THE BISHOP OF LINCOLN AND THE "DAILY NEWS."
THEjudgment in the Bishop of Lincoln's case, on which we commented last week, has been received with general approbation. Alike in journals secular and ecclesiastical, daily and weekly, there has been an expres- sion of genuine thankfulness that the decision of the Privy Council makes for peace, and avoids what at one moment threatened to be a religious scandal on the largest scale. For, had the decision gone differently, and had the Bishop of Lincoln's opponents attempted to enforce his compliance, we should probably have been regaled with the spectacle of a bishop in prison for conscience' sake.
But midst this general chorus of eulogy there was one very discordant note. This was struck by the Daily News, and it deserves some comment because the Daily News is commonly regarded as expressing the views in ecclesiastical as well as secular politics of that party which isjust now about to follow Mr. Gladstone into power. It is true that the representa- tive character of the Daily News is increasingly disputed by the Daily Chronicle, the eloquent and forcible exponent of the "Labour Party ; " and a comparison of the articles in which these two Liberal journals discussed the Lincoln judgment helps to account for the extent to which the Chronicle has lately gained upon its rival in the race for popular favour. For in order to guide a popular move- ment, something more is required than an unlimited faculty of shrewish abuse. The gift of sympathy ; the power of insight ; the ability to comprehend, and do justice to, a different point of view from one's own, are indispensable to the man or the journal that seeks to guide, to persuade, to attract ; and in these qualities the ecclesiastical " pundit " (to use a word of his own) who writes in the Daily News is even comically deficient. What strikes one most forcibly in the perusal of this striking article is its author's governess-like habit of all-round scolding. Convocation, the Judicial Com- mittee, the House of Laymen, the Lord Chancellor, the Bishop of Lincoln, Lord Selborne, and Lord Cairns, are rebuked or sneered at with impartial severity. As in the governess, so in the journalist, the scolding habit is accompanied by a quaint assumption of omniscience. In law, equity, judicial practice, constitutional principles, and the meaning of sacred symbolism, our " pundit " is equally at home. We cannot stay to argue all his points. The Judicial Committee (like the Holy Catholic Church in Mathew Arnold's essay) "can take very good care of itself, and we are not going to defend it against the scorn of" Bouverie Street. We pause on a single obiter dictum of the journalistic court of final appeal. "Lighted candles are well understood to be a recognition of the sacrifice of the Mass." "Well understood ! " quotha ? Marry, by whom ? Not assuredly by King Edward VI. and his advisers, who held them to signify "that Christ is the very true Light of the World;" nor, so far as the ex- haustive catena in the Archbishop's judgment shows, by a single writer on ecclesiastical subjects, from that time to this.
But to pronounce dogmatically, and withal mistakenly, on the significance of an ecclesiastical symbol, may be due to nothing worse than ignorance or carelessness. It is not with such minor faults as these that we have to deal. The part of the article which seems to us to call for emphatic reprobation, is that in which it attacks the character and conduct of the Bishop of Lincoln. The writer, in his passionate and consuming love of scolding, reproaches the Lord Chancellor with not having scolded the Bishop for failing to appear before the Judicial Committee ; and then, taking the congenial duty on himself, he proceeds as follows :— "The Bishop of Lincoln did indeed condescend to appear before his Metropolitan at Lambeth, although even then he took the objection that an Archbishop is not a Synod, and that for a Synodical declaration' his soul was yearning. The Judicial Committee he has wholly ignored, and that not from indifference or want of means, but because he desired to flaunt in the face of the world his defiance of the Queen's authority as Head of the Church, to whom he did homage for the temporalities.' The position of the Bishop is equally inconsistent and indecorous. In order to obtain five thousand a year and a seat in the House of Lords he accepted office, not from any spirital functionary, but from the Prime Minister of the day, who might have been a Jew, a Mohammedan, an Agnostic, or an Atheist.'
"Might have been" is good. As a matter of fact, Bishop King was appointed by Mr. Gladstone, from whom surely the most orthodox Churchman in the world might accept ecclesiastical preferment without any sense of incon- gruity; and as it is only the Bishop's conduct which is in dispute, the hypothetical Jewish and Mohammedan Prime Ministers are merely irrelevant. The writer proceeds :— "He [the Bishop] knew that his nominal election by the Dean and Chapter was a blasphemous mummery, and that he was really appointed in the same way as Lords of the Treasury or Lords-in- Waiting. But having got what he wanted, and finding himself in the posses3ion of a comfortable freehold, he could afford to make a cheap protest against Erastianism by defying the secular jurisdic- tion he had previously acknowledged. Moses, when commanded to take the shoes from his feet because the ground on which he stood was holy, might as well have replied that he would take off one because it was tight, and retain the other because it was easy. If the Bishop of Lincoln had been an Irish Member, the Judges would have exhausted their vocabulary of virtuous indignation against his contumacious disregard of the civil magistrate."
There is a good deal more than ignorance or carelessness in this remarkable passage. To a string of clumsy sneers, it adds the unmannerly attribution of base motives, and not a little of absolute misstatement.
Those who know the Bishop of Lincoln will smile at the notion of "five thousand a year and a seat in the House of Lords" as possible objects of his ambition. His in- difference to money and rank is absolute, and we should question if he has even set foot in the House of Lords since his turn for reading prayers there ended. So far, the sneer is only ludicrously inapt ; but the writer goes on to insinuate the basest and most disingenuous conduct. According to him, Dr. King desired to be a Bishop ; and then, "having got what he wanted, and finding himself in the possession of a comfortable freehold," he defies "the secular jurisdiction he had previously acknowledged." When and where did Bishop King acknowledge the juris- diction in ecclesiastical causes of the Judicial Committee ? And that is the only "jurisdiction" that he has "defied." He has never denied the competence of the Crown to nomi- nate to Sees, or to bestow "temporalities." What he acknowledged when he was made a Bishop, he acknow- ledges still. What he repudiated then, he repudiates still. To state the reverse, and to insinuate baseness and treachery of this kind, seems to us a most discreditable method of attack ; and it must not pass without earnest and public protest from those who, whatever they may think of Bishop King's theological beliefs or ceremonial practices, reckon his sweet unworldiness and his shining sanctity among the chiefest graces of the Church of England.
So much by way of protest against the unbridled rudeness of an individual scribe. It remains to say something on the more general aspects of the case. It were devoutly to be wished that those who undertake to enlighten the public on matters ecclesiastical, should give themselves the trouble to inquire a little more closely into the relations between the spiritual and the secular power, and the views entertained thereon by devout and instructed Churchmen. They will find that these are more complex subjects ,than at present they seem to guess ; and those ecclesiastical critics who are also Glad stonian politicians, may be profitably referred to Mr. Gladstone's "Remarks on the Royal Supremacy," re- printed in his "Gleanings." It is not merely a question of Establishment versus Disestablishment. Non-established Churches, as we all know, are subject to secular tribunals, and not seldom are forced to settle their internal disputes by reference to human law. No general and off-hand treatment of the subject is possible. Under what circum- stances, and in what subject-matter, may a Christian lawfully submit to a human tribunal ? When and where do the requirements of civil obedience clash with the laws of the spiritual kingdom ? When is resistance a duty ? and to what length may that resistance be carried ? These are searching questions. They have been asked and answered, in various and sometimes in startling forme, ever since the days of the Roman Empire. The Church of England has been forced to ask them repeatedly during the last forty years. Pushed to extremity, they "pierce even to the dividing asunder of the joints and marrow." Whatever may be their true and ultimate solu- tion, assuredly it will be better promoted by charity, sympathy, and mutual forbearance, than by anile rebuke and calumnious innuendo.
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