ings, examining their merits and pronouncing sentence accordingly, approving or reversing the sentence of discipline pronounced by the society on its alleged offending member as it thought well. Of course we admit that, unless the laws and regulations of the said religious community were contrary to the laws of the State, the State court judge would make them the basis of his dealings with the case: but the essential point would be that the society would be answerable to him for its proceedings, and that he would be the supreme adjudicator on the religious questions under consideration.

Mr. Rogers, referring to the case of Jones v. Stannard, says:

'The court decided that Mr. Stannard could not occupy the pulpit at Ramsden Street Chapel. It did not inquire into the doctrine, or his right to hold it as a Congregational minister.'

Our reply is--On what grounds did the court forbid Mr. Stannard to occupy the pulpit of the chapel of which he had been the minister? Was it not the fact that the court adjudged him guilty of something that was alleged against him? What was alleged against him? Was it not that he had not preached the doctrines scheduled in his trust-deed? On what grounds could the court come to the conclusion that Mr. Stannard had violated the doctrine of his trust-deed? Would not the grounds be that the judge, having the doctrine of the trust-deed and the testimony as to Mr. Stannard's preaching before him, had inquired into both, and had come to the conclusion that the matter of Mr. Stannard's preaching did not agree with the doctrine of the trust-deed? Now, could a judge examine into a case, and pass sentence on its essential merits, which he had not inquired into?

The wonder is that such an able and astute controversialist as Mr. Rogers is could deliberately have allowed such a statement to escape from his pen.

Then as to the alleged non-inquiry of the court as to whether Mr. Stannard had a right to hold a certain doctrine as a Congregational minister, we reply: the court did not know Mr. Stannard at all as a 'Congregational minister,' nor as a minister in any sense of the word, except as the minister of Ramsden Street Congregational Chapel. It was in his religious office and capacity as the minister of that chapel that he was arraigned before the court. It was as the minister of that chapel he was accused of preaching certain doctrines, and it was with respect to the ministry of that chapel the court decided that the preaching of certain doctrines

could not form a part of it, and it was as the minister of that chapel that the court said to Mr. Stannard, in effect, ‘You cannot hold your doctrines; you must leave the building, leave ministering to the congregation assembling in it, and cease presiding as pastor over the flock meeting within its walls.'

Mr. Rogers, in his further description of the proceedings of the Court of Chancery in the Huddersfield case, says :

'It [the court] naturally declined the assistance of those supposed to be " experts," for it had nothing to do with the practice of Congregational Churches, or the authority of their creeds."

Our reply is-Does not Mr. Rogers go out of his way from the discussion of the main question of the absolute control of the State over Dissenting communities, as we have explained it, to deny what nobody affirms? Of course every intelligent person knows that Congregational communities are independent of each other, and that their creeds and religious customs, as set forth in their trust-deeds, may widely differ. There is no union or bond between them, having its source in a central governmental and administrative body, such as is the case with Presbyterian and Wesleyan communities. This being so, in any case of dispute taken into court by a member, or members, of a Congregational community, the case, in its trial and in the results of the trial, affects that single community alone. The court, in its inquiry into the merits of the case, and in the exercise of its jurisdiction over it, would limit itself to the review of that case alone, and would take as the basis of its proceedings exclusively the trust-deed of the chapel in question, unless it were found that there was anything in the deed referring to some other acknowledged authority; in that event, of course, the court would extend its inquiries to that authority. Had Mr. Stannard been a Presbyterian or a Wesleyan minister charged with preaching doctrine contrary to that which was legally set forth as the doctrine of the body to which he belonged, as a matter of course, and as an absolute necessity to the judicial trial of the case, the court would have been obliged to inquire into the doctrines binding upon the whole Presbyterian body or Wesleyan connexion. But as it was, Mr. Stannard being a minister of a Congregational community having no legal connexion with any other community called by the same name and holding the same principles, the judge could not, of course, extend his inquiry or jurisdiction beyond the prescribed documentary creeds which were legally binding upon that separate and independent community. But had

there been necessity so to extend its inquiries, the court had absolute power to do so; that is to say, had there been a provision attached to the scheduled doctrines of the trust-deed in the Huddersfield chapel case to this effect: 'But the doctrines herein set forth shall be interpreted in accordance with the declaration of faith and order promulgated by the Congregational Union of England and Wales, as generally representing the faith and order of Congregationalists; then this document of the Congregational Union would have been brought into court, and would have been regarded, for the purposes of the jurisdiction of the court, as a document of collateral authority with the trust-deed itself, and, of course, would have very widely extended the sphere of judicial inquiry.

As to the judge declining the assistance of 'experts,' this was an additional proof of the complete jurisdiction assumed by the judge in the whole case. Had he admitted the eagerly proffered aid of Nonconformist theological experts, who for well-known reasons were anxious to get a standing in the case, these experts, and the religious authorities whom they represented, could have turned round afterwards and have said, 'Yes, it is quite true that in the Huddersfield chapel case we were all apparently in the most absolute and unconditional sense subject to the control of the court in the most sacred religious matters by the judge's decision, but then he took our own interpretations of our own creeds, and he based his judgment upon our interpretations and our theological direction, so that after all, you see, the judge's decision was but the embodiment and enforcement of our religious and theological opinions interpreting the doctrines in dispute.' But the judge would have none of this. He declined the aid of experts, and proceeded to form his own views as a civil magistrate of the meaning of the doctrines in question, and whether, according to the evidence submitted to him, Mr. Stannard had been preaching them.

The result of the case is one of historic interest. Never was the subjection, absolute and helpless, of any religious body in its religious concerns more manifestly and unquestionably complete, and the more the case is inquired into and discussed, the more readily and candidly this will be admitted by all persons whose minds are open to the irresistible force of the facts stated, which overwhelmingly show that, in such a case, there is no getting away from State control in matters of religion, even by those who imagine that they are altogether free from it, and who have committed themselves to a loudly proclaimed religious and political crusade, the purpose

of which they allege is to liberate the Church of England from State bondage-a bondage to which they themselves are the veriest victims. This is an unwelcome fact which they must undoubtedly realize every time that their trust-deed creeds are taken into the State court for interpretation, and into the Houses of Parliament for alteration, proceedings which are likely from the growing necessities of the case to be more frequent in the future than they have been in the past.'

1 As a singular comment on the foregoing article we may mention that at a meeting of the English Congregational Chapel Building Society, held in the City Temple on Thursday, February 19, 1885, the subject of the doctrinal schedules of trust-deeds was discussed. The following passage is taken from the Report of the Society, read on that occasion, as it appeared in the columns of the Christian World. It may be taken as indicative of a conflict upon the subject which is now being waged by those who represent the old and the new theological dispensation of Dissent. The Report is evidently on the side of the trust-deed creeds and for the abandonment of the chapels by those who cannot believe them. It says: 'No trust-deed can give or maintain that life [referring to spiritual life], but it can determine a certain user or non-user of the material property so vested, and the whole meaning and use of the trustdeed, when passed according to the constitution of the society, is to secure that user according to the intention of those whose money paid for the site and church, leaving those who may afterwards occupy the building, but whose principles differ essentially from those of the founders, full liberty to do as their predecessors did-i.e. to build elsewhere according to their conscientious belief.' Yet after the reading of such words as these Mr. Samuel Morley, M.P., is reported to have said that he' approved the action of some Churches in which pastors and deacons had concurred in allowing the trust-deed to remain locked up.' Why?-See Christian World, February 26, 1885.

ART. V. EDWARD COLERIDGE AND THE RISE OF MISSIONARY COLLEGES.

1. The Official Year Book of the Church of England. Chapter IV. The Foreign Mission Work of the Church. (London, 1885.)

2. Sermons on the Church of England, its Constitution, Mission, and Trials. By the Right Rev. BISHOP BROUGHTON. Edited, with Prefatory Memoir, by the Ven. ARCHDEACON HARRISON, Canon of Canterbury. (London, 1857.)

3. Colonial Church Chronicle. (London, July, 1848.) 4. Twenty-five Years at S. Augustine's, Canterbury. By the Rev. H. BAILEY, D.D., Warden of the College. (Canterbury, 1873.)

5. S. Augustine's College Occasional Papers, Nos. 233, 234. Combined Report of Missionary Studentship Associations. (Canterbury, 1884.)

ON Wednesday, May 23, 1883, a remarkable man was laid to rest in the churchyard of the village of Mapledurham. Many whose names are known far and wide followed the plain oaken coffin, and saw it lowered into the simple earthen grave, almost hidden beneath its pall of wreaths and floral crosses. There were gathered there the Lord Chief Justice of England, Sir Stafford Northcote, the Bishop of Oxford, Lord Justice Cotton, the Right Hon. A. J. B. Beresford Hope, Sir George Rickards, the Archdeacon of Berks, the Provost of Eton, the HeadMaster of Eton, the Rev. Canon Bailey, and some thirty other mourners besides the immediate relatives. While the funeral was proceeding, the bell of S. Augustine's College Chapel, Canterbury, was tolled, and on the succeeding Sunday, May 27, being the day of the death of the Venerable Bede, Skeat's lovely funeral anthem, The righteous souls that take their flight,' was sung by the students, who had sent a 'Canterbury Cross' of the fairest white flowers to be placed on the grave at Mapledurham.

He who was thus laid to rest under the magnificent elms and chestnut trees of his own beautiful churchyard well deserved this tribute of their affection. But for the exertions of the Rev. Edward Coleridge, and of the present senior Member for the University of Cambridge, Mr. Beresford Hope, the ancient monastery of S. Augustine's would have remained as truly a heap of ruins as Shiloh is at the present day. The