On Thursday week the Bishop of London, in consecrating St.
Michael's Church, was guilty, salt seems to us, of an act of tyranny not at all in accordance with his liberal principles. The church had been decorated in Puseyite style, and the Bishop took offence at the flowers on the communion-table, asked their meaning, and insisted on their removal ; he then requested some of the clergy who were tricked out in embroidered surplices, stoles, and other High-Church vestments, to disrobe before he would proceed ; then insisted on the dislodgment of a cross in polished oak—which the incumbent, Rev. C. Lyforcl, injudiciously admitted to mean "nothing "—and finally took an engagement in writing that a rough cartoon drawn in charcoal over the communion-table should he effaced before he would go on with the service. Now as to the -fine clothes, we of course quite agree with the Bishop in think- ing the clergy silly thus to obtrude gorgeous tailoring on the Almighty, though the flowers are as much in place in a church as in a drawing-room. They add to the higher and quieter influences of the place without distracting the attention. But if the law of the Church permits all these things, as it cer- tainly does, why is the Bishop to obtrude his own simpler standard of taste on—spiritual dandies, if you please—but still men with as much right to be dandies as the Bishop has to be puritan? That is but false catholicism and liberalism which will not admit the full variations of practice and belief which the Church is intended to cover, simply because they seem contemptible. Mr. Lyforl had a right to be contemptible within the limits allowed by the Church, if he pleased.
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