Church of England -- Sermons; Sermons, English -- 19th century
Yes, my friends, I do. I know that the Church Catechism is not the
bread of life. Neither, I beg you to remember, is any other
Catechism, or doctrine, or tract, or sermon, or book or anything
else whatsoever. Christ is the Bread of Life. But how shall they
know Christ, unless they be taught what Christ is; and how can they
be taught what Christ is, unless the conception of him which is
offered them be true?
And, I say, that the Catechism does give a true conception of
Christ; and more, a far truer one--I had almost said, an infinitely
truer--than any which I have yet seen in these realms: that from
the Catechism a child may learn who God is, who Christ is, who he
himself is, what are his relation and duty to God, what are his
relation and duty to his neighbours, to his country, and to the
whole human race, far better than from any document of the kind of
which I am aware.
I know well the substitutes for the Catechism which are becoming
more and more fashionable; the limitations, the explainings away,
the non-natural and dishonest interpretations, which are more and
more applied to it when it is used; and I warn you, that those
substitutes for, and those defacements of, the Catechism, will be no
barrier against an outburst of fanaticism, did one arise; nay, that
many of them would directly excite it; and prove, when too late,
that instead of feeding the masses with the bread of life, which
should preserve them, soul and body, some persons had been feeding
them with poison, which had maddened them, soul and body. But I see
no such danger in the Catechism. I see in the Catechism; in its
freedom alike from sentimental horror and sentimental raptures; its
freedom alike from slavish terror, and from Pharisaic assurance; a
guarantee that those who learn it will learn something of that sound
religion, sober, trusty, cheerful, manful, which may be seen still,
thank God, in country Church folk of the good old school; and which
will, in the day of trial, be proof against the phantoms of a
diseased conscience, and the ravings of spiritual demagogues.
And therefore I preach gladly for this institution; therefore I urge
strongly its claims on you, whom I am bound to suppose honest
Churchmen, because the fact of its being a Diocesan Board of
Education is, at least in this diocese, a guarantee that the schools
which it supports will teach their children, honestly and literally,
the Catechism of the Church of England, which may God preserve!
Not that I expect it to teach only that. I take for granted, that
that will be its primary object, the guarantee that all the rest is
well done: but I know that much more than that must be done; that
much more will be done, even unintentionally.
For, shall I--I trust that I shall not--make a too fanciful
application of the last fact recorded of this great miracle, if I
bid you find in it a fresh source of hope in your work?
'And they took up of the fragments which were left seven baskets
full.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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