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attended to give evidence before it. If any weight is to be given to their testimony, the boasted parochial system has done much to stifle the free energy of the Church of England and to make it the sport of its enemies. The admirable system of placing a clergyman with absolute power in a parish has converted it, as Canon Ryle says, into the incumbent's castle, and nobody can enter it except a Dissenter.' The mutual jealousies and antagonists in this united Church, which includes two or three different Churches, as hostile to each other as to Nonconformists outside, have made the exercise of this power simply intolerable. The Blue Book literally teems with evidence in disproof of Mr. Forster's principal positions, which want of space alone prevents me from quoting. It proves that the parochial system is a cause of perpetual heart-burning, that in many cases it prevents the erection of churches and the making of proper provision for the people, that it is an instrument of ecclesiastical tyranny and party injustice, and that, instead of bringing religious influence home to all, it practically consigns large districts to utter neglect. It indicates the facilities which the Establishment affords for the growth of that Ritualism which Mr. Forster deprecates, owing to the power enjoyed by the parish clergyman and the readiness of parishioners to bear much rather than forsake their parish church. It does much to dispel the fears which we so often hear expressed as to the possible failure of the means of religious instruction if the public' supply were withdrawn, for it tells us ihat the members of the Church are ready enough to build churches if the law, in its anxious care for the rights of incumbents, will cease to interpose obstacles in their path. It proves that the parochial system has collapsed, and that at present it is a fruitful source of internal dissension, a check to real progress, and an unintentional but not less effective ally of Dissent.

Mr. Forster dwells much on the right which is given to the people to claim the services of the parochial clergyman, but practically it is the prerogative of the clergyman which the parochial system helps to maintain. It was,' according to Mr. J. M. Dale, more for the people than the clergyman, but incidentally was given to him the exclusive right to keep any one else out.' The accident, if so it be, has come to be the essential part of the system, for the very obvious reason that the clergyman is always there to maintain his own right, whereas it is not very clear how the right of the parishioner is to be asserted, especially as regards private ministrations. An amusing and yet very characteristic illustration of the working of the system occurred recently in my own neighbourhood. It was proposed to establish a Working Men's Institute, on a perfectly neutral basis, mainly for the residents on the Shaftesbury Park Estate. It happened that a Primitive Methodist chapel was the only convenient place for meeting, and it was announced that the Rev. John Hall, of St. Philip's, Battersea, was to attend and speak. This stirred the ire

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of an individual now known in the neighbourhood as the ó boy Briggs,' and he wrote at once to the Bishop to complain that Mr. Hall had been guilty of the two atrocious offences of speaking in a Dissenting chapel and of intruding on the domain of another clergyman; and the Evangelical Dr. Thorold, with a sense of justice equalled only by his Christian charity, proceeded without inquiry to rebuke Mr. Hall for offences which it turned out he had never committed at all; for, while deeply sympathising with the object of the meeting, he had never promised to attend, and was prevented from being present by other engagements. If this happens in a suburban parish, what is not to be expected in rural districts? The wonder is how a Liberal statesman can, apart from all other objections, believe it to be desirable, in the interests of the nation and its freedom and progress, to have a great army of State officials, in the shape of religious teachers, placed in every part of the country, and clothed with the authority the law gives to the parish clergyman. The political objections alone should have been sufficient to deter him from approving such a system. The character and spirit of the parochial clergy are thus sketched by one of themselves, and one who is a stout defender of their privileges :

I often think, when these mediæval worthies left the world, their mantle must have descended on the rectors, vicars, and perpetual curates of old England. At any rate, if we have not put on their clothes, we have drunk deeply into their spirit. For resolute unwillingness to admit the necessity of change—for steady dislike to anything new—for persevering adherence to old faiths, whether good or bad—for inability to see the need of adapting ourselves to the times—for all these characteristics I believe that there is no class in England to be compared with the parochial clergy. Reforms of any kind are not much in our line.? Such is the testimony of Canon Ryle. If these are the characteristics of the parochial clergy, it is due to the fact that they are State officials, not that they are ministers of the Gospel or even clergy of an Episcopal Church.

That Mr. Forster should desire to preserve so powerful a class of obstructives, and that there should be other Liberals who sympathise with him, is, to say the least, a remarkable political phenomenon.

There is another point which demands much fuller treatment than it is possible to give it here. Mr. Forster anticipates a contingency in which he would feel himself compelled to abandon the defence of the Establishment. 'If,' he says, “the Ritualist party become strong enough to rule the Church --if, instead of being a small but vehement minority, they should become the majority-I should consider that circumstances had so changed. This is a remarkable statement. If Mr. Forster's conscience were aggrieved, or if he believed that the prevalence of a particular system to which he is opposed would materially alter the character of the influence which the Anglican Church is exerting, he would be in favour of disestablishment. Ought not the contemplation of such a possibility to lead

: Tracts on Church Reform. No. VII. p. 11.

him to consider seriously how far it is right to oppose those whose consciences are already aggrieved ? Does not his admission suggest that the provision of a religious system for the people is beyond the proper functions of a civil government ? It may trouble him tomorrow, and then he will protest against it; but why should he uphold it when it troubles us to-day, or on what principle can be resist us and then object when the pressure comes upon himself? Surely the right or wrong of an institution does not depend upon whether or not it is worked in accordance with the views of Mr. W. E. Forster. There is a little too much of oracular infallibility and patronising condescension here. In effect it says to Nonconformists: 'I know the State Church offends you, but you must be content to submit. It may be that in time it will offend me also, and then I will help you to overthrow it. Our reply is: “It ought not to be a question of our personal feelings or predilections, but of right. If it is the duty of the nation to maintain a Church, by all means let the State Church be preserved. If not, and it is a matter of expediency, then respect the convictions of Nonconformists now just as you will ask for your own to be respected if the complexion of the Establishment should become displeasing to you.

So much for the theory: a word as to the facts. •If ever it comes to pass that the clergy of the Established Church, or even a large majority of those State servants, should suppose that by reason of their office they are masters of men's consciences, or have a right to thrust themselves between God and their fellow-men, I would do what I could to dismiss them from the service of their country. The comment which suggests itself is that this would be very hard and unrighteous usage, and yet that, on the principle Mr. Forster lays down, it should be adopted at once. He says : ‘I would as little sanction a sacerdotal State Church as I would the reunion of the State with Romanism.' But the Church for which Mr. Forster is contending is, if words have any meaning, a sacerdotal Church. The Prayer Book it uses has the stamp of the State upon it, and the formula of ordination to the priesthood which every bishop is compelled to use has the sanction of the State. Its well-known words may be quoted once more, for they appear to be strangely overlooked :— Receive the Holy Ghost for the office and work of a priest in the Church of God, now committed to thee by the imposition of our hands : Whose sins thou dost forgive they are forgiven; and whose sins thou dost retain they are retained.' Yet again, in the Order for the Visitation of the Sick, the priest is thus instructed : “Here shall the sick person be moved to make a special confession of his sins if he find his conscience troubled with any weighty matter. After which confession the priest shall absolve him, if he humbly and heartily desire it, after this sort : Our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath left power to his Church to absolve all sinners who truly repent and believe in Him, of His great mercy forgive

thee thine offences, and by His authority, committed to me, I absolve thee from all thy sins.' If the Church which retains such a form is not a sacerdotal Church, it is something much worse, for it is a Church which uses the most solemn words on the most sacred occasions without attaching to them any definite meaning.

If Mr. Forster adheres to his own words, Nonconformists may already claim him as their ally. The Ritualists, in the assertion of their priestly claims, are in truth only obeying the instructions of that Prayer Book which Mr. Forster admits cannot now be revised. The complaint made of them applies really to the system; and instead of proposing to dismiss them because they claim to stand between God and the soul of man, the righteous course would be to destroy the sanction which the State gives to that pretension by the overthrow of the system. The story of the last forty years should have taught Mr. Forster that the continuance of the State Church means the triumph of Ritualism. My eye was arrested the other day by an advertisement of a new edition of the sermons of Dr. Arnold, by his daughter Mrs. W. E. Forster. The connection of the two names first sent my thoughts wandering back to that noble man's early protests against the nascent Tractarianism of the time, and then recalled them to the present controversy. What a marvellous change has passed over the Anglican Church since that beautiful Christian life was closed, as it seemed to men, so mysteriously and prematurely! If Arnold were suddenly to return to his beloved Church, to be present at mass in St. Alban's Church or some similar shrine, to look into the Priest in Absolution, to hear the daring defiances of a law apparently impotent to assert itself by the Catholics of our day, to see the helplessness of the bishops, the blunders of judges, and the unconcealed sympathy of Convocation with Romanising innovations, would he talk of the triumph of Ritualism as a thing of the future? It is only familiarity with the facts that deadens their impression on us. We go on from change to change, and do not realise what these changes, taken together, mean. The one hope is that, so far as the laity are concerned, they are as yet but superficial--asthetic rather than doctrinal—and that the hatred of sacerdotal rule, hitherto so characteristic of Englishmen, still lives. But who can answer for the next generation, trained amid these ideas and influences? Those who would regard their subjection to the power of a priesthood as a national calamity ought at least to do their utmost to prevent the influence of the State from being used for that end. The policy of waiting till the work is done is more worthy of the pashas who allowed the Russians to cross the Danube before organising effective resistance than of English statesmen of robust intelligence and manly spirit.

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J. GUINNESS ROGERS.

THE REASONABLE BASIS OF CERTITUDE.

No one doubts that the cause of religion, whether natural or revealed, is just now going through a tremendous intellectual crisis, and that those who desire to uphold it must put their shoulders vigorously to the wheel. Out of the many anti-religious principles which are rife on every side, I take as theme of my present paper one which is not always at once recognised as an anti-religious principle at all. It is exhibited in different shapes by different writers, but its substance is this. “No one,' it is said, can reasonably hold any tenet with firm and absolute conviction, unless he have instituted an explicit and deliberate inquiry into its truth; unless he have examined the arguments adduced pro and con, and thus assured himself that reason warrants his conviction.' No doubt those who advocate this thesis may admit that reason' is a large word, including various and heterogeneous grounds of belief. The essence of their thesis is, that certitude, in order to be reasonable, must be preceded by explicit inquiry and logical examination.

Now when I admit, or rather affirm, that the acceptance of this thesis would inflict a fatal wound on religion, I must not be misunderstood. I am perfectly confident that in fair controversy, where the combatants on either side are pretty evenly matched, the advocates of religion will entirely vanquish their opponents. And I am confident also that the mass of believers possess super-superabundant reasons for accepting the great verities of their faith. But it is a simple matter of fact, that the enormous majority of mankind are entirely incapable of marshalling arguments or instituting a scientific inquiry into truth. It must follow therefore from the thesis which I oppose, that the enormous majority of mankind would act unreasonably by embracing the fundamental truths of religion with absolute certitude. But without certitude in religious conviction, no religious life is possible.

• Without certitude in religious faith,' says Fr. Newman, “there may be much decency of profession and observance ; but there can be no habit of prayer, no directness in devotion, no intercourse with the unseen, no generosity of self-sacrifice.' • Christian earnestness may be ruled by the world to be a perverseness or a

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