The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-12-07

His Subject Was "The Layman" and the
 Address Was n Remarkably Interest
 ing One-The Importance of the Lny-
 man to the Christian World Strongly
 Brought Out.
 Bishop E-oane of Albany delivered a stirring address before the members of the Church Club of Connecticut, Tues day evening at their quarterly meeting held in the Hotel Davenport. Bishop Doane chose for his text ''The Layman" and spoke as follows;
 THE AMMAN.
 There is a certain confusion or ideas about the meaning of the word "order' which grows out of variety of use; as, for instance, in the preface to the or dinal and in the rules of the House or Deputies of the General Convention. In one case the three orders mean Bish- ops, Priests and Deacons. In the other case, the two orders mean Clergy and Laity And this 1.-two orders' is supple mented by the fact, that the Bishops must vote with the other two orders to pSCuIc Slly plcltu dCliOlis oo thSi V are three orders in each case, Bishops, Priests and Deacons; and Bishops, Clergy and Laity; and both are right And further than that, is that queer distortion of primitive polity which has grown out of the exaltation of the Bish- op of Rome. Our Roman friends, while they get rid of the Order of Bishops, who are only papal friars, and to have only two clerical orders, have taken on good deal at the other end in the way of sub-deacons, acolytes, &c., of what they call minor orders. I want to speak here tonight to laymen and about lay men, as an order in the church, and by no means a minor order, but one of the three essential strains in that three fold chord, which makes the church consist of the episcopate, the presbyter ate and the laity. I do not know, and do not believe anybody knows wheth- CT the 'kai" in the 18th chapter of the Book of Acts belongs there or not. If it does, We have in the very first cor porate action of the Church bishops and priests and laymen. And if it does not belong there, why the fact stands all the same, only this is no proof-text for it.. It seems to me fit subject for our talk tonight, the layman, because this paper proposes only to be the introduce tory address, in a gathering where bishops are only present on suffrance, where the other clergy come only by invitation, and where the layman pre- dominates and presides and controls. And I think it a fit subject, not because it gives an opportunity to lecture the layman, (we do a good deal too much of that on Sundays) but because the laymen that are here, and the fact that they are here, make the object-lesson of the address, and fit in and fill it up, like illustrations to the letter press in the modern magazine, in which the pie lures are far and away the best part of the article. I want to consider the lay man first per SC, and then in his rela- tion to the parson, to the bishop, to the Church, and to the Master
 Now the layman per SC as a genus, is difficult to classify, to describe, or to explain. He means, of course, derlva- tively,a man of the people, but this helps us very little. You cannot find him un- der this name in the Bible. There he is spoken of generally as 'Adelphos." And the title implies what needs clearing up and protesting against; namely, the theory of a sort of caste business, by which the clergy are shut off and separ- ated from everybody else like the Brahmins and the Oriental Mystics. There is mo greater or more fatal folly than this. When clergyman thinks this for himself he has lost either his mind or his good sense; and when the people think that of any clergyman, they have no further use for him. I have no doubt that there were times, when the world was so bad, that the life of the anchorite was the only safe life for some people; but even in the monasteries there were lay-brothers. Simeon Stylites may be canonized on his pillar; but I think if the advocatus populi had had the other side of the question, instead of the advocatus dia- boil, he would have stayed on his pillar, and would not have been pinnacled among the saints. I believe intensely in the need and value, and feel all their dangers and difficulties, of orders of men and women living under rule, but this does not necessarily mean unman- ming a man or unwomanning a woman,
 
 into a machine. The cloistered nun or the monk of mere meditation is an anachronism. And the Priest or Bish- op to-day who Is not in and of and among the people, has either missed or mistaken the meaning of his vocation. I know this a somewhat bald and bare statement. I recognize the constant tendency to worldliness in the ministry of to-day, it's lack of spirituality, it's lack of withdrawal for study, its lack of leisure for meditation and prayer. I realize, too, the fondness that some ministers have for meddling with all sorts of things, except the Christian re- ligion. And I feel deeply the danger of their having all the best life in them crushed out by the wheels within wheels of endless parochia machinery. I wish there were less of these things, or at least, more leisure from them you can't oil a wheel on the axle in mo- tion; and the soul gets its amounting of the first in retirements and retreats. I believe no clergyman ought to be any where, where he is not instantly recog- nized as such by the kind of place he is in, and by his dress and his walk and his conversation. l believe that we ought to feel more than we do, that |