Untitled - Electric Scotland

4 8o LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP TAIT [CM. xvn.
\Yhilc his Charges were thus concerned with the larger
questions of the hour, they were characterised also by
careful and detailed suggestions as to practical ways of
meeting some of the difficulties of London parishes.
One
point on which he was fond of dwelling in those years, as
a means of giving greater effectiveness to parish work, was
the week-day opening of churches, both for short services
and for private prayer. The custom was far less common
then than it is now, and it is probable that his repeated
exhortations did not a little to promote the change. In
his private journal, when abroad, in the autumn of 1861,
he writes :-
there is of
"BRUSSELS, August 23, 1861.- I low little hope
Romanism reforming itself ! . . . I wish indeed we Protestants
could have its outward helps to religion in use among us short
services on week-days well attended ; churches used as houses of
should we not ? Our friends
prayer by the poor. And why
who revived daily services some twenty years ago committed a
mistake unless perhaps they could not do otherwise with the
then feeling of the Bishops when they established the long daily
service at inconvenient hours. \Yhat we want are short litanies
and hymns and expositions, to catch people as they go to and
from their work. How good it would be if we could have the
outward appearance and outward helps of religion which Romish
countries afford, and a pure reasonable Gospel service, and
real religious life promoted by them ! Well, there is good hope
for these things in England, and I may perhaps, (iod willing, do
somewhat to stir the clergy in these matter^."
He did
"
do somewhat in his public Charge of the
following year, when he spoke as follows :-
" And why should not our churches he open habitually, to
give the poor a quiet place for private prayer? How great is the
disadvantage under which they labour, deprived of the power of
retirement, exposed to ridicule or other interruptions
crowded ! . . . lodgings There
beginning from this point
in their
is everything to encourage us in
a renewed effort."
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