WHAT WILL BE DONE WITH THE RITUALISTS?
WE agree with Lord Penzance in regretting the assertion of jurisdiction by the Queen's Bench, in the case of "Martin v. Mackonochie." It is not, however, for the reason assigned by Lord Penzance that we regret it. Lord Penzance is thinking of the nine years' immunity that Mr. Mackono- chie had already enjoyed, when the Queen's Bench interfered on his behalf, and he is shocked at the reflection that by this means the nine years have become ten. This is not a point that gives us the least discomfort. Our objection to the action of the Queen's Bench is merely that it postponed a settlement of the question in dispute. Sooner or later, if not in Mr. Mackonochie's case, then in the case of some other Ritualist incumbent, the question whether the immunity of Ritualists is to be made perpetual, or is to have a final end put to it, must be decided ; and if no prohibition had been issued to Lord Penzance, it would now have been a year nearer to being decided. 'However, that which hath let for the last twelve months has now been taken out of the way, and the point which is really in issue—the only point which has any interest except of a purely ecclesiastical kind—is once more in a fair way to be determined.
The point in question is simply this : On the one hand, there is reason to suppose, from the action of the Legislature some years since, that the nation 18 resolved to put down Ritualism. If it is not resolved to do so, why did it pass the Public Worship Regulation Act ? On the other hand, there is reason to suppose that when the nation Caine to this resolution, it had not counted the cost of carrying it out. To compare small things with great, the English people stand towards
their own little Culturk i ampf n something like the position which Prince Bismarck has been plausibly supposed to stand towards his own bigger atiturkampf It has been argued with much probability that when Prince Bismarck began the fight, he did not expect to meet with any serious resistance.It may have been much the same thing with the English public, when they rejoiced so loudly over the Public Worship Regulation Act. They thought that as soon as the Ritualists saw that Parliament was in earnest, they would obey the law. Now, therefore, there comes up a further consideration. There can be no question whatever as to the power of the nation to put down Ritualism in the Established Church, if it is minded to do so. But if it is minded to do so, it must be minded to do something else also. It must be willing to see zealous, hard-working, popular clergymen go to gaol, and stay in gaol, rather than obey the law, To judge from the feeling excited by Mr. Tooth's case, a large number of Englishmen are not willing to see this. They have no love for Ritualism ; they would like, perhaps, to see Ritualists turned neck-and-crop out of the Church. But so long as the Ritualists are in the Church, they do not like to see them sent to prison. The feeling is in the highest degree illogical, but it is not at all unnatural. Here, for example, in the present instance, is a man whose zeal and whose success are disputed by no one. He has set on foot all manner of good works in a district where, until he took it in hand, good works were conspicuous by their absence. He has gathered round him a large and devoted congregation, to whom his word is a rule of faith, morals, discipline, and ceremonial. If, as is alleged, he has alienated his actual parishioners by his ritualistic prac- tices, he must have performed the remarkable feat of turn- ing people out of a church into which they had never come. The district of St. Alban's, Holborn, can scarcely be described as a church-going neighbourhood. If Mr. Mackonochie had obeyed the law, he would simply have lost his present congre- tion, without gaining a new one in exchange. There could not be a better case for testing the real feeling of Englishmen about Ritualism. In some churches into which it has been introduced, it offends many people and pleases few. At St. Alban's, Holborn, it offends nobody and pleases every one. If Englishmen are really in earnest in dealing with Ritualism, they have now their path marked out for them. If they elect to make short work with Mr. Mackonochie, they will have got through a good half of what they will have to do. What will happen in the course of the next few weeks
seems to be ascertained beforehand. The suspension ab officio et beneficio will be served on Mr, Mackonochie, and he has already stated that he intends to take no notice of it. The contingency which Lord Penzance refused to anticipate will then be realised. "It is, no doubt," said Lord Penzance, "within the respondent's power, by disobeying the suspension, and continuing his ministrations in spite of it, to force the Court to punish him by imprisonment." Mr. Mackonochie, unless he gives way at the last moment, will continue his ministrations just as though nothing had hap- pened, and except by imprisonment there will be no way of preventing him from continuing them. We are not defending Mr. Mackonochie's action. To our minds, nothing can be clearer than that a clergyman ought either to obey the decrees of the Courts accepted by the Church of which he is a minister, or to cease to minister in that Church. The ques- tion, however, is not what we hold, but what Mr. Mackonochie
holds, and upon this point there is no uncertainty. He is of opinion that Lord Penzance's judgment, and the judgment of the higher Court by which he is guided, are bad on two grounds. They come from a Judge who has no legitimate authority over the Clergy, and they declare that to be law which is plainly not law. Consequently, what the English public has to ask itself is not,—Do we approve of Mr. Mackono- chic's defiance of the Court on either or both of these grounds ? but,—Do we so far disapprove of it, that we are willing to send him to prison because he takes this ground? Upon the question as thus stated, we have a very clear conviction. It is not worth while to interfere for the destruc- tion of Ritualism, when it hurts no ono. If Mr. Mackonochie were thrusting his special ceremonial upon an unwilling con- gregation; if, for example, he had succeeded an Evangelical vicar, and had turned all the services in the church upside down ; if he had refused to give the regular congregation any services of the type to which they had been accustomed, and had left them the choice of accepting his ritual or ceasing to come to his church ; if, above all, he had done all these things in a country parish where ceasing to come to his church meant ceasing to come to church at all, we should have been prepared to go all lengths in bringing the law to bear on him. But when the matter is one which touches no one but the congregation of St. Alban's, and when they are, and have been all along, ardent supporters of Mr. Mackono- chic, we fail entirely to see what is to be gained by persistence in this prosecution. If it is said that the law must be vindi- cated, we reply,—vindicate it as much as you like, provided that you alter it as soon as you have vindicated it. Send Mr. Mackonochie to gaol, by all means, only pass a law next Session giving the Clergy liberty in matters of Ritual, so long as it does not offend any appreciable fraction of the congrega- tion. Still, we admit that if this is not the view taken by the nation, it will be entirely within its right in pursuing an opposite course. In that case, it will first have to leave the law to take its course with Mr. Mackonochie, without suddenly becoming troubled at the shocking sight of a good man in prison, when it has put him there of its own free-will. Having shown this common-sense indifference to the passing incon- veniences caused by the application of the law, it will proceed to make the law itself more rational. The whole trouble- some machinery of prosecution might be dispensed with, if an Act were passed . depriving every beneficed clergyman of his benefice, and every curate of his licence, who refused to sign an undertaking to obey the law as laid down by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in the leading cases on ceremonial, and making such -signature a condition of all future institutions to benefices or grants of licences to curates. By this simple measure, the question would be settled once and for all, and nothing would be left to the public to do, but to sit and watch the effect of this treatment on the Established Church.
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