On Sunday there were three services, two of them being
early- communion services, at St. James's, Hatcham, after which, soon after nine o'clock, the church was closed, by the order of the Bishop of Rochester, and also,—as the churchwardens of St. James's allege, on the independent suggestion of the vicar, Mr. Tooth, and themselves, because they had agreed on this plan to prevent the disturbances likely to arise, in case the general public should obtain admission to the building. That such disturb- ances would have occurred seems certain, since many thousands of people assembled, with the intention apparently of going to the church and making a demonstration there ; and even as it was, had not the rain seconded powerfully the efforts of a very well-organised body of 300 police, there would probably have been something of a riot. The old English disposition so often displayed to treat anything like ceremonialism with the club, is not yet extinct. It seems one of the chief dangers of Ritualism that it irritates especially the savage and truculent side of British bigotry.
