BISHOPS AND PEOPLE
‘I exhort … that … prayers … be made … for all that are in authority.’
It is a hard thing to be in authority. The man in authority must live his whole life in the fierce glare of public criticism. It also appears hard to realise that we have a duty to those in authority. The man in authority seems so far removed from us, so independent of anything that we can do. Yet we have such a duty—a practical duty expressed by St. Paul in his exhortation to prayer for those in high places.
I. The authority of bishops.—May I beg you to apply what I have said to bishops, not because I desire to unduly magnify the office of the episcopate, but because bishops need the prayers of the faithful for the right performance of their public duties. They are men in authority. Whatever may be thought of episcopacy as being of the esse of the Church, facts are stubborn things, and it is a fact that great authority is entrusted to a bishop.
(a) The greatest authority of the bishops is based upon the bishop’s relationship to the great Head of the Church. A bishop may be nominated to his high office by the Crown—as in England. He may be elected by the people—as in Australia. He exercises his episcopal authority primarily neither for the Crown nor for the people, but for the great Bishop of our souls. So necessarily a bishop’s authority in its highest sense is pastoral.
(b) A bishop has authority also as a custodian of the faith. Upon him more than upon others is laid the duty of banishing and driving away ‘erroneous and strange doctrine.’
II. The responsibility of the people.—I have not scrupled to indicate how weighty is the responsibility of a bishop. Have you no responsibility? Consider the duty of praying for bishops in the light of present needs.
(a) Pray that the bishops may have alert and unprejudiced minds. Age gives wisdom, but it does not always give the open child-like mind to catch the whisper of God’s voice.
(b) Pray that the bishops may have courage to speak and to act without fear or prejudice. This is not easy to do. It demands courage from a bishop to do his duty in England to-day without fear or prejudice, and he is strangely constituted who has never felt the dread of adverse public opinion, so often blind and cruel in its force. Yet if they fear men they are not the servants of Christ Jesus. Pray, therefore, that those in authority in the Church may be without fear.
(c) Above all, pray that they may have a complete and compelling adherence to the Blessed Lord. Wisdom is good. Courage is good. The heritage of the past, the opportunities of the present, the hopes of the future, stimulate and uplift our lives, but these are vain without Him in whom we live, and move, and have our being.
—Bishop G. H. Frodsham.
Illustration
‘More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore let thy voice
Rise like a fountain for me, night and day.
For what are men better than sheep or goats
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer.’