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great authority, but that the former is fairly subject to criticism, and is far from being, in foro conscientia, of so binding a nature.

Moreover, the circumstances of such cases as we refer to are strangely exceptional. Who would expect the gross and palpable unfairness which has been shown of late by more than one episcopal administrator of justice, an unfairness so great that the secular power has been forced to interpose, and while correcting, to rebuke it? Who would expect that the fiercest assailants of the clergy should be found among those who ought to be the conservators of their rights? Yet this has proved to be the case on occasions which are still fresh in the memory of our readers. And not only so, but even the Church itself is attacked in its very fundamental principles; or if not directly assailed by any Bishop himself, such complicity manifested, by several, with those who are doing their best to undermine it as to involve them in the responsibility to as great an extent as if they were the original assailants.

Under such circumstances it becomes the bounden duty of the second Order to come forward in a prominent position which they would never be called upon to assume, if their superiors the Bishops were uniformly faithful to the trust committed to them. And if, in defending the Church itself, they are driven to oppose any of the Bishops, it is because those Bishops, through, 1st, indifference; 2ndly, ignorance of theology and ecclesiastical principles; 3rdly, the temptations of ambition; or 4thly, sheer corruptness of doctrine, are themselves wanting in loyalty to the Church of England. When a general of division declares himself either neutral or on the enemy's side, it is no longer the duty of inferior officers to resspect his authority. There is a conditional compact understood, if not expressed, in all such relations; and if the superior is avowedly disloyal to the authority from which he derives his commission, he must be opposed, in spite of all appearances, rather than the army itself be sacrificed to neutrality' or treachery.

Such we conceive to be the principles that justify the very decided position which the clergy are often obliged, or think themselves obliged, to assume towards their Diocesans in the present day. And identifying ourselves with them, as we always wish to do when the interests of the clergy coincide with those of the Church, such is our own justification for the line we have been driven to take on several recent occasions. If Bishops use the advantages which their high office and public position give them for the purpose of nurturing heresy and schism, under the misnomer of moderation; or for suppressing orthodox and pious uses through pandering to a public opinion which they are afraid to offend, we must do our best to protect the Church from those who ought to be, but are not, her chief champions and defenders.

We do not remember ever to have been called upon to do this so strongly as in the case of the Bishop of London. Coming to his office full of prejudice against the Church party, and possessed

of considerable energy, it has been his Lordship's endeavour from the first to put down by fair means and foul the Church movement which has been going on in his diocese for so many years. With large professions of impartiality he has shown himself in more distinctively party colours than any of the Palmerstonian prelates; and has provoked remarks on his partizanship in and out of Parliament, even from those who look with distaste on that school in the Church which he is so bent on opposing and persecuting. Backed by a powerful friend in the Bunsenism of a considerable party, and by a press which is consistently opposed to the developement of principles that do not fit in with the extreme worldliness of the day, the Bishop of London has ventured to perpetrate acts of which one could scarcely have believed an English Bishop to be capable; acts in which we hardly know which most to lament and reprobate, the unpaternal conduct shown towards his clergy, or the disrespect (to say the least one can say) to the Church of which his Lordship is a member, a ruler, and a guardian. The animus by which all this has been prompted is now more clearly manifested than it has hitherto been by the Charge which the Bishop delivered and published at his Primary Visitation on the 17th ult. As far as that Charge displays any theological principles at all it is distinctly Presbyterian; and as far as it points to any course of action on the part of its author, it manifests his determination to oppose and discourage by all means in his power the developement of Catholic doctrine and significant ritual, and to substitute in its place a Presbyterian Theology and an unmeaning worship, attractive only to the secular-minded multitudes of London.

Many, no doubt, will impute such a course as this to the prejudices of country and education,-for it must be remembered that the Diocese of London is not under the government of an Englishman, but we believe it to be merely a developement of the shrewd Scotch principle that it is safer and more advantageous to swim with the stream than against it. Not that we mean altogether to deny that Dr. Tait's Presbyterianism has a foundation in conviction ;1 but only to judge from the course of events, and from his own words in Parliament, that he is desirous of sailing in the same boat with the Times newspaper and other followers of that public opinion, the worship of which seems to be in the eyes of ambitious men, their only hope of success and advancement. Whatever be the motives which are impelling his Lordship's course, (and we do not want to be uncharitable in imputing them) certain it is that the Charge which has just been delivered might as well have appeared, as far as its principles are concerned-as a series of leaders in one of the popularity-hunting newspapers as in its present form. Indefinite in everything but the determination to put down those who maintain the Catholic doctrine of the English Church instead of an

The parents of the Bishop of London are, we believe, Presbyterians to this day.

Anglicized Presbyterianism, it is worded from beginning to end in such phraseology as is best calculated to make it favourably received by that large class of business men whose great dislike is to have positive religion or positive duties set before them. And indeed, so eager is the Bishop to get the rich and worldly city men over to his side, that when speaking of the diminished Church income of the metropolis, he actually ventures to say, "I know that the wealthy laity of this metropolis deplore this state of things;" as if he did not know that the wealthy laity are responsible for a state of things which they could alter directly if they had the will; and as if he wished altogether to ignore what Mr. Cotton (himself a city man) had told his Lordship in public quite recently, that only about 2,000 laymen in all London can be asked for money for Church purposes with any hope of success. It is not, however, the spirit of the age to rebuke Dives, and the Bishop of London will not so far fall into a mistake as to exercise his pastoral function of censure the successful merchants and bankers of his flock. Curates are to be persecuted, and independent rectors are to be threatened for their independence, but irreligious wealth must receive the politest of episcopal bows, and be suffered to repose in the selfsatisfying credit of 'deploring' and 'feeling' for a state of things which they will not turn hand or foot to remedy by practical sympathy. How miserable a policy is this, when the truth requires to be told in an outspoken manner by the chief pastor of the chief diocese in England; when he ought to be showing boldly that the present depression of the Church, or "spiritual destitution," in London arises in a chief degree from the worldliness of the middle classes, eaten up as they are with the desire of making money for their own luxuries, and in nine cases out of ten, caring for nothing else than self-gratification. It is open to every one's view that their luxury and self-indulgent habits are increasing more and more every year; that the expenses in which they are involved by such habits lead to a demoralization in business transactions which has brought positive disgrace on the mercantile, banking, and trading communities; and it is notorious that the frauds actually laid hold of by the law are only a small portion of a system which is eating into commercial life like a canker. For all this the Bishop has not a word. It is his cue to win the very class which is guilty of extravagant luxury and questionable commerce as auxiliaries in the work of putting down High Church principles. Those among the more wealthy classes who answer to the "vestrymen" in a lower stage of mercantile society are the very men for his Lordship's purpose; and to offend them by pointing out that it is their selfishness which causes 66 spiritual destitution," to alienate the Times and the Daily News, to thin his ranks of those who command the purse and therefore the press of London, by telling them their faults, would be to forfeit the glib support of metropolitan public opinion, which an unrighteous cause cannot afford to lose.

With such a basis of principles to go upon, the pith of his Lordship's Charge would of course be a denunciation of those who are endeavouring to restore real life to the Church in London, and to do something more than merely carry out the French-polish system of religion with which the middle classes of London varnish over their rottenness. Ritual practices, looking chiefly to the glory of GOD, are not to the taste of those whose endeavour is to make everything look to their own gratification and magnify their own importance; searching systems of self-discipline do not suit the every-day life of your by-no-means-overscrupulous but prosperous man of business. What this class of people want is a form of religion in which they are not driven to obliterate their self-consequence, in the first place; and which, in the second place, is just enough to make them comfortable in the thought that they are not entirely negligent of those religious duties which every "respectable character" ought to engage in, without arousing in them any severe criticism of their own actual position in life and death. Such a demand for religious French-polish the Bishop of London is prepared to meet by the supply of a Church of England system wholly emasculated of sacerdotal principles.

"It would be foolish as well as useless to attempt to conceal or overlook the fact that there are churches in this as in other dioceses in which ritual observance is carried to an unwise extreme. None, indeed, but those who are afflicted with a morose Puritanism will deny that architecture and music, and the decorative arts, may well be used in the cause of the Gospel. Our worship also will be none the less spiritual because that part of it, which is necessarily ceremonial, is clothed with the grave comeliness which recommends itself to persons of refined minds. When our Church purified itself from the corruptions of Romanism it raised no protest, such as some other Reformed Churches have raised, against the system which had come down from remote antiquity, of enlisting on the side of CHRIST the majestic or lovely beauty of the arts-if by any means the eye, as well as the ear and the intellect, might become a help to the soul's spiritual emotions. Witness our great cathedrals, with their majestic services, which our Reformers, instead of demolishing that they might build conventicles in their place, but purified of the dross, the hay, and the stubble, and the tawdry decorations of a sensuous worship, that the fine gold of the Gospel might hereafter be encased in such a chastely simple but beautiful setting as well accorded with its purity. Who has not felt, in rigid Presbyterian countries, that a mistake has been made in this respect? Indeed, the most rigid Puritans have now learned that there is no connection between want of taste and the pure Gospel; and those who wish a national Church to be really national will always be very cautious that there shall be as little as possible in its forms or in its teaching harshly to check those aspirations of the heart and intellect, which, as they have nothing in them that is sinful, will (many not unnaturally expect) receive their highest developement at the coming of the LORD JESUS

CHRIST, when all creation is made fit to welcome Him its King. And as great Universities, where science and literature are nourished, and beautiful cathedrals where Christian worship is offered up with splendour, have always been regarded as integral parts of our reformed national system; so it is, of course, well that the buildings and the worship of our quiet parochial churches also, without falling into any foolish mimicry of cathedrals, should be beautiful of their kind, and that their music should be refined as well as solemn and hearty. As the sermons which are preached within them will lose nothing of their heart-stirring Gospel force by being well composed and well spoken, so will our distinct acts of prayer and praise lose nothing of their spirituality because their adventitious accompaniments are beautiful as well as grave.". Pp. 30-32.

Now the plain meaning of all this is that our churches are to be pleasing to us rather than offensive. With the exception of the caution about harshly checking aspirations of a higher character, (a sentence strangely discordant with the whole tone of the Charge,) there is not a word which will fairly bear a more elevated application. The 'worship' of the Diocese of London is to be clothed with exactly that amount of comeliness which recommends itself to persons of refined minds. There must be nothing ugly about the pews or the galleries in London churches; the organs must be in good tune; and the young ladies who occupy the singing-lofts must be careful never to let the ears of their prosperous patrons below be jarred by false notes. Rectors, vicars, perpetual curates, and curates (when the latter are allowed to do anything more than 'read') must mind and preach acceptable sermons which will gain them a "character for eloquence;" and as even "the most rigid Puritans have now learned that there is no connexion between want of taste and the pure Gospel," they must take care and make the 'pure Gospel" always palateable to their hearers by moulding it into indefinite sentences of unexceptionable grammatical construction. The beadle's coat and hat must be well brushed, and the pew-opener's caps made of "comely" lace. As florid Presbyterianism and not "rigid Puritanism" is just now the taste of the multitude, this is to be the basis of London teaching and practice,—Dr. Blair in a carved pulpit, a Scotch meeting-house with a chancel full of poppy-head stalls for the ladies. No wonder the Bishop of London considers our modern form of Cathedral quires to mark the extreme of ritual developement. It is painfully notorious that the one idea of most cathedral singers is that of singing to the dean and chapter; and this is evidently the reason, in Dr. Tait's opinion, for the preservation of the majestic services in cathedral churches. Taking things in due proportion one with another, no doubt the services are majestic enough for such a purpose; and if it is considered that ordinary flesh and blood is of much smaller consequence than decanal and capitular, the peopleolatry "clothed

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