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be favourable to the Ritualists,' the repudiation was in no way withdrawn, nor have its findings ever been claimed on our side. The only church of any note which occurs to one as having obeyed Archbishop Benson's decision is The Holy Redeemer, Clerkenwell-one cannot, of course, take account of extinct volcanoes' such as All Saints, Margaret Street. In the case of the two parish priests who had consented, under much pressure from their diocesans, to plead at Lambeth, it was felt that they were perhaps bound to abide by the letter of the 'Opinion,' and to yield a technical obedience to its provisions. Such an obedience, hotly denounced at the time as 'dishonest,' Jesuitical,' &c., was as once accepted as satisfactory by the Bishop of London; in fact, at a later date, Dr. Creighton said, 'Well, Mr. Westall, you at St. Cuthbert's have behaved splendidly.' Slowly but surely the feeling grew that, taken literally, the 'Opinion' was an impossible one. Broad Church ecclesiastics such as Professor Sanday, and Radical statesmen like Mr. G. W. E. Russell, agreed on this head. The ultimate outcome has been well summarised by a writer in the Cornhill for February:

The Church is remarkably vigorous. That admirable liberty which its critics call licence, and which has survived a good many attempts to curb it, seems to be emerging triumphant from its latest conflict. Episcopal coercion moves

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.. with a leaden foot in a velvet shoe. . . . The abolition of incense might also spell the abolition of income, and the triumph of Puritanism might disestablish the Church. Far from being abolished,' a definite sanction to the use of the censer in public worship has been given by many bishops, as a direct result of the action of the two archbishops, coupled with the readiness of incumbents to obey such diocesans as consented to ignore the Opinion,' and to give directions on their own authority. Some of the 'uses' thus produced are strange, but every one knows that the eccentricity of usage will in the end disappear; the thurible will remain.

As to the effect of the second Lambeth pronouncement, that on Reservation, it is still too early to speak with certainty. In itself less illogical or Erastian than the former one, it deals, of course, with a far graver matter and runs counter to English canon law and to universal Catholic custom in a far more serious way. It cost us immediately one of the best-read, ablest, and most noble-minded of our priests-the ex-vicar of All Saints, Plymouth, with some less known but earnest clergy whom we can ill spare. Happily, thus far there has been no serious attempt to enforce obedience to it; the episcopal policy so neatly described in A Londoner's Log-Book may well be followed in this matter. I would not endorse his words as to 'abolition of income;' no one could think that Dr. Temple cares aught for income, or could doubt that Dr. Creighton had highminded, philosophic reasons for his occasional harshness, or for his more usual forbearance. But there are signs that our prelates begin

to see how dangerous, from the highest as well as the lowest point of view, a policy of persecution or coercion might prove to be.

It would be unwise to define the present situation more sharply; we stand too close to it to see it in exact perspective; one can only foretell that as it was in the days-or, rather, after the days of the Purchas Judgment, the Public Worship Act, the Lincoln Judgment, &c., so it will be again. But it may be well just to glance at some of the causes which tended to make the ecclesiastical situation what it is now.

(1) Sir William Harcourt's onslaughts. He is a born leader of lost causes, a universal solvent to the political party which he supports. Having buried Local Veto, having shattered the mighty Liberal party into fine shards, he is perhaps destined to turn England's heart away from the idols of Protestantism.

(2) The unsuspected strength of Catholic feeling among the laity, as evidenced at a certain debate at the London Church Congress, for example. Those who watched the face of the president as that discussion proceeded say that it showed first wonder, then annoyance, and at last unwilling conviction.

(3) The unmistakable failure of the Protestant' cry at the last General Election.

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(4) The strong support given-with few, though conspicuous exceptions-by High Churchmen' to their advanced' brethren. By confounding the two sections under a common name newspaper writers tend much to weaken the force of this fact, in itself as striking as it would be to see Sir H. Fowler and Lord Rosebery hastening to the defence of Mr. Burns and Mr. Keir-Hardie. It is too often forgotten that though the president of the E.C.U. may be called the lay leader of the Catholicising party, yet the English Church Union itself is made up of men of all shades of Churchmanship, with at best a strong minority of definite 'Catholics.' So tolerant is it of 'moderation,' even in its officers, that its council decided that the only clergyman who had shown himself eager to give Holy Communion to Mr. Kensit should still hold office as its assistant secretary. But this cautious and comprehensive' body has definitely ranged itself on the side of the 'extremists;' an attempted protest against that policy only serving to show in how insignificant a minority were the protesters.

And perhaps one must add:

(5) A growing indifference among the general public to ecclesiastical, indeed to all religious questions.

Anyhow, the 'Crisis' is no longer exceeding critical: a calm seems to have followed the storm. We may be only in the sheltered trough of the wave before an upheaving on the next billow; but so far the threatened bark rides unsubmerged, with Kensit, Fillingham, Harcourt, et soc., left swimming in the vasty deep.

Is this all that need be said as to the situation? Unhappily, no. There is one other feature of it about which it would be wrong to keep silence. There is an unsettledness among the clergy, among the younger clerics especially, which is of ill omen; in truth, there seems at last to be something of that Romeward tendency so often imagined by those outside, but now becoming a reality-for the first time in my experience. For this the bishops, and the bishops alone, are answerable. When the Pope's apostolic letter on the 'nullity' of Anglican orders produced practically no effect at all on the English clergy, almost every one was surprised. How much the archiepiscopal reply to the Papal Bull helped to bring about this steadfastness, even their Graces themselves seem hardly to have realised. But so it was the main gist of the answer' lies in its declaration that Anglican priests are indeed ordained to offer that holy sacrifice which Rome calls 'the Sacrifice of the Mass;' on this head most unmistakable language is used:

Further, we truly teach the doctrine of the Eucharistic Sacrifice, and do not believe it to be a nude commemoration of the sacrifice of the Cross'. . . in celebrating the Holy Eucharist, while lifting up our hearts to the Lord, and when now consecrating the gifts already offered that they may become to us the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ-to signify the sacrifice which is offered at that point of the service in such terms as, &c.

Such a declaration, promulgated to 'the whole body of bishops of the Catholic Church,' was perhaps the most definite official statement of the oneness of the Church of England' (i.e. the Provinces of Canterbury and York) in orders and doctrine with the whole Catholic Church which has been made since the Reformation. No one could imagine Archbishops Tait and Thompson putting their names to such a document; in principles they were avowedly Erastian-Protestants; therefore any unorthodox utterances on their part would have given no shock to the clergy in their provinces.

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But when our two present primates spoke as they have lately done in their recent Opinion' on Reservation; when especially Dr. Maclagan declared even the sub-apostolic age to be an untrustworthy time as to Eucharistic doctrine, because even then many superstitious views' had arisen, it was inevitable that many should be scandalised. By frank avowal that a practice owned to be at once primitive and oecumenical was forbidden amongst us, and by this seeming condemnation even of primitive doctrine, not only Catholic but also all hitherto recognised 'Anglican' landmarks were swept away; and the shock caused was not only to men of 'extreme' opinions. If the Articles of Religion, our present Book of Common Prayer, with sundry Acts of Parliament read into it ('adopted,' the

* The words I have italicised are of course quoted from the Roman Missal: 'Ut nobis corpus et sanguis fiat dilectissimi Filii tui D.N.J.C.;' they are not to be found in our present Prayer-book.

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wise call it), are to be our sole guide and standard in faith and morals, what becomes of the 'continuity' with the pre-Reformation Church in England which is so loudly claimed and insisted on whenever Church [i.e. Establishment] defence' is discussed? But if that continuity be broken

?

(I apologise for a word in the last sentence: the Prayer-book, infallible as to doctrine, is not to be our sole guide in 'morals,' since it forbids all divorce, in the plainest words that could well be used; whereas, our bishops tell us, the Eastern Church' allows divorce, and the re-marriage of the innocent party;' English state law does the like for innocent or guilty. Therefore, to bring our practice into harmony with . . . &c. . . . the Prayer-book and Canons on this one head are to be set aside.)

Who can wonder if such things cause great searchings of heart? But some have been driven to ask themselves the question, not 'Do our bishops believe in and believe one Holy Catholic Church?' but rather, 'Do some of our prelates believe in such a thing as the Church as a Divine institution at all?' Mrs. Craigie, in Robert Orange, puts almost these exact words into the mouth of one of her characters at the time when Dr. Temple had just been nominated to Exeter. The choice of his name is certainly unlucky; no one could doubt that he does so believe. But in the same book there is an utterance attributed to Lord Beaconsfield, which seems to express perfectly the fundamental mistake made by so many of our bishops -a mistake which shakes the faith and weakens the allegiance of so many devout believers.

Viewed solely (Disraeli is made to say) as a point of administration, it is disastrous to cut religious thought according to the fashionable pattern of the hour. This has been the constant weakness of English Churchmen. They try to match eternity with the times.

It is hardly possible to quote these words without thinking of an * address' and a 'charge' by the late Bishop of London :—

The question which England had to settle in the sixteenth century was in what relation the system of the Church was to stand toward the aspirations of the national life. . . The object was to reinstate the Church in its proper position

As what? the Kingdom of God upon earth, as the Ark of Salvation, as our Holy Mother? Oh no! as the trainer of national life.'

Had he been alive now, there is much that one had meant to say concerning his delusion that before the Reformation the sense of Communion had been almost obliterated among the people by a vicious system,' at a time when practically every one who had

come to years of discretion'

was a communicant; but this, and

much else, out of respect to his memory is left unsaid.

But one comment cannot be withheld: How comes it that so clear-seeing and truthful an historian as Dr. Creighton remained blind to the lesson of the last three centuries? The Reformers wished to turn the mass into a Communion,' to make the Holy Communion a service for the people, to which they came prepared to receive the gifts of grace,' &c. So did the Council of Trent, though without mutilating the holy service of the Mass. Which plan, in the witness of history, has succeeded the better-or rather, which one succeeded, and which failed utterly? Under the Tridentine system, to communicate every Sunday-so say French ecclesiasticsis not to be reckoned as 'frequent communion;' thousands of pious souls communicate twice in the week, some daily. Even in 'atheistic' France the proportion of communicants in the average parish is much higher than it is in England; still more so the whole number of communions made in the course of a year. From the Cranmerian method came the 'Sacrament Sunday,' once in every three or four months only, with its scanty number of pious souls who stayed' for a service on which the general congregation turned their backs. So far from being made 'a service for the people,' the rite of the Lord's Supper became just the service at which millions of baptised Churchmen were never present throughout their life. However good the intentions of the Reformers may have been, in practice their system failed utterly and woefully.

...

Dr. Creighton has said with much truth: 'Our own time has seen a fuller accomplishment of that object. . . . The Holy Communion is more frequently . . . administered; there is a higher sense of its value, a greater recognition of its supreme importance in the services of the Church.'

Quite so; but when did this change for the better begin? With Keble's sermon on Eucharistic Adoration.' Which are the churches where some of the faithful come to the Lord's Table twice or thrice each week? Surely those where the daily Sacrifice has been restored; those also where the name 'Holy Communion' is used in its right meaning of the partaking of the Blessed Sacrament, but where the service and celebration of the Eucharist is called by its ancient name of the Mass.

Why did not so clear-sighted and unprejudiced a bishop realise this? Why, indeed, do our prelates so seldom seem to know the truth and inner meaning of what is happening around them? Why did they let slip a great opportunity some three years ago, when a strong movement towards 'filial obedience' among the Catholicising party culminated in the now forgotten Osnaburgh Conference? Why are they blind now to the 'anti-ritualistic' feeling among the 'extreme' clergy, who would gladly see such things as lighting up of