PRAYER-BOOK REVISION—WHOSE BUSINESS
• IS IT ?
[To TER EDITOR Or TRU " &ROTATOR:1 Sin,—So long as the principles of representative government are but dimly understood ; so long as the people as a whole accept the yoke of an autocrat or of a set of bureaucrats or aristocrats, who claim to hold the reins of government by divine right, irrespective of the wishes of the people—so long must discontent involve some form of active or passive rebellion. Even now, those who disapprove of the way we are governed in England might form themselves into republican. groups or sects, in hostility to the powers that be, as having themselves neither part nor lot with the
governing classes.
Not so the true twentieth-century Englishman. He identifies himself with the civil laws and institutions of his country, and claims to have a voice in their betterment, however discontented he may be with the present condition of things. Only very slowly are we learning to apply the principles of representative govern- ment to our ecclesiastical institutions. Notions of government by divine right die hardest in the religious life of the nation. The privileged classes, in whose hands the reins of government have so long been, have disregarded and defied the rising tide of liberty and knowledge longer in the ecclesiastical sphere than anywhere else. But the tide is none the less irresistible, and the nation as a whole is now perfectly aware that the day of such monopoly of power is gone for ever. The notion that the authority of Christ Himself could be invoked as having given the exact shape and form to our ecclesiastical institutions, or that the Spirit of God had necessarily spoken in any clearer way through Councils of ecclesiastics than in any other Councils of fallible men who sought His guidance, has simply gone the way of other old-world super- stitions. We have learned to see God's hand as much in civil history as in ecclesiastical ; to hear God's voice, and trace the overruling of His providence,- in the ordering of the life of a modern Christian nation as truly as in the guidance of the Israelite people of old. It has thus come to pass that those who are discontented with the present ordering of our ecclesiastical life in England according to the Act of Uniformity, and with the out-of-date character of much of our Book of Common Prayer—that is to say, something like half of the nation—are beginning to see that they have acquiesced all too long in their supposed impotence ; have taken for granted all too long that they have neither part nor lot in their national Church. They have perhaps regarded their religious inheritance as Englishmen, and all the provision made by their forefathers for their spiritual training and nourishment in every parish in the land, with alienation and dislike, or even with hostility. They have acknowledged no duties and claimed no rights. They have even ceased almost to be interested in the old controversy as to which have been more in fault at the critical periods of separation,—the authorities, who were stiff and intolerant, or their forefathers, who were disloyal and self-willed. The Church of England is but a denomination," so they have argued, "and we have formed new denominations ! The old
traditional system is nothing to us!" •
But a new spirit is in the air, and was unmistakably in evidence at the Barrow Church Congress. The people of England are waking up to ask themselves (as a people with representative government were bound to do) to whom this "Church of England 7 belongs, so far as it is an outward and visible human institution, developing by natural laws. Who is really responsible for keeping it abreast with the knowledge and the needs of the day ? If much of our national inheritance for spiritual culture is con- fessedly not used in the best way for the promotion of the Christianity of Christ among us, if its administrative machinery is an anachronism, its financial system chaos, whose fault is it ? Is it not our own ? Why have we left it to itself, as if it were a private corporation like the Salvation Army ? Why have not ecclesiastical Reform Bills been carried part passu with those which have reformed our civil institutions?
The law has never wavered as to who are members of the Church of England. We are professedly a Christian nation, and "all who profess and call themselves Christians" may claim to exercise their rights and enjoy their privileges in their parish church, whether they be "good Churchmen,' who conform 'heartily and loyally to Church rules, "sorry Churchmen," who conform occarlionally and half-heartedly, or "bad Churchmen," who practically do not conform at all, but have either given their adhesion to some separated Church life on an independent basis, or "-go nowhere."
Much of the apathy and aloofness of the people of England, even after divine-right bubbles had burst, has been due, I am 'convinced, to horror of Erastianiam. We have read with disdain of German States whose religious beliefs and customs were 'changed by the arbitrary will of an autocratic ruler from Romanism to Lutheranism, or vice versit. Have we as yet quite grasped what the union of Church and State really means iu a practically self-governing Christian nation like our own,—where we have learned to allow liberty and all but equality to all sorts and conditions of religious and political organisations ? To tell the truth, Erastianisin is now here in England a word that has lost its meaning. At is little more than a bogey, in fact, though it is still a bugbear to minds of two extreme types. With us the Government is not something apart from the people, nor is there the slightest fear (to go to the heart of the matter), I honestly believe, lest the King and Parliament should deal with "spiritual" matters except through "spiritual" persons. Any change in the wording of religious formularies would be committed to experts in whom the nation could put absolute trust. The idea of Parliament itself undertaking to revise the Book of Common Prayer, instead of committing the work to the very best men for the purpose the nation possesses—would that we still had John Ruskin !—is almost unthinkable in this age of specialisa- tion. Why, even the arranging of a syllabus for the religious instruction of children is rarely undertaken by a set of laymen (say a municipal Committee) without asking advice from the authorised teachers belonging to the different branches of the Christian Church in the locality in conference, who are likely, as experts, to do the thing much better than themselves. But this letter is already far too long.
Eccles Vicarage.
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