The Vicar of St. James's, Hatcham, is as impervious to
the demands of his Bishop as to the demands of the law. The Bishop of Rochester deputed Canon Gee to take charge of Mr. Tooth's church last Sunday, as the vicar had been suspended, but Mr. Tooth met Canon Gee at the door, refused him permis- sion to officiate, and sent him away again. On Christmas Day an appeal by Mr. Tooth to his parishioners to support him in this resistance to the -secular Courts was posted on the church door, and they were threatened with the guilt of schism in case they acquiesced in the ministrations of any clergyman appointed with- out his own consent: In Mr. Tooth's opinion, the sin of schism then, is-cothraitted by one who follows the vast majority of his Church—clergy as well as laity—in doing anything which the incumbent of his individual parish tells him to be wrong. We should have thought Mr. Tooth, separating himself as he does from the action of his Church, was more likely to be guilty of Schism than any one of Mr. Tooth's parishioners who happened to think it right to co-operate with his Church in geueral against his suspended vicar. But to people on the earth, the heliocentric view is always apt to seem schismatic.
