LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
THE DISESTABLISHED CHURCH OF IRELAND AND ITS THEOLOGY.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.') Sirt,—No doubt Mr. Murphy's statement, "That the revision of the Prayer-Book, recently effected by the Synod of the Irish Church, has been in the direction of freedom," is quite true. I am afraid, however, that Liberal Churchmen on this side of the Channel have no very strong reasons, after all, for congratulating themselves upon this fact. Because what revision has been accom- plished shows too plainly a decided bias in the sympathies of the dominant party towards what are commonly known as strict " Evangelical " views. Another paragraph, taken from the pre- face to the revised Prayer-Book, may, perhaps, illustrate this
tendency more strikingly than the two which have been quoted by Mr. Murphy :—
"In revising the Table of Lessons, we have judged it convenient to follow the new Table which the Church of England has lately adopted, with these principal exceptions,—that whereas in that Table some Lessons are still taken out of the Books called Apocryphal, we have so arranged ours as that all lessons shall be taken out of the Canonical Scriptures; and we have included in our Lectionary the whole of the Aevelation of St. John."
From this it will be seen that the fears of an "Ex-Divinity Student" as to the possibility of a "verbal inspiration" teat for ordination candidates obtaining the sanction of the General Synod, were not so utterly groundless ; and also, that Mr. Murphy's boast, "No proposal of the kind was ever made," Ought, by right, to yield to one of supreme thankfulness on that gentleman's part that such indeed proved the case.
Sir, the truth is that notwithstanding some hope of better things held out in the recent debates in our Irish Church Synod, the re- velation of a vehement and vigorous " Evangelicalism " which the same have also afforded is one too clear to be overlooked. Young men whose opinions incline to the liberal side on religious questions have, therefore, every reason to count the chances first, as an "Ex- Divinity Student" appears to have done, before casting in their lot with a Church that might question soon their right to belong to her,—a contingency by no means so improbable as Mr Murphy's letter may lead your readers to suppose. For almost every week's experience as a working clergyman in connection with the Epis- eopalian Church in Ireland, goes far to show me that the position Of the few Broad Churchmen amongst us has been tenable up to this simply on the ground that—so vastly behind the times are we in Ireland—it has not yet come to be known by the rank and file of our people what exactly a Broad Churchman is.—I am,
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