Victorian Clergy

The Perfect Occupation, or Not

Historian A. N. Wilson tells us what his dream job would have been, had he lived in the Victorian period.  Wilson is an historian of Marxist stripe.  He is not a Believer.  Nevertheless he writes:

It is difficult to conceive of any more agreeable way of life than that of the Victorian country parson.  If I had to choose my ideal span of life, I should choose to have been born in the 1830's, the son of a parson with the genetic inheritance of strong teeth. (Improvements in dentistry are surely among the few unambiguous benefits brought to the human race by the twentieth century.)

I should avoid a public school education through being 'delicate', and arrive at Balliol with a good knowledge of Greek to be taught by Benjamin Jowett. . . . After a short spell-say, five years-teaching undergraduates at the Varsity, one of them would introduce me to his pretty, bookish sister, and we should be married.  I should resign my fellowship and be presented with a college living, preferably a medieval church, a large draughty Georgian rectory and glebe enough to provide the family with 'subsistence'.  By now it would be, let us say, the 1860's, and I should remain here for the next forty years, a faithful friend to generations of villagers to whom I would act as teacher, amateur doctor and social worker, as well as priest.

My wife, cleverer than I, would read French, German and Italian with our innumerable children and be please when the daughters entered St Hugh's or Somerville.  Whether any of the sons--keen cyclists, antiquarians, butterfly-collectors and botanists all, like their father, all good at Latin and all admirers of William Morris and George Bernard Shaw--would follow me into a clergyman's career is unlikely, for we should all have Doubts, and the children, as they grew up, would be more honest than their father about expressing them.  Perhaps as the country parson, approaching fifty by the time of Disraeli's death, I would instinctively feel that I had entered upon a drama which was coming to an end; that the Age of Faith, embodied in the old medieval building where, every day, I read aloud from the Book of Common Prayer, had irrevocably been destroyed--whether by Capitalism, or Darwin, or Railways, or Imperialism, or a nebulous Zeitgeist, who could say?  [A. N. Wilson, The Victorians, (London: Arrow Books/Random House, 2002), p.425.]

This is a brilliantly painted portrait.  If one wanted an explanation as to why the Anglican Church is slowly becoming a necropolis, look no further.  For far too long the professional clergy in that church have not been required to be born again, to be true believers, to be regenerated by the Spirit of God.  At best the "faith" of such clergy has been an academic attachment, an intellectual habit, rather than a faith, let alone the Christian faith.  Being ordained into the clergy for many represented a mere career, rather than a divine calling.  Consequently, the Anglican Church has gradually ossified, and its clergy have gone down into its ossuary.

In stark contrast have been the "evangelicals"--Anglican clergy who have been true believers in the Messiah and His word.  They have been a minority within the Church of England from the eighteenth century onwards. 

Here is a brief bio of one of the great evangelicals, labouring at the same time as A. N. Wilson's fictitious (but accurately described) career as an Anglican clergyman.  The contrast could not be more striking.

John Charles Ryle was born of well-to-do parents at Macclesfield on 10 May 1816. After a period of private schooling, he entered Eton in February 1828, where he excelled at rowing and cricket. Going up to Christ Church, Oxford in October 1834, he continued his sporting prowess, and captained the First Eleven in his second and third years, achieving a personal 10-wicket bowling triumph in the 1836 Varsity match at Lords (which Oxford won by 121 runs).

Various circumstances and incidents in his own and others’ lives had awakened Ryle to the knowledge that all was not well with his soul, but matters came to a head not long before he took his Finals in 1837. He was struck down with a serious chest infection, and for the first time in fourteen years he turned to his Bible and prayer. Then one Sunday, arriving late to church he was in time to hear the reading of Ephesians chapter two. As he listened, he felt that the Lord was speaking directly to his soul. His eyes were opened when he heard verse 8, ‘For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.’ He was converted through hearing the Word of God, without comment or sermon.

Ryle took a first in Classics, but turned down the college fellowship which was offered. His intention was a career in politics, and he went to London to study law, thinking this would be a help to him. However, he had to give this up after six months due to a recurrence of his chest problems, caused by the London smog. When his father’s bank crashed in 1841, Ryle had to give up all hope of a political career, as he now had no money behind him.

With his Oxford degree, Ryle could enter the ministry of the Church of England, and it was to this he turned, being ordained by Charles Sumner, Bishop of Winchester on 21st December 1841. Long afterwards Ryle wrote, ‘I have not the least doubt, it was all for the best. If I had not been ruined, I should never have been a clergyman, never have preached a sermon, or written a tract or book.’

Ryle started his ministry as curate at the Chapel of Ease in Exbury, Hampshire, moving on to become rector of St Thomas’s, Winchester in 1843 and then rector of Helmingham, Suffolk the following year. While at Helmingham he married and was widowed twice. He began publishing popular tracts, and Matthew, Mark and Luke of his series of Expository Thoughts on the Gospels were published in successive years (1856-1858). His final parish was Stradbroke, also in Suffolk, where he moved in 1861, and it was as vicar of All Saints that he became known nationally for his straightforward preaching and firm defence of evangelical principles. He wrote several well-known and still-in-print books, often addressing issues of contemporary relevance for the Church from a biblical standpoint. He completed his Expository Thoughts on the Gospels while at Stradbroke, with his work on the Gospel of John (1869). His third marriage, to Henrietta Amelia Clowes in 1861, lasted until her death in 1889.

After a period as honorary canon of Norwich (1872), in 1880 Ryle became the first bishop of Liverpool, at the recommendation of Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. His episcopate was marked by his efforts to build churches and mission halls to reach the rapidly expanding urban areas of the city. He retired in 1900 at age 83 and died later the same year in Lowestoft. His successor in Liverpool described him as ‘the man of granite with the heart of a child.’

Needless to say, Ryle's faithful life did not end in the same way as A.N. Wilson's self-written, pre-death obituary.

. . . I would instinctively feel that I had entered upon a drama which was coming to an end; that the Age of Faith, embodied in the old medieval building where, every day, I read aloud from the Book of Common Prayer, had irrevocably been destroyed--whether by Capitalism, or Darwin, or Railways, or Imperialism, or a nebulous Zeitgeist, who could say?

With Ryle, we would say, the Age of Faith will return and conquer as Unbelief destroys itself, from within.  The sovereign power of the Spirit of the Living God will make it so.