TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE PRFMIER'S STRATEGY.
EVERY day's debate on this Public Worship Regulation Bill seems to show more clearly the magnitude of the issues Mr. Disraeli has contrived by his " adroit" strategy to open up. Already the Government and the House of Com- mons stand pledged, after regulating Ritual, to " regulate " doctrine within the Church of England,—that is, if they can. On Friday week, Mr. Lowe maintained that the principal merit of the Bill was the procedure it established, which it was admitted would be quicker, cheaper, and in every way more satisfactory than the present method. That being the case, he could not understand why its provisions should be restricted to matters of form, such as vestments, and why they should not be extended also to matters of more importance, such as doctrine and morality. The House was " stultifying itself by providing a good procedure as regarded the former, while retaining a bad procedure as regarded the latter." " If they were to make a distinction at all, it ought rather to be the other way. The good procedure was to be applied in the case of a clergyman who used a garment too much or a garment too little, or who turned towards one point of the compass instead of towards another,—matters in which the offender might yield without a loss of self-respect ; while the bad procedure was to be employed in the case of a man charged with drunkenness or incontinency, in regard to which he was obliged to defend himself to the uttermost. These considerations led him to ask whether it was necessary to divide ecclesiastical offences in this manner, and whether the improved procedure could not as readily be applied to the one class as to the other. He wanted to know why the House could not set aside all the difficulties they were involved in, and deal with the whole of the Ecclesiastical Law under the same pro- cedure and under the same Judge. What mischiefs could possibly occur from such a course ? It would be a very serious and a very large improvement in the law." That argu- ment is, as regards morals, unanswerable, and as regards doctrine, answerable only from Mr. Gladstone's point of view, —that extreme rigidity in enforcing uniformity of doctrine is inconsistent alike with the theory and the practice of the Church of England. As the House had rejected his view, it had no option but to accept Mr. Lowe's, and it did accept it, apparently with a careless unanimity. Mr. Russell Gurney, who has charge of the Bill, declared that he agreed with Mr. Lowe's speech, and only refrained from acting on his suggestions because of the lateness of the time. Mr. Hardy wished to know-if the learned Recorder would next Session introduce a Bill extending the new procedure to all ecclesiastical offences, and was assured, to the apparent delight of the House, tha,t he would ; whereupon Mr. Disraeli declared Mr. Russell Gurney's offer a liberal one, and one which " might hereafter lead to sound and beneficial legislation." Mr. Forster in vain pointed ont that Mr. Lowe's suggestion, excellent as it was as regarded morals, would, if extended to doctrine, limit the freedom of the pulpit, and land us all next year in a most serious and exciting discussion ; for Lord John Manners, a Cabinet Minister, " did not share the apprehensions " of the right honourable Member for Bradford, and accepted the pledge of Mr. Russell Gurney as perfectly satisfactory; and the debate ended by Mr. Lowe professing entire content with the language of the Premier, and withdrawing the proposed " instruction to Committee " on his assurances. No one except Mr. Forster dissented on either side, and the discussion ended with an un- derstanding that next year another Bill to extend and amend this one shall be introduced by Mr. Russell Gurney, and sup- ported by the Tory Administration. Does Mr. Disraeli really understand what he is doing,—that he is promising a Bill which must alarm every clergyman in the land, which may make a freehold living not worth holding, and which might, under certain circumstances, almost paralyse the usefulness of the Church of England ? The first security of every beneficed clergyman in England is that within certain perfectly well-understood limits he is not liable to punishment for his utterances in the pulpit ; that he does not there represent his congregation or the Church, but is only setting forth his own views, and that he is authorised to teach what is in him to teach, without fear of any consequences other than may result from the opinion of his flock. Of course, if he teaches the doctrine of the Real Presence in so many words, or if he teaches that Christ was human, and human only, in so many words, he is liable to prosecution ; but, except in the most extreme cases, no one will, under the present procedure, attempt to prosecute. The difficulty of obtaining evidence about spoken words is very great, the expense of the procedure is enormous, and the re- sult, if the preacher understands the law at all, is almost certain to be an acquittal, the judges even straining the law rather than restrain human liberty too much. So well under- stood is this, that prosecutions for heretical teaching not. recorded in print are exceedingly rare, and the clergy possess a licence of teaching unlimited by anything except, the danger of hopelessly alienating their congregations.. Now, however, all this is to be changed, and every clergy- man is to preach every sermon under the dread that if his teaching is not absolutely colourless he may be prosecuted for heresy. It is true that he will not be convicted any oftener than at present. It is true that if he has a " discreet" Bishop, liberty to prosecute him will in almost all cases be refused. But it is also true that any wealthy parishioner with a fancy for heresy- hunting—and no fancy is more common, especially among the idle and the well-to-do—may, if he pleases, subject him almost at will to annoyance, vexation, and expense which, though_ small in comparison with that involved in existing procedure, may easily ruin a man not expected to be rich. A dispute a year referred by the Bishop to a Judge would ruin a moderate rectory, and there are parishes where a dispute a year would be a delightful amusement to the people. There are members of each of the three great sections of the Church who, if the procedure for heresy were as simple as the procedure for the recovery of small debts, might be attacked every Sunday, and attacked on grounds which a Bishop must be very discreet indeed to thinlr wholly unimportant. It is scarcely possible for a really con- vinced divine to preach on the mysteries of the Godhead, on the Sacraments, on Inspiration, on Prayer, or on Ritual, with- out using some expression on which a prima facie charge of heresy might be based, and a charge, too, which an Episcopal theologian of a different school might think sufficient to war- rant a request for an authoritative exposition of the law of the Church about it. Free exegesis in particular, the discussion of the question whether such and such a book or passage can be held to be certainly inspired, would be nearly impossible, yet a preacher who cannot convey his opinion on a point like that is surely a preacher with a mouth dosed by external force. To give but a single illustration,—the authority, or rather the inspira- tion, of the Book of Wisdom. There is hardly a clergyman of the Broad Church who does not admit that the evidence for the inspiration of this book is considerably greater than the evidence for the inspiration, say, of the Book of Esther; and hardly a Bishop who, if the clergyman said that strongly in the pulpit, would not feel compelled to allow that a. prima fade ease had been made out against the speaker. The worry of such discussions would be endless, and would inevitably result, in a large majority of cases, in the expulsion of all colour from public teaching, the great evil from which the English Church suffered so deeply towards the close of the eighteenth century. All three divisions of the Church will feel it equally ; the High Church in their freedom of asser- tion, the Low Church in their freedom of protest, the Broad Church in their freedom of exposition ; and all three will, as Mr. Forster obviously foresees, unite to defeat a Bill to which, nevertheless, a Conservative Government has, with a careless rashness no Radical ever evinced, pledged its moral support. That surely is a result of "consummate strategy" about which Conservatives may doubt. They have been just five months in power, and half the clergy of the Establishment are already determined to canvas for Mr. Gladstone.
But the Premier's advocates will reply,—Mr. Disraeli has brought over the whole Protestant, or, at all events, Evan- gelical feeling of the Church towards his Government, and that is worth any risk of a clerical hostility which, for some years to come, cannot be important. Has he ? That he might have done so with a little care eg evident from the division- lists, and from the general tone of Evangelical papers ; but he has either misunderstood Evangelical feeling, or has been too careless to watch the details of the measure in hand, or, which is most probable, has been cowed by the sort of unanimity prevailing in the House upon the subject, for he has actually allowed the House to level at the Low Church a blow far more direct than that which, as he admits, he intends to level at the Ritualists. He actually allowed Mr. Hubbard to move " that the neglect to use any prescribed ornament or vesture " should be an offence under the Bill, and to carry it by a vote of 150 to 125. Poor Dean Close, therefore, who writes to the Timer to say he has never worn a cope, and never seen one, except as a tattered relic of a " superstition " he had
thought dead, will be compelled on certain days to wear the abhorred garment, or endure penalties which in the event of contumacy may amount to deprivation. That is a trifle, it may be said, and no doubt from our point of view most of these disputes about millinery are trifles, but the trifle indi- cates accurately the present temper of the House of Commons and the Government. They are passing between them a Bill which they say, or at least the Premier says, is intended to put down Ritualists, but which is intended to be used against all parties, who are to be equally forced into a uniformity so rigid, that even a trumpery difference, like the habit of preaching in a black gown because the congregation misunderstand a surplice, is to be an occasion for trial, and for legal punishment never light, because the sentence must carry costs. All clergymen are to do exactly alike, even in non-essentials, and even when their congregations and their parishioners alike approve varia- tions ; and are to do it under a threat that the very next step may be to enforce such a uniformity in doctrine that a clergy- man will never be safe from fine unless he reads, instead of a sermon, one of those Homilies which, fine as many of them are, touch neither the wants, nor the doubts, nor even the vices of the present age. What the national clergy may do under such a menace we will not venture to predict, but that they will again stimulate all England to vote for Tories by the cry of the Church in danger is, we may safely say, a belief not only erroneous, but absurd. As Mr. Goschen said, the present Ministry has done more harm to the Church in five months than Mr. Gladstone did in five years, or would have done in fifty.
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