Page:Free Opinions, Freely Expressed on Certain Phases of Modern Social Life and Conduct.djvu/48

 instead of fostering kindness, neighbourliness, good-*will and unity among their parishioners, set them all by the ears, and play the petty tyrant with a domineering obstinacy which is rather worse than pagan, being purely barbarous? Many cases could easily be quoted where the childish, not to say querulous, pettiness of the ruling vicar of a country parish has helped to narrow, coarsen, and deteriorate the spirit of a whole community, spreading mean jealousies, fostering cheap rivalries, and making every soul in the place, from Sunday school children up to poor workhouse octogenarians, irritable, discontented and unhappy. And if the word "pagan" be used at all, should it not be particularly and specially applied to those theatrical dignitaries of the Church whose following of the simple and beautiful doctrine of Christ consists in sheer disobedience to His commands—disobedience openly displayed in the ornate ritual and "vain repetitions" which Christ expressly forbade. "For all their works they do to be seen of men; they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments." And while "enlarging the borders of their garments" they institute "processional" services and promenades round the "fairy lamp" churches, with various altar-bobbings and other foolish ceremonies, caring nothing for the Spirit of the faith, if only all forms and observances, imported from Rome, or from still older "pagan" rites than the Roman, namely, the Græco-Egyptian, may be in some way introduced into the simple and unaffected form of prayer authorized by the Church of England. Disloyal to both God and the King, the "pagan