ITO THE EDITOR OP THE " SPECTATOR.")
Bra,-1 venture to protest most energetically against your treatment of the crisis in the Church. The best way to save the comprehensiveness of the Church is to say very little about it, to recognise the gravity of the present movement, and to investigate its causes. The agitation seems to be in essence nothing less than an uprising of the unenfranchised classes in the Church against privileged classes who have abused their privileges,—to wit, the clergy, lay parsons, and other laymen who can compel attention to their views. The laity of the middle and lower classes have on the whole been treated as children and not as men in the household, as serfs and not as citizens in the city of God. Their views and feelings as to their clergy, their worship, their churches, their parishes have been very generally unexplored, mis- understood, ignored, often despised, even ridiculed. Tact— which, being interpreted, means the art of screwing things up without a row—has come to be regarded as one of the qualities moat to be admired in the clerical administrator. I do not think that the majority of those who are at fault have been of set purpose autocrats. They have sinned through ignorance, through thoughtlessness, through false ideas, above all, through bad law. But, however that may be, the discontent which has now festered into strife will certainly issue, unless constructive reforms are speedily taken in hand, in increasing alienation. The trades- men of England, the clerks, the artisans, the men of all classes who do not read the Spectator, are enthusi- astically with Sir William Harcourt, not because they approve his Erastianism—they know nothing about it—but because, knowing nothing of Church law and the general conditions of the Church problem, they believe that he is giving expression to their grievances. A Russian nobleman once compared his country to a train the engine of which, along with the two front carriages, had become detached, and steamed ahead of the other waggons at fifty miles an hour. This is what has happened in the Church of England, with this difference, that the derelict passengers, being Englishmen, have looked for another engine and driver, and are drifting into the belief that they have found them in Parliament and Sir William Harcourt. The only course of action which will prevent disaster is to bring the engine back to the train and to couple it to it by means of Statutory Parochial Church Councils. Well-written articles on comprehensiveness and toleration will not allay an agitation which has its roots in very real grievances. The clergy and the well-to-do laity must first learn to comprehend and to tolerate the point of view of the middle classes and the artisans.—I am, Sir, &c.,
H. J. BABDSLEY.
St. Paul's Rectory, Mame, Manchester, February 7th.
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