TOPICS OF THE DAY.
" CHURCH IN DANGER": THE EPISCOPAL CONFIRMATION SCENES. • .
TSB two Bishops of Manchester and Hereford have further exem- plified this week the pursuit of episcopation " under difficulties,"
and have been the occasion of an entertainment novel even to the most blase of Londoners. A farce in a church is not usual, but one distinguished by so much eclat, and, yet further, performed in duplicate, within three days, is a surprising abundance of amuse-
ment. We desire to speak of ecclesiastical affairs with all due solemnity, but these affairs were not solemn. It would be posi-
tively inconsistent with respect for the Church to treat these dis- plays in the same tone as if they were solemnities. It would serve no useful purpose to pretend that they were not farces : they were farces : the ludicrous was only too obvious to the most reverential; laughter, hooting, and cheering, escaped the audience in the very church ; and the subject has been fertile in the caus- tic wit which is the most relished by newspaper readers. All real friends of the Church will desire some security against the repetition of Christmas entertainments so deplorably out of place;
for, be it observed, that once begun—the idea once suggested—
they may be repeated on every occasion when a new Bishop is appointed. But no advance would be made towards such secu- rity by affecting to regard the scenes as the proper and regular ceremonies of religion. Let them be described as they were, plainly and uncompromisingly, in order that their repetition may be prevented. As if to add piquancy to the amusement, there was some variety in the two scenes. At the confirmation of the Reverend James Prince Lee, in St. James's Church, the first low comedy part was performed by Mr. Thomas Gutteridge : the Bishop-elect was op- posed on the ground of habitual drunkenness ; his opponent being the untried defendant in a pending prosecution for libel. The opposer was suffered to state the nature of his objection ; then he was told that he could not appear. Restless curiosity, and mis-
placed plaudits, were the worst excesses of this audience. Among the audience in the Bow Church was the Jewish Alderman, Mr.
Salomans ; who must have been duly edified by the performance of divine service under protection of the police, by the dramatic nature of the interlocutory performance, and by the vivacity of the audience—shouting, sneering, applauding, and pursuing the hero of the piece into the streets. Here, when the hunted Bishop sought shelter in a coach, the stumbling of his horse not only de-
tained him for the gratification of the crowd, but added-the Lon- doner's luxury, " an accident," to the sports of the day. The Bishop-elect of Hereford was opposed on the ground of hetero-
doxy ; but, taught perhaps by the experience in St. James's, the Commissioners would not suffer the nature of the objection to be stated ; and the argument was limited to the question whether the opposers had a right to appear. In vain they pleaded the positive citation of the Court. This, the main incident in the farce, was common to both pieces. The Court Ecclesiastical arrogates to itself a privilege which the laity only enjoy on the first day of April: it cites "the opposers" to appear, and when they do appear, they are told that they can't appear, and know they can't I The summons to come forward is made by the Apparitor-General ; who is, it seems, the sole apparitor : the apparitor particular who obeys the summons is obligingly told that he is "contumacious"; and the Court which cites him rewards him for his pains, as it were, by "taking a sight at" him. If we liken the exhibition to things vulgar and ludicrous, it is because the only resemblance is of that kind : the elements of the vulgar and the ludicrous lie in the absurdity and incongruity of the proceeding and its consequences. It is not the description of such scenes which can inflict injury on the Church, but their oc- currence. And very seriously are they calculated to damage the Establishment. Already we see doubtful friends of the State Church, though stanch supporters of the Ministerial appoint- ments, chuckling at the lesson conveyed in these exposures. The true friends of the Church will not increase its stability by endeavouring to avoid the question put in issue by the events. The timid may deem it most reverent to turn away the regard, or
may despair of shutting out such contingencies because they dare not risk a change in the traditional inconsistencies and fictions
of the ecclesiastical formularies ; but the best and most useful friends of the Establishment will grapple with the question, and will discover a method of applying a specific remedy to a specific evil.
The scandalous scenes have been occasioned by two incidents of the ceremonial—the fictitious " election " of a Bishop, and the citation of opposers. The restoration of episcopal appointments nakedly to the gift of the Crown might be open to objection. It would substitute one anomaly for another ; since the Crown does not now exercise that absolute authority and those ministerial functions which it exercised when it bestowed the office of Bishop by the simple gift of the emblem of pastoral authority. The form of election, however, is a pure fiction ; it has long been absurd in theory, and now proves to be mischievous in practice: common sense calls for the cessation of the mischievous and un- essential part of the form. To that end, as it appears to us, no more would be required than to convert the pretended "election" of a Bishop by the Dean and Chapter into a ministerial act of record. The inconsistency of form and practice in the citation and repulsion of opposers is not without parallel, in the challenge of the Champion at the coronation of the Sovereign. Both are empty forms • but the coronation form his at least the excuse of introducing the picturesque figure of the mounted knight into the pageant ; whereas the confirmation form only obtrudes upon the public gaze that respectable functionary the Apparitor-Gene- ral—except that it has at last introduced the less decorous exhibi- tion of Mr. Lee's persecutor, Mr. Thomas Gutteridge. Such very unseemly events might be stopped, probably, by simply &scan- tinuing the empty form of citation.
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