BOOKS.

ARCHBISHOP TAIT.* [SECOND NOTICE.]

Tstonon Dr. Tait died in what we have come to consider only the beginning of old age (he had not completed his seventy- first year), he had had an unusually long episcopate. Of the .Bisbops who were on the bench in 1856, two only, 011ivant of Llandaff and Jackson of Lincoln, who succeeded him atLondon, survived him. These six-and-twenty years at London and Can- terbury were crowded with momentous events, and of all of themparsmayna, we may almost say, maxima, fait. We must go back to the days when English prelates were the chief ministers of the Sovereign, to find a Bishop who had to bear responsi- bilities so heavy. In the first year of his episcopate, he had to take a line on the Divorce question. Whether or no he was right, as the majority of English Churchmen probably think, in supporting the Bill, he certainly did his best to relieve the consciences of those opposed to it by supporting the com- promise which gave the clergy the liberty to refuse their * Life of Archibald Campbell Tait, Archbishop of Canterbury, By Randall Thomas Davidson, D.D., and William Benham, B.D. 2 vols. Loudon Mac- millan and (Jo. 1801, services for the marriage of divorced persons. In the same year he was brought face to face with a controversy which haunted him, so to speak, up to his dying day, and which still seems remote from settlement, the controversy of Ritualism. It took an acute form, such as, happily, has not reappeared, at least with anything like the same virulence, in

the riots at St. George's-in-the-East. The biographers wisely refrain from telling the story of those disgraceful proceedings.

They content themselves with describing the part which the Bishop took in restoring peace. His policy did not meet with unanimous approval. It would not perhaps be unjust to describe it as a policy of opportunism. To persuade the obnoxious rector to absent himself, and to put in a moderate curate, whose stipend he paid out of his own pocket, was not a heroic course ; but it was at least prudent, disinterested, and, as far as the immediate object was concerned, eminently successful. And he had on his side language used by Dr. Pusey at about this same date, to the effect that he and his associates, the writers of the Tracts, "always deprecated any

innovations in the way of conducting the services, anything of ritualism, or especially any revival of disused vestments."

An interval of peaceful hard work, typified, one might say, by the primary charge which took the portentous time of five hours in delivery, came to an end in 1860 with the

publication of Essays and _Reviews. There were things in the

volume of a kind which would now pass unchallenged ; there were others which would be generally distasteful now, and were far more offensive then. All were involved in one un- discriminating censure. Dr. Tait took part, as, indeed, did Bishop Thirlwall, in a general condemnation issued by the Bishops in answer to an address presented to them by the

clergy of a rural deanery in Dorsetshire ; but personally he had his distinguo. Dr. Temple's essay, and Mr. Jowett's, seemed to him practically innocent ; Mark Pattison's, found in any other company, would have escaped without blame, though perhaps one may now read something between the lines. In Convocation, the Bishop of London took up his natural role of moderator. In particular he opposed, though

in vain, the appointment of a committee to consider whether there were sufficient grounds for a synodical judgment on the book. Meanwhile, two of the essayists were prosecuted in the

Court of Arches. Condemned there, they appealed to the Privy Council, where the Bishop of London had to sit as assessor. (It was in view of this contingency that the pro-

ceedings in Convocation had been dropped.) There they were acquitted, and the Bishop of London, who had agreed with the lay Judges, while the Archbishops had dissented, was made the object of a storm of obloquy. This is what he thought of it :—

"I feel my own vocation dear, greatly as I sympathise with the Evangelicals, not to allow them to tyrannise over the Broad Churchmen. . . . . . I do not wonder at the outcry and alarm, but what are Bishops appointed for except to direct the clergy in times of alarm I I pray that I may never fall into the snare of

following rather than leading the clergy of my diocese What is wanted is a deeply religious party The great evil is that the Liberals are deficient in religion, and the religious in liberality."

A few months before the acquittal of Messrs. Wilson and Rowland Williams, Dr. Coleus() had been condemned in absentia by the Bishop of Cape Town and his assessors, and subsequently excommunicated. Convocation, acting in a great measure on the advice of Dr. Tait, who had with him Bishops Thirlwall, Harold Browne, and Jackson, refused to support him by the declaration that he demanded, that the Church of

England was not in communion with Bishop Colenso. Throughout the controversy, which it would be useless to follow, he maintained his characteristic position. His bio- graphers write :—

"He made it clear from the first that he had no sympathy with Bishop Colenso's opinions, and that his resistance to what he deemed the perilous high-handedness of Bishop Gray was no isolated act of merely personal or local significance. It was part of a definite and well-considered policy. The ecclesiastical despotism which he dreaded and opposed might take one form in South Africa, and some other form, not less mischievous, else- where ; and it was his deliberate opinion in later years that the restraints successfully imposed by himself and others upon the impetuous Metropolitan of Cape Town had had a wholesome and reassuring effect upon Colonial Churehmanship in every quarter of the globe."

On one point, certainly, connected with both the Williams and Wilson, and the Coleaso oases, it will be generally agreed

that the Bishop's action was salutary. In October, 1862, Mr. F.D. Maurice wrote to him announcing his intention to resign the incumbency of St. Peter's, Vere Street. It is not easy to put in plain words Mr. Maurice's motives for this step. He did not approve the teaching of the incriminated divines, yet many identified his views with theirs. To resign would, he thought, set him free to oppose them, without seeming to do so out of regard for his own position and emoluments. As the step would have been most certainly interpreted to mean exactly the opposite—that is, sympathy with the accused—not to speak of the loss that would follow the intermission of his regular teaching, the Bishop earnestly begged him to re- consider his decision. Though Mr. Maurice did not yield directly to this request, it doubtless influenced him, and shortly afterwards, to the great relief of his friends, he suspended his resignation.

In October, 1868, Archbishop Longley died. Just fifteen days afterwards, Mr. Disraeli, whose Ministry was doomed, offered the Primacy to the Bishop of London, thus fulfilling early previsions, which, as the biographers remark, were curiously definite and frequent (see I., 41-42), of the elevation which Archibald Campbell Tait was ultimately to attain. He had at once to grapple with a great difficulty. A House of Commons had been returned pledged to disestablish the Irish Church, a measure which the House of Lords, if left to itself, would infallibly reject. Dr. Tait, as usual, grasped the facts of the case ; he saw what could be done, and what could not.

The ship must go, but save as much as you can from the wreck, was his advice. The friends of the Irish Church would not give up hope. Then the Queen intervened. In an admirable letter, written at her command by General

Grey, she asked the Archbishop's help in bringing about a settlement. To pass the second reading of the Bill, and

amend it in Committee, had been all along his plan. It was so amended, and to a very considerable extent. Then the question arose,—Would the majority in the Commons accept the changes P The Archbishop worked on with unwearied patience and unfailing tact. At the very crisis of the negotia- tions, when " he was striving to mediate between the eon- tending parties as represented by Lord Cairns and Mr.

Gladstone, and was in almost hourly communication with the Queen," he was called away to open the new chapel at the County School of Cranleigh. He ;performed this function with an ease and cheerfulness—so an eye-witness tells us—that gave no indication of the anxieties that pressed upon him. He returned to London next day, again acted the part of mediator and peacemaker, and had the satisfaction of getting all that circumstances made possible. But he was not satisfied. We have made the best terms we could, and thanks to the Queen, a collision between the two Houses has been averted ; but a great occasion has been poorly used, and the Irish Church has been greatly injured without any benefit to the Roman Catholics." (His own views, as has been said, were strongly in favour of concurrent endowment.) With the biographer's

remark that "the whole episode is one eminently characteristic of the Archbishop's practical statesmanship," no one, we

think, will be disposed to disagree.

In 1874, he made what was doubtless the great mistake of his life,—the introduction of the Public Worship Regulation Act. This subject has been so copiously discussed in the Spectator, that we may be excused for not now reverting to it. The chapter in which the history of the Act is given is both judicious and candid, and to it we would refer our readers, quoting from it a few sentences which point out one cause of the Archbishop's error :- "It had always been his characteristic to fix his attention on the practical end in view, and to make comparatively light of what seemed to him the petty scruples of those who cared more than he did about the precise details of the path. Particulars of system or procedure which had, in the view of some, attained all the dignity of fundamental principles, appeared to him neither interesting nor important. On some occasions in his life this fixedness of aim and disregard of difficulties, real or imaginary, had stood him in good stead, and had resulted in complete success. But it was not always so. Biding thus rough-shod over the obstacles in his way, he unintentionally gave more pain than he was at all aware of, both to his opponents and his friends."

A far worse mistake than any committed by the Archbishop, and ten times more blameworthy, because the act of a profes- sional statesman, was Mr. Disraeli's declaration that the Bill was intended "to put down Ritualism."

To go through the subjects which occupied the Arch. bishop's attention during the fourteen years of his Primacy, would be to write the history of the Church of England. What a list of burning questions, some of them not yet by any means extinguished, do we find in the chronological table appended to these volumes ! Besides those already men- tioned, we have, to speak of the period of the Primacy only, the agitation against the nomination of Dr. Temple, the Revisers' Communion (the Vance-Smith case), the Voysey case, the Lectionary Bill, the Burial Bill, the Second Lambeth Conference, and ritual troubles perpetually recurring, and culminating in the imprisonment of Mr. Green. We will pass them over, and call our readers' special attention to the delightful chapter in which Dr. Randall Davidson has recorded his experiences during the six years for which he acted as the Archbishop's private chaplain and secretary. Dr. Davidson points out three characteristics of Dr. Tait in dealing with the correspondence which is now the greatest burden of a Bishop's life :— " First, his invariable anxiety to regard the matter rather than the manner of every letter he received. Angry P of course he is. Never mind that. What is it he asks me to do P' The letter might be prosy and longwinded, or curt even to rudeness. It might be overflowing with personal grievances, or sternly reticent and reserved. It was all the same. What is his point ? What do you gather are the facts ? ' Next, I remember his constant anxiety that no letter should seem harsh or unkind. It used to be a joke among his secretaries that when he had written some severe or stern reply to a controversialist or complainant, he would always say to us, See if that is quite kind.' But it was perfectly genuine, and again and again he has kept an ,official letter or memorandum back until the following day, saying, Let us see to-morrow morning whether it looks unkind.' Or again—a. very frequent order---' Tell him he's a consummate ass, but do it very kindly.' The third characteristic which comes back to me in recalling the correspondence of those years is the un- failing humour with which he lightened -the drudgery of every clay. No amount of prosiness on the one hand or of petty ill- temper and spitefulness upon the other could usually avail to spoil his quiet good-humour or provoke him into irritable replies.. I doubt whether this had been quite the ease in his earlier years, but in my secretarial time it was indisputably true. It was as though he was somehow upon a higher level, which set him above the strife of tongues and pens. Self control' would be a mis- leading description of what I mean. It was rather that he seemed, in almost every case, to stand outside the arena of the strife, and even to see it in a humorous rather than an irritating light. Per his more copious and angry correspondents he had a series of kindly pseudonyms of his own, though they were never whispered: beyond the walls of his study. I fancy I can hear him now dic- tating his grave replies to Jannes and Jambres, Socrates and Xantippe, Euodise and Syntyche, to Gil Bias, and Meg Merrilies, and Uncle Tom. To suppose that there was in this habit the slightest vestige of contempt or flippancy, with respect either to the matters or the men with whom he had to do, would be alto- gether to misapprehend him But the strain of monotonous work, and the tension of difficult situations, may oftentimes be lightened and relaxed byone who has a keen, and withal a good-natured, eye for the humorous side of even the gravest facts of life. It is perhaps a rare quality in ecclesiastics, and in most men it is not without its peril. In the Archbishop it was accompanied by an earnestness so intense, and a sympathy so tender, that I do not believe he ever, in this particular way, gave a moment's pain to any one."

Of his action as a whole, various opinions will be held; but few will dissent from the judgment expressed by one who differed from him greatly on not a few matters of importance :

"But when we think of the manner in which, born and bred in a different communion, he gradually learned, in a time of great. difficulty, to understand and even to sympathise with all the varieties of the English Church, and of his constantly increasing determination to do justice to them all—a determination which, I believe, would have gone much further, if his life had been pre- served ; and when we remember his strong hold on the laity, no, less than upon the affection and respect of the clergy, I cannot help believing that, in the opinion of all parties, very few Arch-. bishops of Canterbury have for centuries discharged the duties of that great post with so much dignity, ability, and devotion."

It was a fitting conclusion to such a life that its last act, his successful intercession with Mr. Mackonochie to avoid a renewal of the St. Alban's troubles, should have been one on which the best comment is : "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God."