XX

CHANGE AND CONTINUITY1

THE VOICE OF ONE SAYING, CRY. AND ONE SAID, WHAT SHALL I CRY? ALL flesh is grasS, AND ALL GOODLINESS THEREOF IS AS THE FLOWER OF THE FIELD: THE GRASS WITHERETH, THE FLOWER FADETH; BECAUSE THE BREATH OF THE Lord blowETH UPON IT : SURELY THE PEOPLE IS GRASS. THE GRASS WITHERETH, THE FLOWER FADETH: BUT THE WORD OF OUR GOD SHALL STAND FOR EVER.Isaiah xl. 6-8.

THE WORLD PASSETH AWAY, AND THE LUST THEREOF: BUT HE THAT DOETH The Will of God abideth for ever.—1 St. John ii. 17.

Two

1. RETROSPECT over so many centuries as are gathered into this Commemoration must needs be in the highest degree thought-provoking. reflections, perhaps, rise in the mind of every considering man as he joins in this service and hears the Preacher rehearse in stately sequence the famous names of "FOUNDERS AND BENEFACTORS "—how changeful is human life, how persistent is human faith. Change and continuity, change conditioning

1 Preached on the occasion of the COMMEMORATION OF FOUNDERS AND BENEFACTORS in Durham Cathedral, January 27, 1918, being the last occasion of my preaching as Dean of Durham.

continuity, continuity assimilating change-these are the two lessons of such a history as that which we recall to-day, and, in preaching the Commemoration Sermon, I desire to emphasize and interpret both. The passages from the Old Testament and from the New which I have united in the text serve to set forward with sublime impressiveness the conclusion to which we shall be brought.

2. And first of Change. Mortality implies mutation. The rapid succession of the generations changes the human agents, and it needs no words to point out the far-reaching consequences of that fact. Policies have their practical effect at least as much from those who must carry them out as from those who design them. Institutions are what men make them even more than what men meant them to be. There is no more pathetic contrast in the world than that between the intention of Founders and the actual character of their Foundations. For men have large plans and small vision, mighty ambitions and petty resources. They work always under sentence of death, and they cannot choose their successors. The formula of purpose may be unchanged, but the emphasis will vary. Even Divine Truth, as alone it reaches us, cannot stand outside this humbling necessity. "WE HAVE THE TREASURE IN EARTHEN VESSELS,"

says the Apostle. No two generations stand precisely on the same level, none is wholly intelligible to any other, though none is fully intelligible apart from the rest. For every generation succeeds to a situation created by its predecessors, and it must hand on in turn to its successor a situation which is altered, enriched by its labours and impoverished by its failures. Every man belongs to his own age, and is not wholly in harmony with any other. Life is a river in which no man twice dips his feet," said that ancient Greek thinker on whom the striking judgment has been passed that "he who once hears the sayings of HERACLITUS never forgets them for the rest of his life." 1

3. Next, of continuity, which, not less than change, is attested by this service. Which of us could have listened to that great succession of famous names from ST. CUTHBERT, who lies buried behind the Neville Screen, to Bishop WESTCOTT, whom many here can yet remember, and not feel his heart kindling with an exultant consciousness of the insignificance of Death and the conquering greatness of human Faith. What a various company all bound into a single purpose! What a multitude of contributory streams swelling the volume of a single

1 Vide ADAMS, Religious Teachers of Greece, p. 214.

river! The generations with their problems, conflicts, crises, exultations and despairs, their crimes and glories, pass, and before our awed and considering minds rises the spiritual Fact which unifies, interprets, pardons, rewards them all. "THE GRASS WITHERETH,

THE FLOWER FADETH: BUT THE WORD OF OUR GOD SHALL STAND FOR EVER." "THE WORLD PASSETH AWAY, AND THE LUST THEREOF BUT HE THAT DOETH THE WILL OF GOD ABIDETH FOR EVER."

4. Change and continuity, the very marks of life, are significantly pictured by this mighty and magnificent Cathedral, and suggestively preached by this annual Commemoration of Founders and Benefactors. On every side as you traverse these hallowed courts your eye encounters the memorials of a vanished past-here a fading fresco on the wall, and here a forlornly empty niche, and here again a pavement worn into grooves, where once knelt the pilgrims from far and near who came to pray at a Shrine which has gone. The great Church entombs an Epoch, and stands now in the eager toiling society of the North as the consecrated boulders of Stonehenge on the Wiltshire Downs, aloof, enigmatic, alone. That is one side of the Cathedral's witness, melancholy, perplexing, even full of deep dis

couragement: but the man who will receive no more deprives himself of the greater truth which DURHAM CATHEDRAL proclaims. The changes written on

this time-battered pile are less significant than the continuity which it attests. Religious fashion has altered, but not Religion: modes of expressing belief have changed, but not Faith: forms of discipline and government have no fixity, but morality and order stand. Faith persists in DURHAM, and the Worship of GOD in CHRIST has not failed, and the Preaching of the "WORD OF THE CROSS" to the sin-laden generations goes on. Here in the twentieth century, as in every previous century of its long record, DURHAM CATHEDRAL has called men and women, the creatures, servants, and victims of remorseless Time, to conquer their natural weakness, and on the wings of Faith to rise above and beyond this transitory scene to GOD, the Everlasting and Unchanging, from Whom they come, in Whom they live, to Whom in the end they shall surely return. "THE VOICE OF one saying, CRY. AND ONE SAID, WHAT SHALL I CRY? ALL FLESH IS GRASS, AND

ALL GOODLINESS THEREOF IS AS THE FLOWER OF THE FIELD: THE GRASS WITHERETH, THE FLOWER FADETH; BECAUSE THE BREATH OF THE LORD BLOWETH UPON IT: SURELY THE PEOPLE IS Grass.