Excerpt from A Farewell Sermon Preached in Westminster, Abbey at the School Service, July 24, 1875 However humble. It may be too late. It may be God's'will that, after centuries of prosperity and calm - after centuries, alas of much stagnation and worldliness - our great and beloved Church may be doomed once more to long and dreary years of struggle and afflic tion. It may be that God would purge from our souls, and above all from the souls of the Clergy, all dross of hypocrisy and worldli ness, and leave in the furnace of affliction nothing but the refined gold. It may be so but if it be so, if it be-too late now to avert the danger, what in that hour shall be her strength? What shall win for the Church of England the gratitude, the loyalty, the devotion of the people whose souls are in her charge? Not assuredly her wealth, that may be appropriated not her social honours, they may be torn away 5 not her connection with the State, that may be very suddenly and very rudely snapped no, not these, but her love, her energy, her fearlessness, her charity, her faith, her works. Of these Works none is a more noble or a more important work than this that the worship of the Church should henceforth be, as it ought to be in every parish church, by law, by right, and by the distinct utterance of Holy Scripture, not in name only, but in reality, a free and open worship - the work that they'who minister therein should, with quiet minds and thankful hearts, be able, not'in name only, but in reality, . To preach the Gospel to the poor. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.