Evensong at the Temple Church

Seated amid a formidable array of law lords, other judges, barristers, bishops and their wives, I tried not to feel intimidated. We were at the Temple Church, outwardly a haven of cloistered tranquillity just off Fleet Street in London, to celebrate the life of Richard Hooker, author of The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity and for six years Master of the Temple.

The "Judicious Hooker", as he is described in his epitaph, and who died in November 1600, would preach in the morning, often in praise of church music, "driving on a whole flock of several clauses before he came to the close of a sentence," according to one observer. In the afternoon, until he was banned by Archbishop Whitgift, his rival Walter Travers would ascend into the pulpit where he would "out-Calvin Calvin". During these hostilities, the Temple Church was packed to overflowing.

The service began as it continued, with an indescribably beautiful Tallis introit from the choir: "E’en like the hunted hind the water brooks desire, E’en thus my soul, that fainting is, to thee would fain aspire." We confessed our manifold sins and wickedness. Receive knowledge rather than choice gold, we heard in our reading from Proverbs. "For wisdom is better than rubies, and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it."

As the choir sang the Magnificat, we were reminded of Hooker’s words: "What disorder is it if these few Evangelical Hymns which are in no respect less worthy and may be by reason of their paucity imprinted with much more ease in all men’s memories, be for that cause every day rehearsed?" The Archbishop of York, Dr David Hope, preached. "The Church of England was no new invention," he said. "Hooker vigorously promoted the Church of England’s continuity with the Church of the Middle Ages and the early Fathers." Certain knowledge is not given to us in our earthly pilgrimage, he continued. Probability is our only guide.

As we rose for the final hymn, All people that on earth do dwell, I could almost hear the judges around me thinking that, probably, this much was true. The final of The Times Preacher of the Year Award takes place this Wednesday, December 6, at Walsall Central Hall Methodist Church, 1.30pm. Admission free.

VENUE: The Temple Church, Temple, Fleet Street, London
MASTER: The Rev Robin Griffith-Jones
ARCHITECTURE: Perfectly ordered 12th-century Round Church with 13th-century chancel
SERMON: Authoritative treatise on the nature of Church
MUSIC: Choir of men and boys maintained by Inns, directed by Stephen Layton
LITURGY: Choral evensong from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer

Ruth Gledhill, writing in The Times, December 2000

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