HOME | Tolerance | outside influences | the Oxford movement
The Book of Common Prayer of 1662 set out on its uneventful path with no flourish of
trumpets;
though it was a protestant book, its compilers made it clear that the nonconformists were not going to be included as
part of the established church.
Once that was clear the word toleration began to be whispered in ecclesiastical politics and the
religious troubles of over a hundred and fifty years can be presumed to have ended.
The nonconformists, realising that from now on
they must fend for themselves, put their househouses might be more accuratein order and to the tune of Watts' hymns sang
their way through a century of enthusiasm.
Within the church, however, toleration degenerated to tolerance;
going to church
became, as for Addison's Sir Roger de Coverley, a pleasant social duty.
The church as a Christian body, losing touch with the
momentous events in the outside world of thought and politics, went slowly to sleep, especially in the cathedrals where the
services were droned out day by day with diminishing thoughtfulness.
The musical establishments followed suit: poor as indeed
some of the organists and composers of the period were, it is yet surprising that they did their daily job for the most part
with sincerity and conscientiousness.
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The minds of thinking men, which for so many years had been concentrated on religion,
shifted their interest.
Using the new experimental methods suggested by Descartes, men like Boyle, Newton, Faraday probed the
phenomena of physics and chemistry, explained away the spacious firmament and seemed to drive the mysteries from life.
Writers
like the mordant Voltaire extolled the Newtonian physics and derided the shams and social unawareness of current Christianity;
the
French Encyclopedists proved that no God was needed to sustain a determinist universe.
Social unfairness of all kinds was
uncovered and with the advent of machine-run industry the evils of society and the franchise became the topic of the hour.
In
France, the growing discontent was precipitated by Beaumarchais' Figaro (set later to sparkling music by Mozart) into the
Revolution that soon belied its watchword of freedom and resulted in a dictatorship.
England passed unhappily through the troubles
leading to the Reform Bill.
Thinking men were too occupied with these vital things to bother about drearily recited church
services out of touch with the world.
Even the fanatical preaching of the Wesleys, both churchmen, failed to rouse the church from
its torpor;
the Wesleyans ultimately split off from a church with whose members they had political as well as dogmatic
differences.
The state of the world, ecclesiastical and political, is vividly pictured in three dissimilar but contemporaneous
events.
In 1851 Gaisford was installed as Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, and is reputed to have ended one of his Christmas sermons
with these remarkable wordsmore remarkable when one remembers the sort of audience out of term time who heard them:
'Nor can I
do better, in conclusion, than impress upon you the study of Greek literature, which not only elevates above the vulgar herd,
but leads, not unfrequently, to positions of considerable emolument.'
Unconscious cynicism could hardly go further.
In 1852 the
Reform Bill made the first attempt to distribute the franchise more fairly, and in the following year John Keble preached his
famous sermon on National Apostasy, thus initiating the awakening of the church known soon as the Oxford Movement.
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The ministry had become the resort of those seeking an easy and respectable profession,
but by Keble's sermon and the ensuing tract warfare the standard of better things was already being raised.
The Tractarians
rediscovered the church as a God-made institution with the communion as its Christ-given service.
Slowly the church was to begin
to take itself seriously, to use its missionary powers not only abroad but at home.
Parish churches everywhere formed surpliced
choirs, cluttered their chancels with choir-stalls and organs and set about aping the cathedral service.
Enthusiasts ordered
copies of French missals to discover how the communion service should be performed.
Church going became once more the fashion,
even for unbelievers.
The cathedrals, safely ensconced in their endowments, lagged far behind especially in the matter of their
choirs where the education of the boys was often as disgraceful as the housing of the choir school.
Miss Maria Hackett wrote
impassioned letters to every dean in the country, making herself a veritable Florence Nightingale in the cause of cathedral
choristers.
Sir John Stainer improved the choir conditions at St Paul's and Sir Frederick Ouseley founded a college where
cathedral singing could flourish and be studied.
If the Victorian churchgoer of the middle of the century was smug he was at least
busily smug.
Convocation was revived in 1852 and a committee was formed to enquire into questions of ritual which by then, thanks
to the Tractarians, had become a burning brand of controversy;
though no common decision was reached, in 1871 they issued a
revised lectionarya great improvement on the old and a year later the Act of Uniformity Amendment Act gave official sanction
to shortened services and other unimportant customary departures from the Book of Common Prayer.
A further attempt in 1879 to deal
with the problems of vestments and the octaves of certain saints' days proved abortive:
it is possibly well that it was so, for
accurate knowledge of liturgical history was not yet available and a revision then might have made the whole question more
difficult later.
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