[TO Tn. EDITOR Or TUE "SP Nara:Tom"' SIR,—The controversy now
being waged in your columns under the heading of " Nonconformists and the Communion" is, of course, concerned with only one of the many practical difficulties which are the inevitable consequence of time rise and growth of Nonconformity. The main question at issue is this,—Are the Jews and the Samaritans of our land to continue for all time to have no dealings one with the other until German 'Dreadnoughts' and airships arrive in sufficient force to take away both our place and our nation; or are we as a nation to estimate at its true value that religious unity which first suggested to our Saxon fore- fathers the possibilities of political co-operation whereby the Eleptarehy became England and the Norman invader might easily have been driven back into the sea P
Now as to Nonconformity, every one realises that it is to-day a very different thing front what it was two or three centuries ago, or even less; but in what respect ? Chiefly in this,—that then its work and success were a subject for the prophet, now they are one for the historian and the journalist. To take one instance, that of John Wesley, whom for present purposes we may regard as a Nonconformist. Every Church- man who is not at heart a Papist deplores the persecution which has driven the Methodists outside the pale of the Established Church; but for all that, the persecutors of the eighteenth century, whose fault was that they lacked the divine gift of prophetic vision, should be far more leniently judged than those wilfully blind bigots of to-day, to whom the spiritual success of Methodism ought to be a living reality.
What hope is there for the future P It will be a long day before rubrics are revised for the benefit of the Samaritans, Caiaphases with their blunt criticism, "Ye know nothing at all," being unfortunately in a small minority among the Pharisees. It is the individual sanction of occupants of the Bench to wise infringements of the strict letter of mediaeval rubrics which alone can, but which undoubtedly can, save the situation. When one reads the enlightened, broad-minded views of the Bishop of Carlisle one is filled with hope ; but when one contemplates the unmitigated mediaevalism soon to be on show again at Birmingham hope gives way to blank despair.—I am, Sir, Sm., W. F. FELTON. Viienhall Vicarage, Heniey-in.Arden.
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