THE ELECTION TO THE IRISH PRIMACY. T HE election of the
Bishop of Derry to the Arch- bishopric of Armagh, which carries with it the Primacy of the Disestablished Church of Ireland, has an interest extending beyond the communion which is immediately concerned with it. Taking the Irish Epis- copate as a whole, it cannot be said to have benefited by the change which it underwent in 1869. In theory, of course, there is much to be said against the appointment A Bishops by the Prime Minister, and nowhere have the objections gained more force from actual experience than in Ireland. And yet, when all this has been allowed for, we cannot but feel that, comparing nomination with nomination, the Prime Minister in these later times comes out rather well. If the Irish Episcopate were the creation of Lord Beaconsfield, Mr. Gladstone, and Lord Salisbury, it would be a more distinguished body than it is. The truth probably is that Prime Ministers are acutely sensi- tive to public opinion, and that public opinion has of late years framed for itself a very much higher ideal than formerly of the Episcopal office. We do not mean that the electoral bodies which choose the Bishops in the Church of Ireland are careless of what will be thought of their choice. We can readily believe that clergy and laity are alike animated by a sincere desire to elect the best man. It is their conception of the best man that is likely to be inferior to that of a Minister,—inferior because narrower and more provincial. Consequently, we were not at all sure whether the Irish Bishops with whom the choice of the Primate lies would rise to the level of their function. They have done so by electing by far the most distinguished Irish Bishop to the vacant See, and doing this in the teeth of an opposition which, if insignificant, was at least active and noisy. The presiding Bishops of the Anglican communion outside England will more and more be chosen by methods bearing a general resemblance to that by which the Archbishopric of Armagh has just been filled up, and it is satisfactory to find that in one conspicuous instance the method has worked well. The action of a small electoral college is sometimes determined by considerations which, if not unworthy, are at least inadequate. The Irish Episcopate has avoided this danger, and has elected, not the safest man or the man who has fewest enemies, but the most eminent man.
The history of the Church of Ireland since Disestablish- ment has been singularly uniform. It had been but very slightly influenced by the Oxford Movement, but so long as it remained united to the Church of England it pre- sented the same opportunities for the development of that movement, though for the most part its clergy declined to take advantage of them. When that link was severed, the Low Church party in Ireland set themselves at once to deprive High Churchmen of the passages in the Prayer book which had proved so many Tractarian strongholds. They were not able to do all that they desired. They could not turn High Churchmen out of the Church, but they could and did make the conditions under which they remained there less favourable. The authors of this change had a considerable following among the clergy, and a still larger following among the laity. The votes of the latter in the General Synod were often given on the side of proposals which would have gone far to erase -ihe distinction between the Episcopalian and the Presbyterian com- munions in Ireland. Since that time this tendency has shown itself in various ways, and the great influence of the Archbishop of Dublin has for the most part been cast into the same scale. The election of the Bishop of Derry to the Primacy is the first indication of a turn in the tide. He is not, indeed, what would nowadays be called a High Churchman in England. But he comes nearer to being a High Churchman in that acceptation than any other Irish Bishop, and he is what would have been called a High , Churchman even in England half a century ago. Under these circumstances, it may be thought that his election has no particular significance. The Church of Ireland must be in a singular condition if the election of an old- fashioned High Churchman to the Primacy has any claim to be regarded as an epoch-making event. In answer to this, we can only observe that the Church of Ireland has seemed of late to be in a singular condition. The Bishop of Derryhas at times stood almost alone among his brethren, and it marks a considerable change of feeling that he should now be placed at the head of the Episcopal College by their nearly unanimous vote. Considering that the members of the College are elected by the synods of the several dioceses, this may fairly be taken as the expression of something more than the private opinions of the individual Bishops. The Church of Ireland has travelled a long way in the Puritan direction, and if she is not to complete her journey, it is time that some signs of a reaction should begin to show themselves. Things being as they are, we cannot think that we are wrong in recognising one such sign in the election of the Bishop of Derry.
There is another aspect of this election which has some interest for Englishmen. It was not unnatural that the first feeling of Irish Churchmen after Disestablishment should point to a large divergence from the Church of England. England had dealt to Ireland a different measure from any that she proposed to deal to herself. Disestablishment, which was not so much as talked of in one country, had been actually carried out in the other, and though a majority of English Churchmen had opposed the passage of the Irish Church Bill, they had done so with some hesitation and without attempting any very desperate resistance. There was nothing therefore to induce Irish Churchmen to cling with any special affection to the Church from which they had been parted. Moreover, the severance came at a time when the restoration of elaborate ceremonial and corresponding doctrine was becoming very marked in England, and even if no change had been made in the legal status of the Irish Church, many of her members would probably have been anxious to prevent the rising tide of Ritualism from invading Ireland. Dis- establishment gave them just the opportunity they wanted. It left them free to set up what they hoped would be a permanent barrier in the shape of a revised Prayer-book and new Canons. How successful they have been may be judged from the fact that it has taken as much litigation to get a plain cross allowed at the east end of a Dublin church as it took to establish the legality of the reredos in St. Paul's. Time has done something to soften these feelings ; and now an opinion is probably growing up that the Church of Ireland has nothing to gain by carrying any further the process of separation from the Church of England. For good or for evil she has been, she is, and to all appearance she always will be, the Church of the English connection. It is in her power, if she is so minded, to cherish and strengthen the links which still unite the two Churches, and thereby to share in the growing life and abundant expansion of her English sister. What amount of strength or reality there is in this feeling we will not undertake to say, but the choice of the Bishop of Derry as Primate—the election, that is, to the first place in the Church of Ireland of the Bishop who- has most associations with the Church of England— certainly goes to show that it exists.
Previous page
