Читать книгу The Youthful Wanderer - George H. Heffner - Страница 20

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On Sunday morning, July 18th, I started out at random to find a church where religious service was held. Before going far I came to a large church edifice (St. Pancras) where numbers of people were assembling from all directions and gradually filling up that capacious building which has seats for about 3,000 worshipers. Upon the portico I met the Superintendent of the Mission House, who had accompanied the Vicar of St. Pancras on a visit to Canada, some years ago, and who seemed as much pleased to meet an American as I was benefited by his kind attentions and accommodations. For three-fourths of an hour, he answered me questions and explained the organization of the Church of England, which by the way, is quite as complicated as the organization of the civil government of a nation. Arch-bishops, bishops, vicars, canons, deans, chapters, curates, &c., constitute a list of ecclesiastical dignitaries whose functions are not very easily defined and comprehended by a stranger. Just before service commenced, he conducted me to a seat near the pulpit. Rev. Thorold, the officiating clergyman, is a very able speaker, and made the first attempt at argument in his discourse that I had yet listened to in England. Preaching, in England, like the reciting of prayers, is all so much blank assertion--no more, and no less. I had never before so felt the force of unquestioned authority as I learned to feel and appreciate it in the services of the Episcopal Church of England. The very fact of arguing a question is in itself a compromise of its one-sidedness and of the infallibility of the position the preacher may have taken; but let the clergy of an entire nation read the same mass and recite the same prayers in all their congregations, and let them refrain from discussing scriptural texts, and all give one and the same answer to each and every question, and there will soon be an end of sectarianism. The best reasoning has always provoked more doubt than it has established faith, and in consequence, ever been more fruitful of contention than of peace. So long as a people are one-minded they will be peaceful and contended even if they are bound in wretched slavery, but the tide of revolution has set in at London, and the church begins to tremble, and the clergy to argue. In the afternoon, the weather being very fair, I went to