THE IDEAL PUBLIC WORSHIP BILL.
WE have more than once indicated the direction which legislation ought to take, with the view of composing the Ritual disputes which promise to become more abundant every day. The main principle to be kept in view is one which has absolutely nothing in common with that on which the Public Worship Regulation Act was founded. That Act assumed that there existed in the Book of Common Prayer an order of ritual which the great majority of English congrega- tions wished to see obeyed to the letter. What was wanted, in order to secure obedience to it, was first, a cheap and cer- tain procedure for ascertaining the law on any disputed cere- mony; and next, a cheap and easy method of punishing any misguided incumbent who should be wrongheaded enough to continue the ceremony in question, after it had been declared illegal. To what extent these expectations have been fulfilled everybody knows. If persistence in a ceremonial which has been declared illegal constitutes wrongheadedness, Mr. Mackonochie is the most wrong-headed of men ; but for all that, he is still at St. Alban's, nor can it be said that he has been left there by the contempt or connivance of the opposite party. "Martin v. Mackonochie" promises to occupy a position second only to the Tichborne case in the annals of contemporary jurisprudence, and unless lawyers have done their work for nothing, somebody must have paid several very handsome bills of costs. This is not simply an accidental failure, it is only the most conspicuous out of several ; and there is no case that we know of that can be quoted as at all equally decisive on the other side. It is plain, therefore, that the attempt to put down Ritualism by Act of Parliament has completely failed, and this circumstance in itself supplies a reason for considering whether the failure may not be due to a wrong conception, in the first instance, of the limitations of which legislation on such a question must necessarily take account.
We must say at starting that we have never questioned for a moment the power of the nation to put down Ritualism in the Anglican Establishment. Two things only are wanted to secure 'this consummation. The first is that the nation should be in .earnest in willing the end ; the next is that the nation sheuld be in earnest in willing the means. When the Public Worship Regulation Bill was before the House of Commons, the first ,of these conditions seemed to be attained. The majorities by which the Bill was passed were exceedingly large ; the temper -of the House was, to all appearance, exceedingly resolute ; the attitude of the Members was that of men who felt that, what- ever they might themselves think about the question, their constituents were in no mood to be trifled with. Whether at this time the nation was really determined to put down Ritua- dism, must remain uncertain ; but the problem is deprived of its importance by the discovery that the nation is certainly not disposed to use the means with which the Legis- lature has furnished it. Such a discovery naturally sug- gests a doubt whether the principle on which the abortive Act is founded was really as popular as it was supposed to be. is it true that there exists in the Book of Common Prayer an order of ritual which the great majority of English congrega- tions wish to see obeyed to the letter The experience of the last four years has shown that, though the order of ritual may exist, the desire to see it obeyed is entirely wanting. Nor is this in the least wonderful. The ritual of the Prayer-Book is the work partly of the sixteenth century, partly of the seven- teenth. The century to which it has to be applied is the nineteenth. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the great desire of the authorities in Church and State was to construct a ceremonial which, to use a phrase common thirty years ago, should be equally removed from Rome and Geneva. The congregations of the present day are made up of three prin- cipal classes of persons, not one of whom is in accordance with the habits of mind that prevailed either in Edward Ws or in in Charles IL's age. One class thinks that the Prayer-Book went a great deal too near Geneva ; a second thinks that it did not go far enough from Rome ; and even the third, which still prefers a service that shall be distinct from either, likes both to add to, and to subtract from, the particular compro- mise which the fathers of the Anglican Church invented for their spiritual descendants. The result of all this is, that a service precisely modelled on the directions given in the Book of Common Prayer would be a service which every human being who attended it would wish to change in some re- spect. The Ritualist would like to make it more Catholic. The extreme Evangelical would like to make it more Protestant. The man who boasts that he is a plain Church of England man, with no taste for extremes of either sort, would like to make it more elastic, or more popular, or less dogmatic. But no one member of the Church of England—,except, possibly, Mr. Beresford Hope—wishes to make it precisely what it was in any given year between 1552 and 1662. Yet, if the Prayer- Book is strictly obeyed, that, and nothing else, is what the Church of England service must be made. An excess of ritual must be docked off here ; a defect in ritual must be made good there. The " Agnus Dei "must be forbidden in one church ; the hymn before sermon must be forbidden in another. The man who thinks the surplice Anglican must be denied the coat of many colours which his soul loves. The man who cherishes a secret suspicion that the surplice is Popish must be denied that Geneva gown which is indissolubly associated in his mind with the preaching of the pure Word. In short, everybody will be asked to accept some one else's annoyance, in lieu of his own gratification, and every manger will have its occupying dog.
The rational alternative to a compromise which no one really desires is for Parliament to give up all thought of enforcing uniformity of ritual, and to content itself with ensuring that, so far as is possible, no congregation shall have a ritual which it dislikes forced upon it. At both ends of the Church, congregations are liable to be placed in this unpleasant position. A Ritualist incumbent succeeds a Low Churchman, and forthwith positions, dresses, music are all changed. For a year or two, perhaps, there is more or less of a conflict in the parish ; but after that time, those to whom the change was distasteful either come to like the innovations, or go off to another church, in which they can still get the kind of service they like, and a congregation gradually grows up to which the new ritual is thoroughly grateful. Then an Evangelical incumbent succeeds the Ritualist, and the whole process is reversed. Once more the existing congregation is offended and scattered, until in course of time an Evangelical congregation is again got together. Both these cases yield a fair cause of griev- ance. So long, no doubt, as such very opposite views are contained within one and the same Church, there must be some cases of hardship. But the hardship might be very much lessened. An incumbent can have no right to force alterations down the throats of his congregation ; a minority of a congregation can have no right to impose its wishes upon the majority ; a majority of a congregation can have no right to prevent the minority from getting what it wishes, if it can be done without inconvenience to the majority. The application of these three rules to Ritual controversies would have a wonderfully calming effect. The first two might be reduced to practice by a provision that no deviation from the ritual already established in any church should be per- mitted without the consent of two-thirds, say, of the habitual congregation. The third rule might be reduced to practice in part by a provision that the two first should only be applicable to a fair proportion of the services held in the church, and in part by freedom being left to the minority to maintain a chapel of ease, in which services to their taste should be performed by a curate appointed by the incumbent, but nominated and paid by the congregation. Let us take an imaginary case, and see how these rules would affect it. We will assume that a Ritualist clergyman has succeeded an Evangelical, and wishes to introduce a highly ornate and symbolical ceremonial. He submits the change to the congre- gation, and finds that only a fifth of them are in favour of it, and the change is not made. Hitherto, however, there have been services on Sunday only, at 11 a.m. and at 7 p.m., and there has been no celebration, except at the 11 o'clock service, on the first Sunday in the month. No injury, therefore, will be done to the majority of the congregation by the use of additional ritual at additional services. They have not been accustomed to early celebrations on any Sunday, or to late celebrations except on the first Sunday in the month ; consequently the incumbent may be left perfectly free to please the fifth part of the congregation by using the ritual they both like at early celebrations on all Sundays, and at late celebrations on all Sundays except the first in the month. Supposing, again, that the requisite majority of two-thirds is found in favour of the proposed changes, the incumbent will be free to introduce them ; but the minority, which is opposed to them, will be equally free either to pay for the provision of addi- tional services in the church, or for the establishment of a separate chapel in which the service they desire may be con- tinued. The same rules would be applied in the opposite case of an Evangelical succeeding a Ritualist. The edification of the majority of each congregation should be the first object kept in view ; but the edification of the minority, how- ever small, should be equally consulted, in so far as that can be done without detriment to the edification of the majority. All that need be insisted on would be that each section of the congregation should be content with being edified itself, and not insist on edifying its neighbours in spite of themselves.
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