The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1868-11-07 00:00:00

"FATHER IGNATIUS."

The Rev. Joseph Leycester Lyme, otherwise "Father
Ignatius," preacheti on Sunday last, in his oddly-chosen pulpit
in Lombard-street, Loudon. The very sleepy and humdrum
fa,hion in which Divine service is got through at the Church
if St Edmund, King and Martyr, with St. Nicholas Aeons,
Sunday after Sunday, when the mild young monk of the
English Benedictine Order is not the star there, account:: for
I the great discrepancy between the congregations at different
times remarks a London contemporary'. On Sunday morn-
ing last, for example, the church was not half nor a quarter
filled, hut in the evening, when Ignatius was the attraction,
' there was no space to pack the smallest umbrella. Mr. Lyne
. looking more than ever like one of the saintly personages of
pre- Kaphaelite art, took in hand the reading of the prayers,
which was a decided relief from the grating voice and slip.
slop pronunciations of the young clergyman who formerly
officiated at the reading desk. On the whole, the sermon in
the evening, may fairly be pronounced the best of the course
hitherto preached by Mr. Lyric, in the Lombard-street pulpit.
There was more strong meat in the discourse, and there was
less—althottgh there was some—of the silly, nursery-governess
easy-lessons-foryoung-beginners style of argument, which
makes a certain claas of hearers giggle and titter, and all
others feel uncomfortable.

--Tice-teXiv;L-taken from the 27th verse of the 12th chapter
of St. Mark : "lie is not the God of the dead, but the God of
the living. Ye therefore do greatly err." Ile remarked that
the Roman Catholics are commonly accused of worshipping
dead nien and women ; and he dented that the saints were
dead. They are, said he, alive In fifty times a deeper sense
than we are. If any of you in this church he continued,
think that the saints are in any sense dead, ye do greatly err,
If they are dead Christ is dead, and we alone poor mortals
are living. That day, Mr. Lyne next reminded his congrega-
tion, was the Festival of All Saints. Although throeghout
the Christian year our Church calls together us her children
to celebrate particular saints, there are tens of thousands of
God's own saints throughout all ages who are of necessity
left us-named in the calendar. All these were gathered, he
sold, in one day's celebration. Latest of all who had been
added to their number, said Mr. Lytle, was that good captain
taken from the front of the fight when the Church most
needed a guiding hand.
After a fitting tribute to the lamented Archbishop of
Canterbury, the preacher divided the rest of his dinourse
into four heads ; First, were the saints alive? This question
he dimissed cursorily; foe the tent was in itself a sufficient
confutation of the idea that they are dead. The other three
points were, that the saints are in some respects like us; that
In other respects they are nnlike as ; and that they are of
use to us. The saints are like us, Mr. Lyne asserted, Man-
much as they retain their individuality and their affections ;
and of this assertion he gave scriptural proofs. They are
elflike us, because their life in Christ is not shackled by time
and space; and, because, too, there was once a filthy burden
which they dragged after them as they wallowed and
staggered through the foul ways of the world. The flesh
was :his burden, which they had cost off; but in speaking
of the flesh, said Mr. Lyne, I do not speak of the lady, for
this is redeetned. I speak of what is gross and sensual, and
of that antagonistic principle which opposes all our efforts
after light and life. It was in speaking smiler the fourth
head, the use that the saints are to on, that" Father Igna-
tius" most boldly came out from his Low Church ambuscade.
He said that to reject the abl of the saints in prayer was an
act of folly parallelled by that of a mall with one bad leg,
who should declare the sound leg to be of no service to him.
We are the unhealthy limb of the Church of Christ, and the
saints in heaven are the healthy limb.
. . ..• .• .

in touching on the question. of images and symbols, Mr.
Lyne denied that idolatry, in the sense in which that word is
generally used, can exist in English minds. lie ridiculed
the absurdity of supposing that our countrymen could
worship stocks and stones but he said they were foolishly
prejudiced against nionuments of their saints, while they per-
peto.dod the memory t.tch.ful ro,. to 0,111,1 like, he said,
to g.,SOLO CL. ali,l SStLehlL,St I Aioapc,y, aliuti.cr to
pieces those idols raised to earthly glory and the lust of con-
quest. Suppose that the statue at the end of Cheapside—
" Pitt," Mr. Lyne called it, in scornful forgetfulness that it
records the City's grateful memoiy of Peel—were removed,
and a cross substituted, there would be a howl of offended
Protestantism front one end o, the land to the other.
_ .

ith a fervent advocacy of the real interposition of cur
friends and relations, the saints, who are of our kin from
Atom, and whore prayers to the Throne of Grace must be of
greater efficacy than the prayers of our friends and relations
still ,iurdened and dragged down by the flesh, Mr. Lyric con-
chmod a very eloquent sermon. There was a crowd of some
two or three hundred persons outside, whose noisy behaviour
during the service was little checked by the police.