Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/29

 1899.] The Church and Parliament. [21

stepped forth the colossal figure of a new Elijah denouncing judg- ment, but at the same time clamouring that somebody else, of course the bishops, should take off his hands the trouble of slay- ing the priests of Baal. The bishops, if they had been to blame, had been to blame for having acted as Englishmen and not as ecclesiastics. Prosecution and persecution were very closely connected in the mind of the ordinary Englishman, and those who had to administer the affairs of the Church would always remember that that public opinion which goaded them to prose- cute their clergy would be the very first that deserted them and held them up to derision and contumely when they had under- taken the task forced upon them. It was not, however, to be assumed that because the bishops did not prosecute they were doing nothing. They strove their utmost to bring about a good understanding in all parishes where their intervention was called in, and the consequence was that in most country dioceses all disputed questions of ritual were settled by episcopal intervention, on the grounds of the good sense and good feeling of those who lived within the parish. In the diocese of London, which pre- sented peculiar difficulties, his intervention had been generally successful. Some of the clergy indeed were not prepared to accept his decision on the question of the mode in which the services of the Church should be conducted ; but, while regret- ting that that should be so, he acknowledged that on some of the points involved there was a certain amount of legal obscurity. The archbishop had in this crisis undertaken to hear all that could be said respecting any ceremonial which was claimed as being permissible under the regulations of the Church of England.

Viscount Halifax, president of the English Church Union and a leader of the Kitualist party, pointed out that the Albert Hall meeting, of which so much had been made, was largely a Nonconformist meeting, and he asked with all seriousness what business had Nonconformists to meddle with the internal affairs of the Church of England? Those who thought with him denied, and would continue to deny, that it was within the competence of Parliament or the Crown, according to the tradi- tions of the Church of England, to alter matters ceremonial. It was hateful to them to seem to be in opposition to the bishops. It was impossible, however, to assent to the principle that any interpretation of the rubrics could be legitimate which implied that omission to prescribe was equivalent to prohibition to do. Nor was it possible to assent to the principle that use, however long and continuous, could be brought forward as legitimate evidence of what the Church of England permitted or forbade. He entreated his hearers not to risk the chance of certain disaster by endeavouring to force on the consciences of members of the Church of England decisions of secular courts in spiritual affairs. On the other hand, the Earl of Kimberley thought it vain to disregard the fact that the Church was regulated to a larj