The Dean of Chester (Dr. Howson) wrote a long letter
to the Times of Monday, in which he endeavoured to turn Mr. Glad- stone's " Contemporary " artillery against Mr. Gladstone's own position. He tried to show that all Mr. Gladstone's principles of interpretation tell against the Ritualists, and even, as we understand him, against tolerance of the Ritualists. Perhaps he may be right': But this, at least, seems certain,— - that if clergymen as moderate and as liberal as Dean Howson have worked themselves up to Dean Howson's state of mind on the subject, it does not seem very likely that laymen will be more moderate, and if so, the Public Worship Act will soon be in active operation, and the "casualties" of the ecclesiastical war will not be few. Whatever Mr. Gladstone's counsel may have been worth, it was at least a counsel of peace. As for war in the shape of a severe course of ecclesiastical litigation, it will be the beginning of the end. Possibly, however, the laity do not yet exhibit the same symptoms of incandescence which are betrayed in the Dean of Chester's letter.
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