equally remarkable with S. Paul's and S. Barnabas' for making no advance." I have no desire to see a code established of unbending uniformity, so that the Church's Service should be at all times, and at all places, absolutely the same. We must accept it as a fact that, according to men's differences in intellectual and æsthetic culture, their tastes differ exceedingly. What to one seems noble and grand simplicity, to another seems dry, cold, poor; what to one seems gorgeous and impressive, is condemned by another as meretricious, childish, sensual. It is true Christian wisdom to make the accessories of religion attractive to the people to whom it is offered; attractive in the way their tastes demand. At present our Church's rules allow of considerable diversity, nor should I object to see greater latitude on some points permitted by lawful authority. But I do object to each priest's being permitted to select from antiquity a ritual for himself uncontrolled either by rubric or by the authority of his ordinary. Public worship could not be conducted if the people shewed as little regard for the wishes of the clergyman as he sometimes does for theirs. He may choose that the Litany shall be sung, but how can it be sung if each person insists on singing to a tune of his own? There have been sneers in abundance at the "aggrieved parishioner;" but it is surely a real practical grievance that the clergyman should have power to revolutionize the services of his church in a manner most distasteful and offensive to his congregation, and that they should have no remedy unless they choose to turn God's house into a bear garden, and His service into brawling and contention.* Since the above was written it has received a striking illustration from the letter in which Mr. Hubbard, the patron and founder of the Church of St. Alban, Holborn, "challenges the sympathy and assistance" of his Bishop because of the "persistent introduction of strange and obsolete practices" by an incumbent who, at the time of his appointment, had given Mr. Hubbard an "earnest assurance of his wish to carry on the work in accordance with his desire as far as he possibly could," and of his endeavour "to act as a true and faithful priest of the Church of England with prudence and discretion." The language with which Mr. Hubbard closes his letter to the Bishop of London is nearly identical with that employed in the text: "In these days it would be as impolitic as unjust to narrow the liberty of either the clergy or the laity of our Church; but liberty must not degenerate into licence. No Church, no corporation, no society can exist without order and without law; and it must be decided whether, consistently with order, law, and the uniformity which results from them, individuals can be permitted to act independently of all authority and opinion but their own." Public sympathy is now generally against any interference of authority with individual liberty; but this is a matter where the liberty of the clergyman is the slavery of the people. If he be exempted from all control of rubric or Bishop, the people must either acquiesce in what they will often regard as a total change of the religion taught in their church, or else absent themselves from the houses where they and their fathers have been wont to worship, and their right to a continued use of which, on the same terms, is involved in the very notion of an Establishment. It is no wonder, then, that an Establishment should not be in favour with the party of which I am speaking, and that they should express their desire to see the Church relieved from the fetters which State connexion imposes on it. But I am persuaded that when the matter is examined into, it will be found that what is really objected to is often not limitations imposed by the State on Church authority, but the power, limited as it is, which State connexion gives to Church officers to enforce obedience. The ideal of many is a Church completely on the voluntary system, where the priest, supported by liberal offertories from his congregation, should be absolutely uncontrolled by any external authority. If a Bishop thoroughly agree with him, he will gladly accept so respectable a leader; if the Bishop disapprove of his proceedings, he does not desire to trouble himself about him, unless he happen to want ordination for a curate. This conception, however, could only be carried out on the system of the Independents; for if the Church of England, though separated from the State, were to remain together as one body, it is probable that the vote of a considerable majority would impose on individual liberty restrictions quite as severe as any which the law of the land imposes at present. I cannot help branding as schismatical a conception which reduces the Church from an organised body to a mere name for a collection of independent Presbyters, each teaching and acting as he pleases. One is reminded of Lord Amberley's proposal of an Established Church, completely relieved from the incumbrance of creeds, each of whose teachers was left completely free, and in which, if I remember right, even the existence of a God was to be an open question. The toleration taught by some of the Ritualist divines resembles much more the latitudinarianism of Lord Amberley than the comprehensiveness of Christian charity. They tell us that they only claim the right to wear chasubles themselves, but have no wish to force their neighbour to do so against his conscience. They have no desire to persecute or to turn others out of the Church. "We look on the Church as a great hospital, meant for the cure of all spiritual ailments, and especially for that zymotic disorder called Protestantism. The prospect of cure within the walls is, we believe, far greater than it is for out-patients, and therefore while not willing to relax unduly the necessary regulations of the house, we should never think of turning out some poor cretin whose faculties allow him to count up to exactly Thirty-nine Articles and no more." (The Church and the World,' third series, p. 66.) No one understands the first principles of toleration, who holds that all who do not agree with himself must be either idiots or knaves. I reverence the toleration which springs from Christian charity, which can recognise in men of other theological schools real love for Christ and zeal for His cause, and can therefore cheerfully own them as brethren, because it is felt that the points of agreement are vastly more important than those of difference. But I have no respect for the toleration which springs from indifference or from weakness. If you refuse to own men as brethren, if you treat them as deniers of vital truth, if, when you acquit them of wilful dishonesty, you insultingly excuse them on the ground of intellectual feebleness or stupid ignorance, and yet are content that they should remain authorised teachers of the same Church as yourself, it cannot but be thought that the reason either is, because you are not strong enough to enforce as you would wish the "necessary regulations of the house," or because you are indifferent to the organic unity of the Church, and, provided you can keep your own conventicle open to teach in it what you believe to be truth, are not concerned in what is taught by others, with whom, though nominally your fellowpresbyters, you have no real connexion. I could give other illustrations of the prevalence of schismatical tendencies at the present day; but I content myself with those which I have produced: namely, that men who speak with contempt and abhorrence of the Reformers and the Reformation, quietly remain in the position in which the Reformation placed them, and seem unconscious that a causeless breach of the Church's unity can be visited with any penalties: that they transfer their allegiance from living Bishops to dead ones, who give very little trouble, who will speak exactly when they are required to speak, and will make no remonstrance when they are neglected: and that they act as if they supposed the power of instituting rites and ceremonies to belong not to the Church, but to each individual clergyman. Men who act thus are most unfairly accused of Romanizing tendencies, because none are less likely than they to submit themselves to the Church of Rome, which they could not join without exchanging self-will for obedience, and coming under the dominion of a fixed code instead of being allowed to devise one for themselves. GEORGE SALMON. |