An excellent letter on the Burials Question in our own
columns, and a very able one by "A London Clergyman" in Tuesday's Times, point out the very great impolicy of which the Clergy will be guilty, if they condition for a set-off against their surrender to Dissenters of the right to bury in the Churchyard, in the shape either of the privilege of refusing, if they please, to read the Burial Service over the bodies of Dissenters, or of exercising a discretion as to the use of the well-known words of hope in the case of persons of whose morality they are disposed to think ill. It is clear that the national clergy, so far from wishing to repel Dissenters who choose to apply to them for the last offices over the dead, should we/come eagerly every sign of attachment to the Church of the nation, and never look coldly on it. And as for the scruple as to the hope expressed, the "sure and certain hope" applies only to the general re- surrection of man to eternal life, not the redemption of any indi- vidual man ; while the individual hope expressed for the individual case may be just as faint as a gloomy imagination inclines to make it, so long as it remains hope at all. To have our clergy publishing their private judgments upon the claim of individuals to rank amongst the sheep or amongst the goats, would indeed give the coup de grcice to the Establishment, as well as, let us add, to the public respect for the private judgment of a host of clergymen. "Judge not, that ye be not judged," was addreesed as much to the Apostles as to the multitude.
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