MR. HUGHES ON "COMPREHENSION."
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."'
SIR,—Your article of' last week upon this subject hardly seems to deal sufficiently with the insuperable objection to Mr. T. Hughes's proposals. His idea, as I understand it, is to open the athedrals and parish churches to the use of different religious denominations at different hours. Mr. Hughes is a very amiable and hearty disciple of the Rugby school. His feeling is no doubt, "Good men all, good men all, the more the better." He seems to be devoid of the sentiment which prevails with most Churchmen,—namely, that unity founded on the holding of the same traditional discipline and doctrine is worth infinitely more than any unity which can be founded on mere heartiness and good-fellowship.
The chief difference between Churchmen and most Protestant Dissenters is, that the former consider the poorest church, so long as it is duly dedicated to religious uses according to the rites of our fathers, to be a temple, a sacred place. Now, to most Dissenters it would be nothing more than a meeting-house. They do not object to employ their own chapels for secular purposes, even for political meetings. The difference between Churchmen and Dissenters on this score is, I suppose, based partly on differences of sacramental doctrine, and partly on the extreme antiquity of Anglican local associations.
It may be said that the difference is merely one of sentiment ; but what, after all, is stronger than sentiment P It is not necessary to condemn absolutely from the intellectual point of view the opinion of men who hold that one place is as good for divine worship as another, and that the practice of divine wor- ship confers no special sacredness on a place; but so long as our .own feeling is diametrically opposite, it is impossible for us to entertain for one moment Mr. Hughes's proposal. We would rather give up a church altogether than, like the false mother before the throne of Solomon, consent to its being cut in two.—
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