Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 096.djvu/441

Rh there, in spite of perfect demonstration to the contrary: We say nothing as to the theoretical, or doctrinal dispute between High and Low; but we do say that in practice, in fact, in the actual working of things, the Church is Broad to a remarkable degree. On the same episcopal bench sit right reverend representatives of the most antagonistic opinions. It supports uncompromising champions of orthodoxy, and is not too hot to hold pliant and plastic latitudinarians. From diocesan Exeter to diocesan Manchester is a distance the very mention of which suggests something akin to the expression, "From Cornwall to Caithness." If you are an eclectic in your ecclesiastical tendencies, and have itching ears for a brilliant succession of novelties in the sermons you hear, then take a tour of the parish churches in your neighbourhood; and in one you will hear the follower of Dr. Pusey, in another of Dr. Hook, in a third of Dr. M'Neile, in a fourth of Dr. Arnold, in a fifth of Dr. Maitland, in a sixth of Professor Maurice, and so on, with an illimitable series of spirits, black, white, and grey, mingling as they may.

Mr. Kingsley, perhaps, stands out with too clearly pronounced a development of his own, to be referred to either of the sections to which we have just assigned, in each case, a real or imaginary head; otherwise his position is at the feet (as he would place himself), or by the side (as others would place him) of Professor Maurice. And Mr. Kingsley is just the sort of man about whom opposite thinkers unhesitatingly affirm that he can't be in the Church. Nor is it easy to deny that, on the face of it, there does appear something odd, something eccentric and abnormal in his position. A rector and canon, he yet perplexes old-fashioned Church-people, and minds not given to change, by his adventurous essayings in the literature of the day. As Parson Lot, he writes letters in Politics for the People and in the Christian Socialist, and in a tone and style which divide the honours (as an examination of the placards at the John-street Institution, and similar places, would show) with Messrs. Harney and Holyoake, Bronterre O'Brien and Thomas Cooper, G. Reynolds and Ernest Jones. He is advertised (on whatever pretence) as a contributor to the Leader, in common with the names of Thornton Hunt and G. H. Lewes, Francis Newman and Frederic Foxton. He bewilders matter-of-fact readers by a life of "Alton Locke," Chartist tailor and poet; he puts them in a ferment with "Yeast;" he incurs public rebuke from the reading-desk, while he is himself standing in the pulpit, for expounding "untruths" in his "Message of the Church to Labouring Men." Little marvel, therefore, is it, if a prediction of episcopal prosecution is perpetually uplifted in terrorem against him—if he is continually threatened by more orthodox brethren with the alarum, "The Bishops be upon thee, O Socialist!"—if he is periodically warned to look out for squalls extraordinary from his cloud-compelling ordinary—as though in the words of the Theban princess,