REAL CHURCH-EXTENSION AND RETAIL PROSELYTISM.
THE great Law Courts have not yet done with Alicia Race. That little girl is as important to their concurrent jurisdiction as the Royal British Bank ; for as the bank is at once in Chancery and in Bankruptcy, so the child is in Common Law and in Chancery. The Lord Chief Justice Ims declared that she shall be given up to her mother ; but Vice-Chancellor Kindersley has been called in to ascertain which church the little girl would like to go to. His Honour felt perplexed, and we do not wonder at it. He asked, "would it not be better that an undertaking were given, that the child's religious opinions should not be disturbed in the mean time, by going to church or otherwise " ; for his Honour found it difficult to see her between Saturday last week and Thursday in this week. However, the Vice-Chancellor managed to see the little girl, ascertained that she did not wish to go to a Roman Catholic church, and made an injunction accordingly. Poor Mrs. Race, who is said to be a very respectable woman, was, says ViceChancellor Kindersley, "suffering from considerable anxiety and distress of mind lest her child should be taken from her, and the child itself expresses its wish that it should not be taken from the mother."
This last fact is worth noting. Not many days have passed since the little girl was wishing to remain with her Protestant governess, and was anxious not to be taken to her mother; • now she has regained her filial feeling, but still has theological differences with her parent; and it has been judged proper to call one of the Vice-Chancellors into the nursery for the purpose of regulating the churchgoing of the establishment. It is to be hoped that proselytizing persons will not have authority to introduce theological differences into other homes ; for it is painful to think of the mass of business which will be entailed upon the ViceChancellors if they have to visit the abodes of many more widows, to consult with many little girls, and to regulate the churchgoin5 of many poor families. Besides the mass of business, we can foresee an immense amount of inconvenience, if not of danger to the very essence of Protestantism ; for it is repugnant to every English notion that the religious doctrines of little girls should be regulated by Vice-Chancellors.
The Bishop of London has cut that gordian knot of our religious dissensions in a much more trenchant style. Most of us in this country would desire to see larger numbers of children rescued from the spiritual domination of Rome, and drawn into one or other of our Protestant communions; and it is most consistent with the national policy that the larger number of children should be drawn within the pale of the National Church. Indeed, there must be something very wrong either in the state of the population or in the administration of the Church, if, in the absence of special and peculiar circumstances, the children of the humbler classes do not as naturally walk into the parish-church as into the street or their homes. Many circumstances have contributed to prevent them. One is, the immense social severance between rich and poor, and most especially the contrast of costume of rich and poor. In the parish of St. Peter's Stepney, the local clergy
man, Mr. Rowse11, has opened a "church-school" for the education, social intercourse, and worship of such among his parishioners as are not yet prepared to attend Divine service in church; and among those who personally assist Mr. Rowsell is the Bishop of London. That is the true mode of proselytizing. Assist the poor in elevating their temporal condition while elevating their thoughts Heavenwards ; make them feel that the national establishment is for the service of the people—that it helps in their elevation—that if they want guidance, support, counsel, the pastor is their "guide, philosopher, and friend," backed by the resources of the Church establishment with the Bishop at its head. Many more children would be brought to the Church by this large, practical, and friendly policy, than by the process of individual teasing, with a Vice-Chancellor meddling within the sacred precincts of home between widows and their little girls.
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