THE EDINBURGH REVIEW, JANUARY, 1899. No. CCCLXXXVII. By ART. I.--1. Charge delivered at his First Visitation. the ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY. London and New York: 1898. 2. Letters to the Times' (June to December, 1898). By the Right Honble. Sir WILLIAM HARCOURT, M.P. 3. Essays in Aid of Reform in the Church. Edited by CHARLES GORE, M.A., D.D., Canon of Westminster. London: 1898. 4. Roman Canon Law in the Church of England. Six Essays by FREDERICK WILLIAM MAITLAND, M.A., LL.D., Downing Professor of the Laws of England in the University of Cambridge. London: 1898. 5. The Reformed Church of Ireland (1537-1889). 2nd edit. Revised by the Right Honble. J. T. BALL, LL.D., D.C.L. London and Dublin: 1890. 6. The Law of the Church of Ireland. An Essay. By the Right Honble. ROBERT R. WARREN, LL.D., Councillor of Cashel and Waterford, Killaloe and Clonfert. Dublin and London: 1895. IN the present day it is certain that no Church can retain the character of being truly national' unless it comprises within its limits very various tendencies of religious thought. Accordingly, the wisest and the best friends of the Church of England in recent years have laboured in the cause of comprehension, and have endeavoured to lay stress rather upon the importance of what all Christians hold in common, and upon the objects at which all Christians profess to aim, than upon the causes that divide them. The 1899. The Unrest in the Church of England. 3 least the right, without exposing himself to the charge of intolerance, to direct public attention to the matter, in the desire that those whose duty it might be should look to the due enforcement of the law. A good deal has been said and written since 1772, yet we doubt whether Burke's language in that year in the House of Commons, dismissing the idea that there was any hardship' on the clergy in requiring their conformity to the standards of the Church, does not accurately represent the feeling of ordinary English laymen of to-day : 'They want to be preferred clergymen in the Church of England as by law established, but their conscience will not suffer them to conform to the doctrines and practices of that Church; that is, they want to be teachers in a Church to which they do not belong, and it is an odd sort of hardship. They want to receive the emoluments for teaching one set of doctrines whilst they are teaching another.' And he proceeds, in language bearing upon the property of the State Church which would win the approval of Sir William Harcourt, to declare that 'a Church in any legal sense is only a certain system of religious doctrines and practices, fixed and ascertained by some law, by the difference of which laws different Churches (as different commonwealths) are made in various parts of the world; and the Establishment is a tax laid by the same sovereign authority for the payment of those who so teach and practise. For no legislature was ever so absurd as to tax its people to support men for teaching and acting as they please, but by some prescribed rule. The hardship amounts to this, that the people of England are not taxed two shillings in the pound for teaching as divine truths their own particular fancies.' Nevertheless it is highly desirable that the limits fixed by the law should be very wide, so that the State Church may include within its fold the greatest possible number of Christian citizens. It is in the present day matter of general regret, as well as a source of weakness to the National Church, that so many earnest and sincere Christians are outside her communion, and every effort should be made not to repeat past errors, and to avoid making it necessary for religious-minded men to sever their connexion with the Church. Still Burke is right that limits there must be; and limits imposed by the law there are. It is to the Book of Common Prayer that extreme Ritualists and extreme Protestants nowadays alike appeal. That Book was in 1662 approved in its present form by the Convocations of Canterbury and York, and Parliament in the same year annexed and joined' it to the Act of Church of England compares well with other Churches in its freedom, as a whole, from narrow denominationalism, a spirit from which, no doubt, many of her clergy and members are not exempt, but which, owing in great measure to her connexion with the State, has never been allowed for long to dominate the Church of the nation. Still the National Church has bounds, and the clergy owe it to the Church and the State to keep within them. A keen controversy has been carried on in the newspapers for the last seven or eight months as to the merits and lawfulness of so-called "Ritualistic' practices in the Church of England, and it has evidently greatly interested the public. Beyond the interest attaching to the special points discussed in the press, the controversy has turned the attention of many men who are not partisans of either High Church, or Broad Church, or Low Church, to questions affecting the constitution and government of the State Church and its position towards the State. The immediate cause of trouble was Mr. Kensit. It has often happened before that a small, even an ignoble, cause has been sufficient to stir up public excitement to the pitch necessary to abate abuses and to promote reforms; and it would be altogether superfluous to spend time in denouncing the want of good feeling and good taste shown by Mr. Kensit and his friends in violently disturbing the religious worship of priests and congregations who, at least, were perfectly sincere in their belief that the practices impugned were the highest and truest expression, in worship and ceremonial, of their own Christianity. Mr. Kensit's methods were offensive in the highest degree to all men of right feeling. They involved breach of the law, and they would not have found a single supporter or apologist had he attempted to disturb the worship of Roman Catholics or other independent congregations, however superstitious or idolatrous that worship might appear to him to be. Their creed and their forms of worship are their own affair; and public sentiment, no less than the law, allows complete toleration to every variety of religion and worship, and will punish any individuals who violently endeavour to interfere in those respects with other men's freedom. Here the practices impugned were the practices of clergymen of the Church of England in the performance of public worship in the churches of the State. They were alleged to be contrary to law, and opposed to the doctrine and worship of the Church of England; and, if so, any citizen would have at least the right, without exposing himself to the charge of intolerance, to direct public attention to the matter, in the desire that those whose duty it might be should look to the due enforcement of the law. A good deal has been said and written since 1772, yet we doubt whether Burke's language in that year in the House of Commons, dismissing the idea that there was any hardship' on the clergy in requiring their conformity to the standards of the Church, does not accurately represent the feeling of ordinary English laymen of to-day :— "They want to be preferred clergymen in the Church of England as by law established, but their conscience will not suffer them to conform to the doctrines and practices of that Church; that is, they want to be teachers in a Church to which they do not belong, and it is an odd sort of hardship. They want to receive the emoluments for teaching one set of doctrines whilst they are teaching another.' And he proceeds, in language bearing upon the property of the State Church which would win the approval of Sir William Harcourt, to declare that 'a Church in any legal sense is only a certain system of religious doctrines and practices, fixed and ascertained by some law, by the difference of which laws different Churches (as different commonwealths) are made in various parts of the world; and the Establishment is a tax laid by the same sovereign authority for the payment of those who so teach and practise. For no legislature was ever so absurd as to tax its people to support men for teaching and acting as they please, but by some prescribed rule. The hardship amounts to this, that the people of England are not taxed two shillings in the pound for teaching as divine truths their own particular fancies.' Nevertheless it is highly desirable that the limits fixed by the law should be very wide, so that the State Church may include within its fold the greatest possible number of Christian citizens. It is in the present day matter of general regret, as well as a source of weakness to the National Church, that so many earnest and sincere Christians are outside her communion, and every effort should be made not to repeat past errors, and to avoid making it necessary for religious-minded men to sever their connexion with the Church. Still Burke is right that limits there must be; and limits imposed by the law there are. It is to the Book of Common Prayer that extreme Ritualists and extreme Protestants nowadays alike appeal. That Book was in 1662 approved in its present form by the Convocations of Canterbury and York, and Parliament in the same year 'annexed and joined' it to the Act of |