Sermon by the Right Rev. Chauncey B. Brewster, D.D., Bishop of Connecticut at the Consecration of the Rev. Philip Mercer Rhinelander, D.D., as Bishop Coadjutor, and of the Rev. Thomas James Garland, D.D., as Bishop Suffragan, of Pennsylvania, at Philadelphia, October 28, 1911.
The Living Church, November 3, 1911, pp. 12-13, 16.
Introduction
An uncommon event in the life of a diocese was the 1911 consecration of a suffragan and coadjutor for the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania after the death of its fifth diocesan, the noted evangelical Ozi Whittaker (1830-1911, bishop 1887-1911) and the retirement after just a few months in office of the sixth bishop, Alexander Mackay-Smith (1850-1911, diocesan only in 1911).
Suffragan bishops consecrated as such were a relatively new phenomenon in the life of the Protestant Episcopal Church. Recent examples were William Edward Toll of Milwaukee and Charles Sumner Burch of New York, both in the year of 1911. In the case of the Diocese of Pennsylvania, a suffragan responded to the immediate needs of a burgeoning polyglot population, with substantial work among new Americans of English, Italian, Polish, Chinese, German, and Swedish backgrounds; it was also informed by the recent experience of two bishops ending their episcopates involuntarily in quick succession.
A significant aspect of this consecration in a diocese not characterized historically for episcopal Anglo-Catholicism was the inclusion of vested and mitred Russian Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, Armenian, and Polish National Catholic bishops in the proceedings. Just 11 years earlier, a similar configuration of ecumenical guests provoked a firestorm of outrage at the “Fond du Lac Circus” for the consecration of Reginald Heber Weller. The prominent Philadelphia Inquirer coverage of the service from above the fold on the front page noted “acute interest” but no partisan controversy. One of the Russian priests in attendance was Alexander Hotovitzky, who would return to Russia three years later and suffer martyrdom under the Soviets in 1937. Another Orthodox saint in attendance was Raphael Hawaweeny of Brooklyn (1860-1915), the Syrian missionary archbishop who would briefly recommend that Orthodox without access to their clergy could have recourse to Episcopalians in some limited circumstances.
The Inquirer printed much of this consecration sermon that would appear days later in The Living Church. Preacher Chauncey Bunce Brewster (1848-1941, Bishop of Connecticut 1899-1928) was one of over 30 bishops and 2,000 other persons present for what the Inquirer noted was the first time two bishops had been consecrated at the same time in the United States.
Sermon Text
“The Church, which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all” (Eph. 1:23).
The Episcopate is an organ or instrument of the Church in its larger aspect, in its general functions as distinguished from local and particular ministries. It would seem pertinent to this occasion that we consider the Episcopate as an organ of Catholicity. “Catholic” implies more than worldwide extension. That external sense was naturally seized upon by the practical Latins. At the first, however, the word had an inner quality and meaning. It is not mere tautology when the account of Polycarp’s martyrdom tells how he prayed for “the Catholic Church throughout the world.” There was in the title some premonition of a profound significance that was universal. It was the Church throughout the world because it was Catholic, with import for all the world.
The name, Catholicity, came a little later; but the thing was there before. It is to be found in St. Paul’s doctrine of the Church in the Epistle to the Ephesians. In our text he calls Christ’s Church “His body,” and this figurative designation is followed by a description without figure, “the fulness of Him that filleth all in all.” Without here discussing the precise meaning of “fulness,” it is enough to mark that it points toward and anticipates what is to be found in the latter term “Catholic.” If we think how justly some conceptions and expositions of that term might be described as empty, shallow, and thin, we may see by contrast how truly St. Paul’s “fulness” in one word sums up what Catholicity really means, and suggests its “large room,” its spaces, its heights and depths, filled with the fulness of Him that filleth all in all. He is the Son of God; “in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.” He is the Son of man, having in Himself the nature and the realization of humanity. The Catholicity, the fulness, of the Society which is His Body has relation to the fulness of God in Christ and the fulness of humanity in Christ.
I. The fulness of God, the fulness of His truth revealed in Christ, “in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”
- Consider how large this truth is in its wholeness. “Catholic” is used by the earlier Christian writers as opposed to the partial and the particular. The belief of a true Catholic is not limited to the partial truths within his own ken and vision. That which is not held by me explicitly may still be held implicitly, as belonging to the vast circumference of all truth, that includes within its encompassing circuit those half-truths and opposites and seeming contraries, at once fulfills every affirmation, and transcends all negations and denials.
This truth, enduring from generation to generation, overpasses the partial conceptions of a particular age. It is a structure that spans the centuries. Thereon each age may build according to God’s eternal purposes, ever bringing forth some better thing. Each age has its own special task to achieve; but it is as preparing for the tasks and missions of ages that follow. The Church ought not to be held back from manifest destiny by limitations bequeathed from some bygone age. The Reformation age won back personal liberty and responsibility, never again, let us hope, to be forfeited. Yet it is not for the dead hand of such a time, an age of divisive and disintegrating tendencies, to rest, heavy with determining weight, upon a Church with national responsibilities in a century like this, a century of synthesis and reintegration, of combinations and great unities in political, social, and religious life.
This truth of the ages is the faith of the Catholic Church. The sect selects its shibboleths to insist on. The heretic, chooser, following the newspaper reporter who changed the “eternal verities” into the “eternal varieties,” picks out his truth to suit himself. The Catholic Church is as your native land. You did not choose it. You were born in it. Its truth, to change figure, is not a private pond. It is an ocean. We are like children on the shore. Yet that narrow strand men have parcelled out and partitioned and called the lands after their own names. In the Twentieth Century as in the Fourth, I would say with Pacian: “Christian is my name, Catholic my surname.” The sectarian name or definition becomes patented. The shibboleth invented by some masterful individual gets minted as current coin and stamped with Caesar’s image and superscription of imperial domination. Definitions imposed by individuals and by sects have, not once or twice only, come to spell tyranny grievous to be borne.
- In the fulness of Catholic truth, truth in its wholeness, there is room for freedom, the freedom for which Christ made us free. The Episcopate voices that authority of the whole Church which may be resolved into Catholic consent, and which guards against servitude to strange doctrines imposed by any individual authority, and against the imposition of sectarian shackles upon Catholic freedom of faith and thought.
A Catholic Bishop will have his own personal convictions, but he ought not to be a narrow and altogether one-sided man. He must be mindful of his vow to banish and drive away all erroneous and strange doctrine contrary to God’s Word. But he will do so not as jealous of, but as jealous for, the liberty of the glory of the children of God. He will not use a brief authority to suppress what may be stirrings of the creative Spirit of truth. He will remember that he is not invested with an authority which is arbitrary, but is a mouthpiece of the authority of the whole Church. Recognizing the largeness of truth in its wholeness and the largeness wherein it makes men free indeed, he will be the minister and instrument, the herald and champion, of that spiritual freedom. He will remember that the word of God is not bound because it is a word of life, and that in its fulness of life lies the freedom of the truth.
- For this truth is no matter for the intellect alone, for the settling of opinions or the solving of problems. It is for the whole of man and all his life. Immediately after the text, the Apostle speaks of a quickening power. The present age in unwonted ways is turning from dialectics to dynamics. It is worthwhile to note that the conception of Catholicity leads on from the fulness of God’s truth to the fulness of His power. This is indeed the fulness of Him that filleth all in all, for it is the fulness of that Spirit who is the very life and soul of His body, the Church.
Of that Holy Spirit, the Bishop, in Confirmation and Ordination, is especially the minister. Thus he, particularly, is an organic instrument of this dynamic quality that is characteristic of Christianity. Practically, Episcopacy ought to work as an instrument of power. In the laying on of hands, the Bishop comes literally in touch with each and every member of the Church. His ought always to be a vital contact. Not only officially, but personally, he ought to bring spiritual power and be always a potent force for the right, nor only against deviations from and perversions of moral standards. The dynamic quality of the Spirit operates, moreover, to stir the stagnation of complacent conformity to a merely conventional code. Its righteousness cannot be stationary. Because of the infinite Spirit of life and power, the standards of a former age are past and left behind. Today before our very eyes we may see the advance from a morality negative and individualistic, to the positive, expanding, fruitful righteousness that is social, and in that measure, at any rate, Catholic in character, shows the insistent pressure of the finger of God, the propelling breath of His Spirit. Of this furthering power the Bishop ought to be an exponent. Into this movement he ought to enter, himself moved, and bringing men to be moved, by the Spirit’s impulsion, stirring, quickening, pushing human life on and up. To this we shall recur by another approach.
II. We have come to the second element in our conception. Catholicity implies the fulness of God’s truth and power as revealed in Christ. It implies also the fulness of humanity, of humanity realized in Christ, who, to use a word of Irenæus, “recapitulated” in Himself mankind. His humanity is not particular and local but Catholic. The Church which is His body might take the Roman poet’s words:
“humani nil a me alienum puto.”
Catholicity with large inclusiveness lays hold of the human experiences augmenting through centuries, instinctively making its own whatsoever of good and true wheresoever found. Consecrating with its touch all human life, in its grasp continuous through ages, Catholicity gathers the accumulating treasures and holds them in trust, not to be fashioned and fastened as fetters, but as a heritage of possessions available, as may be found valuable, for adoption by the Church to meet varying needs of men. Of this trusteeship of Christian experiences, provided there be no infringement upon Christian faith and freedom, the Episcopate may be an instrument. A Bishop ought to be a genuine conservative, not eager to destroy, rather careful to preserve, not in servile bondage to the past but in due reverence, with appreciation and insight to discern the inner meaning and the element of value in whatever has survived the test of time.
Catholicity is concerned not only with the fulness of human experiences but also with the fulness of men themselves. It implies the realization of humanity by actual participation in Christ. In this same Epistle the Apostle of Catholicity, writing of that same “fulness” of Christ as the end of all the Church’s ministries, says: “till we all attain unto the unity of the faith.” Essential in the Catholic outlook is the vision of Catholic unity. In this assembly I need not argue that the organic instrument of Catholic unity is the one and undivided Episcopate whereof Cyprian wrote. It may be today we are prepared for return to a conception emphasizing less than in certain ages, rigid ecclesiastical authority, more akin to the Apostolic conception of an outward and visible yet at the same time spiritual and vital unity centering in living personality.
It is enough here to suggest that the Bishop’s office may mean apostleship of unity, first, as he shall illustrate not the monarchical conception of Episcopacy which has repelled many, but the pastoral conception, which presents it as a personal bond of unity; the Bishop, the living link binding his flock to the Church throughout the world and the Church of all the past. The Bishop may be an apostle of unity, furthermore, as, in an age yearning after some larger fellowship, he stands for the great things that now as at the first do not dissever but unite men. He may help to win men from division and separation and from content with the thin results of make-believe expedients, as he bears his loyal witness to the ideal of that unity our Lord prayed for: “that they may be perfected into one.”
In this conception of the fulness of humanity is to be included the full service of all. In the passage already referred to, concerning the body of Christ, the Apostle writes: “for the perfecting of the saints unto the work of ministering.” So, commentators to the contrary notwithstanding, I venture to take those clauses together as meaning the complete fitting of all the members of the body to the work of ministering. A cardinal Christian doctrine, as we learn from other Apostles, is the priesthood of the whole body. It is therefore that certain members are ordained priests to be instruments for certain corporate functions. And of this priesthood of the whole body the Episcopate is an organ. To the Bishop belongs representative and executive headship rather than lordship. He is not to lord it but to lead. Where the Episcopate has failed in efficiency and in commending itself as an institution, it has been because of its perversion into something prelatical and remote from the people. Isolation from men means forfeiture of power. The Bishop’s cathedra is to be broad-based upon the people.
Of this Diocese of Pennsylvania, a perhaps preeminent characteristic has been a large development of the latent power of the laity. It has had, it has, laymen whose names are, throughout the Church, signal watchwords of loyal service. It is indeed a privilege for a Bishop to have a constituency with such traditions and to lead company of such fellow helpers. May there be yet many more here and elsewhere!
That there is enough to be done may be seen as we pass from the service of all to the thought of the Church’s full service to all. The Catholic Church of the Incarnate Christ must recognize humanity wherever and howsoever it be, and appreciate the worth of the personality in all sorts and conditions of men. This principle of the universality of humanity is the bond of affinity between Catholicity and Democracy, and makes the two so near akin that a Church failing to be true to the democratic ideal falls so far short of the Time allows me here not to discuss, only to suggest questions. How far have we fallen short of the democratic ideal in administration, and in the representation in our councils of certain classes of the community? In ministration have we been democratic enough? Have we done all we might to secure that in our churches rich and poor meet together before the Maker of us all, or has there been too much respect of persons? Have we fallen short in providing services for the people that are free and flexible enough? Is the dominant character of our public worship sufficiently popular and adapted to assembled masses of men? For example, are we making as much as we ought of that Divine Service of the Holy Eucharist which, in its tones of praise and penitence and of that unspeakable pathos so intensely human, is a service fitted for the people, for humanity gathered in the great congregation, as compared with the more esoteric character of Morning and Evening Prayer, to be traced largely to the daily offices of monastic communities of the select that were in a sense spiritual aristocracies?
Are we of the clergy sufficiently democratic, not in theory but in our actual living among men? Have we so borne ourselves as to make quite slanderous in its implication the description of ministry that preaches to the poor but dines with the rich? Have we, clergy and people, been mindful that to follow Christ means not to be ministered unto, but to minister? Have we our Dead Seas of Church life, with no outlet, receiving without giving forth?
While through severed parts of Christendom has been passing a Catholic current, a social current has stirred and thrilled the whole Western world, and the two movements may be traced, let me repeat, to the one Spirit of the living God. If we have been slow in response to the democratic ideal, what has been our attitude toward the social ideal, which broods over the seething ferment of our time and beckons on to some better thing God has for man? Have we endeavored to understand and appreciate its import? Have we been as interested as we ought to be in the problems pressing so insistently today, of wages weighed against cost of living, of a weekly rest-day for all workers, of due protection of workers from the injuries and losses of accident, of child-labor, of underpaid working-women? Things like these have not only their economic but their ethical side. That side the Lord of all regards. His people must not be blind. We are waking up, especially in certain of our dioceses. But our eyes have been shut too long to what might be done in bringing to bear upon such hard problems that touch of our better nature that even in the industrial world makes men kin.
In the rising social enthusiasm of to-day there is tremendous force. Its trend and issue, and so the future of society, will depend upon whether it be led, lifted, and spiritualized, by the Church of Christ, bringing the inspiration of His Spirit, or directed by influences alien and perhaps hostile to His gospel of humanity and human brotherhood. This task now awaiting the Church is part of its Catholic mission.
That mission means to bring the Kingdom of righteousness into vital touch with every department of human life. Righteousness in civic affairs encounters apathy and cowardice and debauching influences of personal and party interests. Has the Church’s contribution to the quality and achievements of citizenship been all it ought to have been? In this great city, what have been the fortunes of the ideal of civic righteousness, how that ideal has fared at the hands of the Church’s members, what has been their response to the demand of its vicissitudes of adversity, how thoroughgoing has been their loyalty, are questions I do not presume to discuss, for I may not claim to know the facts as do you of this diocese.
My contention in this connection is that the Catholic Episcopate ought to be a democratic Episcopate, with sympathy and solicitude for the people, on the side of right dealing on their behalf and justice to all. A Catholic Bishop is to be, not a partisan or demagogue, but a true democrat. As chief minister he ought to be one to whom there might well be recourse as to a kind of tribune of the people. So it was in ancient days. So it has been in our day more than once. It will be so again where there is a true shepherd of the people, in this as in all respects worthy to lead them out and on and up to better and to higher things.
When all is said, the momentous question for us is not so much what the Episcopate is ideally, as how it works in actual fact. That is likely to be according as its regard shall be less on itself than on its task, less on the title-deeds than how to till the field, less on a succession from the Apostles which few are greatly concerned to dispute, more on really being apostolic. The apostolic mission made the Body apostolic. As an organic instrument of that one Catholic and Apostolic Church, to serve its purposes, the Episcopate was primarily not so much magisterial as ministerial, and meant not mere superintendence of an organization but, much more, oversight of souls.
In brief, the ideal of the Episcopate is an ideal of service. The Bishop is a minister, servant, of God in Christ and Christ in men. That conception, loyally illustrated, not the conception of a prince-bishop or lord-bishop, is in consonance with the spirit of Him who said: “I am among you as one that serveth.” His overseer ought to be like Him, ought to know something of the nether side of human life, ought to be no stranger to its sorrows nor unacquainted with its griefs and its grievances, so as to be touched with a feeling of what the children of men have to undergo and bear.
This is often made well-nigh impossible by the administrative machinery encumbering the office. In making the Bishop a perhaps dignified but often overworked ecclesiastical official, charged with the supervision of many details of a wide-spread organization, there is risk of secularizing, desiccating, and devitalizing an organ of the Church that ought to prove fraught with rich contribution of spiritual life and power. It is making a bureaucratic functionary of one whose work ought to be chiefly pastoral, personal, and spiritual. The late Dr. Moberly said: “It is a serious thing indeed if, by impossible demands, we kill our Bishops. But it is more serious by far if, in any measure, we run the risk of killing the very conception of the ideal of bishopric.” There are, I am sure, possibilities for us in America, of further development and adaptation of the Episcopate as an organ of the Catholic Church to ensure fulness of ministration to humanity for Christ’s sake.
In this connection it is significant that we are gathered here for the Consecration, not of one man upon whom is to descend the obligation of a multifarious and hopeless task to labor at all kinds of things that must be done, but of two men, who, as time goes on, shall share the burdens of this metropolitan diocese. The office of Bishop Suffragan is new in this American Church. At the General Convention, in the debate regarding its introduction, much was said regarding the dignity of the Episcopal office. The essential dignity of the office of Bishop lies in its service to men. That is according to a divine standard of distinction. “If any man will be great among you, let him be your servant.” With whatever differences in function, the office of both these men now to be consecrated is to have its crown of fulfillment in service.
My Brothers, called to this ministration:
To be made a Bishop might mean, with a very small man, self-inflation. It may mean, as it has meant, uplift of a people nearer God. A genuine idealism, while it humbles the man, magnifies the office and multiplies its effective power. It has been my endeavor to suggest the Catholic ideal of the Episcopate. This makes the Bishop more than a superintendent or an executive, or any mere official or dignitary. It presents the office bound in with the Body and organically belonging thereto as an instrument of its purposes. This gives the office its essential character, if of dignity, yet also of responsibility, that upon an honest man will rest with heavy weight. Honos sed onus.
There will be differences of administration: but the office whereunto each of you is to be consecrated is one and the same. It is the one episcopate whereof part is held by each Bishop for the whole. It is an organ of the Body. It is for the sake of the Body. It is nothing in and for itself. It is nought, it is worse than nought, if it be not for service.
The ideal is so high and imperative, as it towers above one, that we instinctively cry: who is sufficient? Truly it is a solemn matter for one to occupy the Bishop’s chair. It recalls the Arthurian legend of the Seat Perilous, —
“Perilous for good and ill for there …
No man could sit but he should lose himself.”
The seat perilous! No less a Bishop than St. Chrysostom, you remember, thought not many Bishops would be saved. At any rate it is another instance of the Christian paradox: lose self to save self. In this hour when you are to be consecrated, let me ask each of you to remember how the chief Shepherd and Bishop of all souls “for their sakes” consecrated Himself. As in that hour into His, so now into your consecration, let there enter that willing and utter surrender of self for the sake of the brethren. Thus, losing self for His sake and the Gospel’s, find yourself and your power in the fulness of Him that filleth all in all.
