A SPEECH

In reply to an Address presented to him by One Hundred Young Men of his Congregation, at the Town Hall, Brighton, April 20th, 1852.

MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN,-I should be guilty of affectation if I were to disguise the satisfaction and deep gratefulness which I feel for the Address which you have just presented me. No one can feel more deeply than I do, the deficiencies, the faults, the worthlessness of the ministry of which you have spoken so kindly and so warmly. Whatever eyes have scanned those deficiencies, I will answer for it that none have scanned them so severely as my own. Others may have detected its faults more keenly, no one has felt them as bitterly as I have. And yet, for all this, I shall not for one moment disguise my belief that much of what has been said to-night is true. We have not come here to bandy compliments with one another. You have not come to flatter me: and I have not come, with any affected coyness, to pretend

to disclaim your flattery, in order that it may be repeated. You have told me, in the frank spirit of Englishmen, that my ministry has done you good. Frankly, as an Englishman, I tell you with all my heart, I do believe it. I know that there are men who once wandered in darkness and doubt, and could find no light, who have now found an anchor, and a rock, and resting place. I know that there are men who were feeling bitterly and angrily, what seemed to them the unfair differences of society, who now regard them in a gentler, more humble, and more tender spirit. I know that there are rich who have been led to feel more generously towards the poor. I know that there are poor who have been taught to feel more truly, and more fairly towards the rich. I believe-for on such a point God can only know-that there are men who have been induced to place before themselves a higher standard, and perhaps I may venture to add, have conformed their lives more truly to that standard. I dare not hide my belief in this. I am deeply grateful in being able to say that, if my ministry were to close to-morrow, it would not have been, in this town at least, altogether a failure. There is no vanity in saying this. A man must be strangely constituted indeed if he can say such things, and not feel deeply humbled in remembering what that instrument is,

how weak, how frail, how feeble, by which the work is done. I desire to feel this evening far less the honour that may have been done to myself, than the opportunity that is given to us for meeting together in Christian union and brotherhood. We are met here to-night, a minister of the Church of England, a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, invited by young men, of that age at which it is generally supposed that the hot blood of youth incapacitates, or indisposes them towards religion. We are met here, many of those around me of the richer classes of society, invited by those who are in a humbler and far poorer class, and is it possible for me to see in a picture such as this, merely the prominent object of myself? Is it possible for me, as a Christian, to see anything in this-almost anything—except a foretaste of better and happier times? A pledge of a coming time, when that shall be realized, of which that which we now see is but the representation: like the ancient agapæ, or feasts of charity, in which the Corinthian churches, and many other churches, exhibited before the world the blessed fact of a Church, and of a Brotherhood existing here on earth. These signatures which are appended to this address you have given me, will be to me, I trust, in future times, in many a dark hour, a consolation and encouragement. For if I have been liable-and

what public man has not-to have at times, and in certain quarters, my words misrepresented, my motives misconstrued, the whole aim and object of my teaching utterly perverted-unintentionally, I am sure yet surely-surely-there is a rich recompense in the warm and affectionate professions of respect which you have made to me this night. Surely there is abundant overpayment, in the affectionate regard with which I have been met in Brighton, in so many personal attachments, some of the kindest and warmest of those friends being now around me, for whose presence here this evening, I have to thank your graceful and touching courtesy. My young friends-my dear brethren—I had meant to say more-I had intended to briefly sketch the principles of my public teaching; but I would far rather leave what Mr. Evans has said of it, knowing it as he does, to speak for itself. Far rather than that I should speak of my own principles, I would have the decisive testimony of that young man to reply to all the misconceptions and perversions that have been uttered of my work. His words shall answer for it, whether there is Rationalism or Socialism in my teaching.

A SPEECH

Delivered at the Town Hall, Brighton, November 14, 1850, at a Meeting held for the Purpose of Addressing the Queen in reference to the Attempt of the Pope of Rome to parcel England out into Ecclesiastical Dioceses under Cardinal Wiseman.

WHEN I entered this room, I had not the smallest intention of addressing the Meeting; but certain expressions which have been used since my arrival seem to make it necessary. However that may be, if this were simply a question between the Church of England and the Church of Rome-if it were merely a question of precedence between the Archbishop of Canterbury and Cardinal Wiseman, I should hold it purely superfluous to attend this meeting. As a member of the Church of England, certainly consistently, as every dissenter will acknowledge, I hold that the Bishop of Rome has been guilty of an act of schism. It was a principle of the early Church,