TOPICS OF THE DAY.
LORD SHAFTESBURY'S VICTORY.
IF Lord Shaftesbury had elected to live the life of the
statesman, instead of the life of the leader of a religious clique, we imagine that the world would have been a great gainer by the change of duties. His amendment on Arch- bishop Tait's Bill is so radical, so entirely alters the character of the measure, that we certainly had very little hope of seeing it accepted by the House of Lords, and still less, accepted by the enormous majority which has endorsed that profound distrust of the Bishops as Judges which we have incurred sharp criticism for expressing with some plainness of speech. For the purpose of deter- mining whether the law of the Church has been violated or not, the difference between Dr. Tait's measure and the mea- sure substituted for it by Lord Shaftesbury is immense, and all that difference is in favour of Lord Shaftesbury's amend- ment, which substitutes a true legal tribunal for the strange and, we had almost said, hermaphrodite Court of the Arch- bishop's Bill. Indeed, we can hardly even believe that as many as 800 clergymen will really carry out their absurd threat of ignoring the decision of a Court which does not emanate from ecclesiastical authority. Hitherto even the High-Church party have always contended for a purely legal tribunal to interpret the Ecclesiastical Law, and have ob- jected to the Episcopal element in the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, instead of approving it. Why, then, Lord Shaftesbury's proposal to have a real Judge to try ecclesiastical cases as Election petitions are tried, on the spot, instead of the Bishop, is objected to, seems inscrutable to all but those who know familiarly the ins and outs, the long, dark windings, and unexpected issues into upper air, of the High-Church clerical conscience. Indeed, we agree with Lord Salisbury that there is no reason in the world why the new Public Worship Judge should not be appointed like other Judges, by the Crown and on the responsibility of Her Majesty's Govern- ment, instead of by the two Archbishops, though we dare say those prelates may be fairly well trusted to select a man of impartiality and vigour. For, should such an appointment ever be badly made, should any scandal arise in connection with it, it will be impossible to make the Government re- sponsible for a fault due to the Archbishops ; while, as regards the Archbishops themselves, there is no use in censuring them, since they are responsible only to their own consciences. Lord Shaftesbury seems to us, we must say, to have made a weak concession to the clerical preference for keeping hold of a shadow of influence after the substance is gone, when he left the choice of a Judge on whose clearness of mind and firmness of purpose the efficiency of the pro- posed remedy for ecclesiastical misdemeanours will obviously depend, to irresponsible prelates. But with this exception, we cannot speak too strongly our opinion of the improvement effected by Lord Shaftesbury's amendment. So far as the Bill is intended to ascertain and to enforce the existing law of the Church in relation to public worship, the change makes the whole difference between a tribunal which Englishmen will respect and trust, and one which they would have hardly taken the trouble even to consult, so deep would generally have been their distrust of the oracle consulted. As the Bill now stands, the Bishop will be the Judge only when both parties previously consent to abide by his decision, and not to appeal from it. That there are Bishops to whom both parties would thus appeal with confi- dence, and to whose decision, on matters of this kind, they would submit with grace, we are happy to believe. But they are very few in number. The great majority of our pre- lates will incur very little new responsibility under this Bill. Lord Shaftesbury having provided a genuine Judge, the complainant who prefers a Bishop will not often get his antagonist to agree with him, and such complainants will be few.
But it is necessary to point out that the very merit of Lord Shaftesbury's amendment enhances greatly one enormous danger of the Public Worship Regulation Bill,—a danger against which provision must be made, unless we wish Lord Shaftesbury's statesmanlike proposal to become a source of great evil, instead of great good. If we are to have a genuine lawyer to interpret and enforce the Rubrics of the Church, just as they are, we shall get a rigid code of rites, from which no deviation will be possible, yet based upon rules more or less obso- lete, and the enforcement of which in every locality by an impar- tial mind will fret and harass large sections of the people almost to madness. The better any code is interpreted, and the more rigidly it is enforced, the worse for the people who resent and. distrust the principles at the root of that code. The Bill, as amended by Lord Shaftesbury,- will be to the Bill as prepared by Archbishop Tait, for the purpose of subduing clerical oppo- sition, what a steam-roller is to ordinary carriage-wheels for the purpose of pounding down the lapidary friction of a newly- made road. So far, then, as it is desirable that the existing law of public worship should be respected and uniformly enforced, we shall have a vastly stronger and better in- strument for declaring and enforcing it. But so far as it is very undesirable that that law should be respected and uniformly enforced, we shall receive a much more formidable instrument from Lord Shaftesbury's hands than we should have received from Archbishop Tait's. Had it not been for a suggestion of Bishop Magee's, and its powerful endorse- ment by the Lord Chancellor, we should therefore have looked with even greater dismay at the Bill as amended by Lord Shaftesbury than at the Bill as introduced by Dr. Tait_ Thatsuggestion, however, is of the first moment, and if adopted into the Bill might, we think, not only remove this grave objection to it, but turn the measure, as a whole, into one of great practical benefit. The suggestion is, as we understand it, that there should be neutral regions of ritual laid down by the Bill within which a variety of different usages, as practised in many churches at the present time, should all be admissible, even though the actual directions of the rubric against some of them may be explicit. Lord Cairns mentioned two subjects of dispute which he thought ought to be included in this neutral region,—the position of the clergyman, during the prayer of consecration in the Communion Service, and the use of the Athanasian Creed. The first would be a concession to the High Churchmen against. whom at present the law has explicitly decided. The second would be a concession to the Broad Churchmen. Let us add, as a concession to the Evangelicals, the neutralisation of the use of the words as to the regeneration of the child by the act of baptism, and we think a fair compromise would be agreed upon. Of course other minor points might equally be included within the area of neutrality. But something more would still be needed to make the compromise a thoroughly sound one. Within the area so neutralised,—where the exist- ing law is not to be the guide, but usage,--the laity of each parish should be consulted as to the usage to be adopted, and a Parish Council,—which might be elected, as we have formerly suggested, by the voluntary ratepayers—should have authority to decide on the usage. Without this rider, we should have. gained but little by the suggestion of neutral areas. As we have so often maintained, it is not the minister's conscience only which is interested in the mode of celebrating public worship, it is quite as much the conscience of the laity. Suppose that in a parish in which the greatest horror is felt of every shade of Consubstantiation, the celebrating priest makes it a matter of conscience to kneel during the prayer of consecration with his back to the people. Is it not obvious,—has not even Dr. Pusey himself virtually admitted—that such a congregation will be as much scandalised by the act of a clergyman who repre- sents them in the prayer, as the clergyman could be. by being compelled to conform to their wishes, and that it is far better for one educated man to be thus scandalised, than for scores or hundreds of uneducated persons, to whom posture means even more than it can mean to their instructor ? Within the proposed neutral areas, it seems to us essential that the body of worshippers should have the right to decide what ought to be done and what not done. With such a concession, Lord Shaftes- bury's Bill, as it now ought certainly to be called, rather than Archbishop Tait's, might be prolific of good results,— of definite law, of speedy redress for illegal practices, of a new spirit of self-government among the laity, of a new disposition to conciliate the laity on the part of the clergy,— in short., of order, of justice, of peace, and of good-will. But this'good result cannot be gained without embodying in the Bill Dr. Magee's wise suggestion as to neutralised regions, nor adequately, we think, without surrendering the dis- position of worship within those neutralised regions into the hands of the separate Churches, the laity and clergy consulting together, and deciding together, on the course to be taken in relation to all disputable points.
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