Mr. Cross has been stirring up Lancashire again this week
with two or three of those, in a sense, successful speeches, the secret of which seems to be a sort of animated dullness, a common- placeness beyond ordinary common-placeness, yet a common- placeness which is not flatness, but is almost buoyant with satis- faction at its complete avoidance of anything like individuality of thought. At Kirkdale, in the suburbs of Liverpool, on Thursday, - he laid the first stone of a new church, and hoped the Anglican Church had made up its mind "to have no tampering with her doc- trine or ritual," and that she would be faithful and true to her "Book of Common Prayer, Articles, and Homilies." Well, if the Church can manage that, much longer, she will be a very diplomatic Church. In point of fact, no one has ever been "faithful and true" to all alike. It takes a contempt for logic for which the clergy are too well educated, to be "faithful and true" to High-Church Rubrics and Low-Church Articles at the same time. The compromise may last a little longer, but the more earnest the Church grows, the less is the hope that it can endure in its present form.
