of England to save England. Without her the Roman task is hopeless. After one hundred years of intensive propaganda the Romans are only five per cent. of the populaton. They stand where they stood at the date of tlie Catholic Emancipation. Equally hopeless for the salvation of England would be the task of the Church of England without Rome. To save England without Rome is becoming more and more obviously impossible day by day.

These are the reasons by which I desire to convince you-that tlie Oxford Movement must end in Rome.

V.-How is the Church of England to be brought back to Unity with Rome ?

I deprecate the question if a definite answer be required : for who can tell the ways of the Spirit ? And of what can we be certain except our mission to spread the Truth ?

Nevertheless, the question is being asked. And first we say that obstacles must be removed. The great obstacle is prejudice against Rome. We must be no parties to the raising- of obstacles. I would name a few which are raised by some among us.

There is the bogey of Absorption. There is no harm in being absorbed by your own country, England. And English people have no objection to the absorption of other nations into the British Empire. Why refuse to be absorbed into the largest part of the Christian Family ? - Rome.

Then there is the word "Impossible." Nothing is-impossible to God.

Then there is the obstacle expressed in the phrase "Not in Our time." It is the old obstacle of unbelief. The answer to this is in prayer : and the way to remove it is to pray, How long, 0 Lord? Tarry not, but come to unite us. Come quickly." The same unbelief made the man in Samaria say : "If there should be windows in Heaven this fall of food could not be." He was trampled to death in the gates when plenty of food came as a flood. Trample on ths distrust of God which is implied in the words : " God cannot - do this wonder in our time."

Then there is the whole brood of the Partingtons: deriving their origin from the famous woman of that name who went out to contend with the Atlantic Ocean and prevent it sweeping over her home. She lived on its shores down West. One year the tide rose higher than ever before. Looking from her parlour window she saw-it invading her garden. She was not so much alarmed as angry. And still the waves came on and in great rollers they began to come into her yard. Infuriated by this invasion of her territory, she donned her bonnet, and, seizing her mop and her bucket she dashed forth to drive out the impudent Ocean which dared to wash up to her back door, She soon discovered that her weapons were futile against so powerful an Adversary. With her mop and her bucket she could deal successfully with a splash or a puddle, but they were no match for the Atlantic Ocean. Our Mrs. Partingtons view with fury the oncoming of Unity with Rome. They see the Canterbury and York Gardens invaded "by the rising tide. Now it has reached the Paddock. It is in the Palace and in the Cathedral Close. So donning their mortar-boards, they rush forth with the Mop of tlie Church Assembly and the Bucket of the Establishment. Like their prototype, in her contention with the Atlantic they will discover that they are like children fighting a cyclone. The Mop and the Bucket may be useful for a splash in the Paddock, or a puddle in the Press, but they will be no match for the sweep of the Atlantic Rollers of Catholic Unity.

Many other obstacles might be mentioned. I need not further try to enumerate the innumerable. My own strong conviction is that Unity will come as a great flood, something that will sweep us into the one Church : something like the wave of hate and greed which brought the Great War, or like the Great Wave of Waste and Godlessness which has brought the World to Economic Ruin. Only that the Catastrophe which brings Unity will be a comfort and joy to the Faithful. It may be soon. It will not be " Never." He that is coming will come. When the avalanche begins to slide the only safe refuge will be in the City on the Seven Hills. A Good Swimmer loves the contest with the waves : and he. trusts himself to the Sea as to a friend. How much more securely can he trust himself to the Waves when he is snug and safe in Peter's Barque, which is stronger than the Ships of Tarshish and cannot be broken by the East Wind ? Rome wall' be the only Harbour from the Tidal Wave of the Anti-Christian Teaching and from the onslaught of Communism, and of Militant Atheism, and from the World-wide power of Anti-Christ.

If still you persist in asking me to say how7 can Unity with Rome be gained, I must ask you to give your help bv prayer. Every time you see a Church, say "That they may be one." Whea you see Roman Catholic Chapels or Nonconformist Meeting Houses, say "That they may be one." Through this Holy Year, and after, I ask those who can do so to go to Mass on the First Friday in each month; and also to keep the Holy Hour before the Tabernacle, for the intention of the Holy Father and of the Archbishop of Canterbury. That is something practical for you to do.

Remember that you are sons and daughters of the Holy , Ghost, and that God expects His children to do His work. I work the work of God in your days.

Conclusion.

While thinking of the Oxford Movement as a Flood of the Holy Ghost carrying the Waters of Catholic Truth to England and her Colonies, the Words of the Easter Anthem for the Asperges came into my mind. And, like Ezekiel, I saw Water issuing from the Right Side of the Temple: and all to whom that Water came were saved.

"Keep the Vision" and compare it with the Oxford Movement.

A mysterious Being with a measuring rod shows the prophet the Whalers issuing from the Temple. He measures five hundred yards and the Waters were up to the ankles. Keble's Assize, Sermon was preached, and the Oxford Movers dedicated their lives to the restoration of Religion. The Waters of Unity were up to the ankles.

Again he measured another five hundred yards and the Waters were up to the knees. The Tracts for the Times were finding their way into the Vicarages and into the homes of the pious. The Waters of Unity were up to the knees.

Again he measured another five hundred yards, and the, Waters were up to the loins. The Ritual Movement was spreading. Altars were being set up and the Chapels in Cathedrals were restored. The Waters of Unity were up to the loins.

Again he measured five hundred yards and the Waters were up to the neck, Waters to swim' in, a river that could not be passed over.

It is this last five hundred yards that we are measuring. And the Waters we see rising are - The Appointment of Catholic Bisliops : and the Rule by Bishops who Value their Priesthood above what is called "The Historic Episcopate. Then there will be Waters to swim in when the whole Anglican Episcopate is invited to the next Vatican Council : and when the Cardinal Archbishop of Canterbury, with the Papal Pall representing England as the Second Rome, takes his place, beside the Holy Father.

A Vision for England.

I hold that England's hope for the future is not in Empire, nor in Industry, but in the restoration of the true culture which comes of the Catholic Religion.

What a lovely Land is this to be under the Slavery of Protestant Philistinism and Industrial Bolshevism' I call upon you to Keep the Vision and nerve yourselves for Service in this Noble. Cause of Unity. What was once, may be again. Our Lord was once here according to tradition at Glastonbury; and at any rate later on He'was here in His United Church, and for hundreds of years. We must not rest till He comes again to Build His Spiritual Jerusalem in this splendid Country.

The poet Blake had some such vision of Unity in England. He said, speaking- of Our Lord's stay in England :-

There may be some who cannot see the splendid Truth of Blake's lines ; a splendour the more blinding, when they are applied to the Establishment of the Universal Sovereignity of Jesus Christ the King, with His Vicegerent the Pope. Let me therefore put to you a Truth which comes from our great Teacher, St. Thomas, and which should be written in gold on the Church sky. He says :

"That the Church be One, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing; is the End to which we are Ordained and brought by the Passion of Christ."