HC Deb 26 June 1872 vol 212 cc236-58

Order for Second Reading read.

MR. COWPER-TEMPLE

, in moving that the Bill be now read a second time, said, that it was intended as a practical measure of administrative reform in the law of the Church of England, augmenting its comprehensiveness without touching any doctrine, and without requiring the repeal of any statute, or any ecclesiastical law. It was intended to give a liberty to the authorities of the Church which they had formerly possessed, and which was not intended to be taken away from them by any expressed enactment. In all other Protestant communities in England there was a power exercised by the pastor to admit into his pulpit teachers belonging to other denominations—a power which was frequently exercised with advantage to the congregation and with convenience to the minister. The same power existed and was exercised by the ministers of the Episcopal Church in Scotland, and of the Episcopal Church in America. In America he had heard of a case in which an Episcopal minister admitted a Baptist minister to his pulpit against the wish of his Bishop, with the approval of his congregation; but in this Bill the Episcopal control would be maintained in accordance with English notions. In the Bill the power which was inherent in the Bishop still remained untouched, and special permission would have to be obtained from him before persons who were not in Holy Orders could be admitted to preach in the pulpits of the Established Church. Our Church was the only one in which the Bishop was restricted in the power of giving licenses to his priests by any Act of State, and in which an incumbent was limited in his power of admitting anyone to his pulpit, by the condition that the person so admitted should belong to the same Church. The distinction, upon which the Bill rested, between discourses which were to be delivered occasionally and exceptionally, and which implied no definite relationship between the preacher and the congregation and the ordinary stated teaching of the regular ministers, was one which had been universally recognized from, the earliest times of the Church. In those days a great part of the stirring and popular preaching was done by friars who had no Orders and who were laymen; and when we looked back to the precedents of antiquity we found that at the Fourth Council of Carthage the practice of lay teaching was recognized, for a canon was passed providing that laymen were not to preach in the public offices unless the clergy who happened to be present should give them permission. After the Reformation, the deficiency of preachers in the regular ministry was so great that the Bishops and other authorities were obliged to give licenses to other persons to go and preach specially and occasionally, without having received Holy Orders. One of the objects of the present Bill was to place the license of the Bishop and the permission of the incumbent with regard to occasional and exceptional sermons upon a different footing, so far as the qualification of the individuals was concerned, from those discourses which were delivered as part of a regular and stated ministry. There appeared to be no distinct law that a Bishop in giving a license should be so restricted as to give it only in the case of occasional sermons to such persons as were in Holy Orders in the Established Church. There was no such restriction in the Act of Uniformity; but, on the contrary, it con- tained an exception for persons who delivered lectures in the nature of occasional sermons, those persons not being required to have gone through any form or made any declaration; but only required to be present during the reading of the Book of Common Prayer, provided that it was not read by them, but by some priest or deacon. There was an exception, then, present to the minds of those who framed the Act to meet the sort of case which was contemplated by the Bill. In reference to the teaching part of the functions of Bishop, priest, and deacon, in the preface to the ordination service, no allusion was made to the preaching of occasional sermons, and they were assumed not to be excepted from the general rule. Legal doubts, however, existed as to whether, at that moment, the Bishop could or could not exercise the discretion given to him by the Bill, and in the face of that doubt this Bill became necessary. The Bill, therefore, was not drawn up to repeal any existing statute, but simply to declare that lawful about which there was now some doubt. The expediency of the Bill would turn upon the question of whether it was good or not to relieve the authorities of the Church of any fetters or restrictions which were unnecessary, or which were not imposed for any clear and useful purpose. He felt strongly that every religious community should be left as free as they possibly could be left by Parliament, and that no fetters or restrictions should be imposed upon them without some strong and clear necessity. There was no state reason why Bishops and incumbents should be deprived of the discretion which they would naturally have, in the absence of any statutory restriction, to admit to their pulpits any minister of any other communion. At the time of the Restoration there was a State reason why Nonconforming ministers should not be admitted into the pulpits of the national Church. Nonconformity in religion had got closely connected with Nonconformity in State matters, and the phrase—"No Bishop, no King," expressed the logical connection between resistance to the authority of the Church and resistance to the authority of the State. But the Acts of Toleration passed in subsequent reigns left Nonconformists on the spiritual ground they had taken, without being forced to assume political antagonism, and left no political reason against the admission of a Nonconformist into the pulpit of the National Church. Was the restriction required for the authority and discipline of the Church? This position was not tenable, since the Act of 1840 allowed ministers belonging to the Episcopal Churches of America and Scotland to be admitted to pulpits in dioceses of the Church of England. They owed no allegiance to the heads of our Church, and were not amenable to its laws. There could be no national advantage in preserving restrictions which prevented foreign ministers from partaking in this country of the interchange of ministerial offices which they enjoyed abroad. He believed that it would be a great relief to many clergymen, and acceptable to many congregations, if they could have substantially the same teaching from persons belonging to a different school of thought, and having a different style of preaching. It would be an advantage that sometimes the subject should not be dealt with in the conventional manner which was common to the Church of England. ["Oh, oh!"] He meant to say the habitual way of ministers of the Church of England, and most persons would appreciate variety in the presentation of old truths. The congregations would suffer no disadvantage from such a change, for, practically, their consent must be obtained. He trusted that the day was not far distant when the main body of the congregations could have a representative voice by which their opinions would be ascertained. Already there were some parochial councils, and where they existed the incumbent would, of course, ask their opinion in this matter. Nonconformist ministers who had absolute power in their own pulpits did not exercise it without reference to the wishes of their congregations, and there would be no object for a clergyman of the Church of England to disregard the wishes of his congregation. When the principle of the Parochial Councils Bill was adopted, a machinery would be created by which the assent of the congregation could be given as well as that of the incumbent and Bishop. Was this restriction required to secure orthodoxy in the national pulpits? For such a purpose it was illusory. In the last century this idea might have had some weight, but in the present day the proceedings in the Ecclesiastical Court showed that the declarations made by clergymen on entering the Church was no sure guide to their subsequent teaching. Before Mr. Voysey was removed, Mr. Bennett would have had the power to invite Mr. Voysey to occupy his pulpit. The differences between men who had signed the same Articles was as great as between men who could not go through the same ceremony. They must not rely upon ceremonies, but rather upon personal responsibility to secure orthodoxy of opinion. The personal responsibility would remain under the Bill. The existing law could not have been intended to raise an artificial barrier between clergymen of the Church of England and ministers of other denominations, because it was one-sided, for no construction yet put upon the statutes made it illegal for a clergyman of the Church of England to preach sermons in places of worship not belonging to the Church of England. Clergymen had preached in Nonconformist chapels; and no doubt could be entertained as to the propriety of their conduct when such eminent Prelates as the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of Winchester had preached in a Presbyterian church. They had done more than would be permitted under this Bill, for they conducted the service. He admired those Prelates for the course they had taken, rising in their sympathies above those narow and Pharisaical notions which prevailed; and they had, in fact, acted on the principle upon which this Bill was founded. The Bill was not framed in any spirit of party, and was not intended to benefit any particular school of thought; it would do something to banish that spirit of exclusiveness and those airs of superiority which had sometimes been attributed to the Church of England, and it would provide an opportunity for the co-operation of earnest men in promoting the living faith and the Christian life on which persons of different creeds were agreed. Retaining these opinions, he begged to move the second reading of the Bill.

MR. T. HUGHES

seconded the Motion.

Motion made and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."—(Mr. Cowper-Temple.)

MR. BERESFORD HOPE

*: Sir, I am glad to be able to agree in one sentiment—almost the last he uttered—which fell from my right hon. Friend (Mr. Cowper-Temple). He said that his Bill was not brought forward to benefit any particular school of thought. I do not think that it is. I think not only that it will benefit no particular school of thought, but that it will not benefit any consistent or logical thought at all. If I desired in place of thought and study to introduce sensationalism, or what my right hon. Friend pleasantly calls a desire for variety, I should feel sure that I possess the means of doing so within this Bill. My right hon. Friend spoke strongly and learnedly upon precedents; he is much impressed with the value of Church discipline and authority. I noted those words in his speech, and I observed with pleasure the importance which he attributes to those principles. But I rise on the other side—having as much respect for authority and discipline as my right hon. Friend—in the name of the liberties and rights of the congregations; I stand up on behalf of the laity whose liberties would be imperilled under the intolerable, because unlimited, tyranny contained within the four corners of this Bill. There is a class of people in this country whose existence is too often overlooked during our Wednesday deliberations, but who still have an existence, and whose rights we are bound to protect. These are not the people "with itching ears," who carry on dissipation under political or social pretexts for six days in the week, and then fill up the gap upon the seventh by indulgence in rhetorical fireworks, but those quiet people who go to Church to worship God in the way their fathers did, and to be instructed in their duty. That class of people will find their status much imperilled by this Bill; but before proceeding to discuss its provisions, I must remark that in the speech of my right hon. Friend I observe a remarkable deficiency. In the course of the observations following the introduction of the Bill I threw out some interlocutory remarks, and said that it did not appear to be limited to the admission of Nonconformist ministers, but that as it was drawn it would admit a Church layman into the pulpit. On that my right hon. Friend jumped up, and said that the Bill was intended to admit the Church laity. But from one end of his present speech to the other, that side of the Bill has been kept in the background; and thus I find myself deprived of the help which the able advocacy of my right hon. Friend would have given me in fixing the points on which I feel certain that that relaxation would be dangerous. My right hon. Friend has fallen back upon precedents and instances, and I am glad he has done so, for they have their value; but to be valuable they must be accurate, and run on all fours; and in face of that requirement one of his most astonishing statements was the assertion that the American Church recognized this principle of his Bill. His proof was that a certain clergyman—who, as I may add, is named Dr. Tyng—introduced a minister of another denomination into his pulpit, to the great disapprobation both of his Bishop and of the community to which he belongs. I have not the canons of the American Church by me, but I believe I am right in saying that by that act Dr. Tyng contravened those canons. The matter was taken up and investigated; and if Dr. Tyng did not substantially suffer, that only shows that the discipline of the American Church is not strong for practical purposes; but it does not prove that Dr. Tyng and his abettors acted in conformity with the spirit of their canons. Then my right hon. Friend appealed to the Preaching Orders of the Middle Ages. I ask what were those Preaching Orders? They were bodies of men in the most complete subjection and submission to the Church of Home, and who were sent out to preach because—and only because—they were absolutely identified with the system on behalf of which they spoke. Yet that institution is quoted as a precedent for an occasional license to preach to be given to persons who are not identified nor even in conformity with the body whose pulpits they are to occupy. The practice may have been right or wrong, the Friars may have been good or bad, and this Bill may be a beneficial or a dangerous thing; but as an illustration of the advantage of it, the instance proves absolutely nothing. Then my right hon. Friend falls back upon the Fourth Council of Carthage. What argument does he find there? The canon to which he refers is one to limit, not to confirm, occasional sermons. There may have been prior to this Council some system in existence similar to that which is found in this Bill; but, if so, it was found to work so ill that limitations were put upon a practice which was found to be at variance with the existing canons. Then, again, it is true that after the Reformation, viewing the scarcity of clergymen and the scantiness of population in many districts, laymen were occasionally permitted to preach. Those who have studied the history of the reign of Elizabeth may recollect the one lay sermon of that age which has come down to us, preached upon a day when the High Sheriff of Oxfordshire got up with his sword by his side, and professed that he had come to distribute some dainty comfits to the sweet chickens of salvation. Does my right hon. Friend wish that for the future the High Sheriffs of counties shall preach the Assize sermons? But to proceed to the consideration of the Bill itself. I must say that in this measure my right hon. Friend has transcended the utmost limits of vague and ambiguous language allowed even to the innocent bantlings of a Wednesday afternoon. To begin with the first words of the 1st clause—"It shall be lawful for the Bishop on the application of the incumbent or officiating minister." The officiating minister! Who is he in law? What definition can be given of so fleeting a personage? A tired clergyman may go for a month to the sea-side, and when he comes back he may find that the "officiating minister" who has taken his duty for those four Sundays has, in his absence, brought in a Boanerges from the Potteries to deliver occasional sermons, and has upset the whole good order of his congregation. On one point I praise my right hon. Friend. He has made the thin end of the wedge argument impossible. There is no room for it; for the wedge itself, and the hammer that drives it, and the hand that wields the hammer have all gone in with the Bill. The clause goes on to deal with "persons not in Holy Orders of the Church of England," and my right hon. Friend, as I have said, argued the Bill throughout as if it were intended only to apply to Nonconformist ministers. Why did he not state what he had asserted before—that it would equally apply to laymen of the Church, if such an one desired to preach? In regard to those persons he proposes that it shall be lawful for the Bishop to license them to preach "an occasional sermon or lecture." What does he mean by an "occasional" sermon? The duties of every Sunday are occasional compared with the other days of the week. The phrase may mean anything, from a casual discourse at some long irregular interval to one which recurs every fourth, or third, or second week. It may be so worked as to authorize a complete cycle of weekly discourses by different orators. Each sermon may be an occasional one as far as its particular preacher is concerned; but if the clergyman manages the arrangements dexterously, they will as a whole be habitual, and the unlucky parish may find itself condemned to an endless series of sensational orations duly announced by illuminated placards at the church doors. But the most astounding feature of the clause is its hazy enactment enabling the Bishop to license these occasional sermons or lectures. It is, as if on purpose, left vague whether the clergyman is to ask for, and that the Bishop is to grant the license each time, and for only one sermon; or whether the license is to overflow the one occasion, and if so, for how long is it to run. Is it to continue for the man's life time, or for the life of the Bishop who grants it; or are all future Bishops in the see to be bound by the permission granted by their predecessors? If the person licensed abuses his trust—for we may have even occasional preachers that are disobedient to the laws of good sense, good manners, or morality—as we find that even incumbents are not always obedient to them—where is the power to revoke the license? So hastily and carelessly has the Bill been drawn that the draftsman has actually forgotten to make any provision for revoking the license; and so a gentleman who has graduated at Little Rock, or some other equally distinguished seminary over the ocean, and who is desirous of exhibiting himself to an European audience, may obtain a license, which, when he becomes better known, the Bishop cannot revoke. His sermon may smell of Geneva, with a good deal of Indirect Claims in it, with something of Calvin, and, perhaps, a little of the homonyrnous spirit; but the Bishop will have given his permission, and he will find himself powerless to withdraw it. The Bill says that the person is not to be in Holy Orders, and stops there, and so the preacher may not even be a member of any Christian denomination. A clergyman may apply to his Bishop for a license for a distinguished foreigner, and that foreigner may prove to be an active-minded Mahomedan, or a Brahmod, or Buddhist. The House must not object to me for taking extreme cases. It is extreme cases which test the value of a proposal. We have in the Church about 15,000 clergymen as honest and respectable as a class as are to be found anywhere in the world, yet there may be among them different degrees of respectability, and different qualities of moral sense. We can suppose that there may be some perplexed clergyman in a destitute Peel district. His church does not fill, and he is at his wits end with the expenses of a growing family. He will find his way to the Bishop of his diocese and ask leave for a distinguished American clergyman to preach, and probably he will obtain it. Some five or six weeks afterwards he will apply for permission for another distinguished foreigner, and in due course will again come forward with as many like petitions as he may need. Then the curtain will rise, and the large posters will be unfurled—on one Sunday it will be an enlightened Mahomedan who will offer a dispassionate survey of Christianity; the next orator will approach the problem of Creation from the starting point of natural selection; the third Sunday will be thrown in to the rigid Calvinist; on another, an accomplished Comptist will extol the worship of humanity; while the Brahmod will take the next turn with the genteel Spiritualist or Mr. Howard Paul to complete the cycle. This daring clergyman will stand above or below all law. He will have got the Bishop's irrevocable license for all his performers, and he has only to reckon the shoals of listeners who will crowd his church Sunday after Sunday. How is the Bishop to proceed against the clergyman who has obtained his own permission for these men to preach? The Ordinary cannot put the incumbent into the Ecclesiastical Court, for the obnoxious sermons will be none of his, and still less can he proceed against the occasional preachers. Clergyman and preacher can alike defy the Bishop, defy the law, and defy common sense, and our churches will become theatres of entertainments, resembling those with which distinguished performers enable us to wile away our week-day evenings. We must take another case. There are such things as proprietary chapels. Any person strong in means, and strong in views, may become proprietor of one of these chapels, and put in his clergyman. That clergyman may go to the Bishop and represent that the gentleman who bought the chapel, and who put him into it for the pure love of souls, and in order to extend the doctrines of the Church of England, was desirous to give an occasional sermon in the chapel. How can the Bishop refuse a license to such a man; and yet the fact may be that the proprietor has acquired the place only because he holds—though hitherto in the dock—opinions in which very few of his fellow-citizens share. He may be an advocate of polygamy, or an enthusiastic believer in the mortality of the soul; and yet the Bishop will be equally unable to cancel the permission, or prove complicity. But I have not done with my cases. We are many of us patrons of livings, and most of us go down into the country during the Recess, and coming as we do fresh from the debates of this House, I dare say it is the opinion of all of us that we should as well be able to speak from the pulpit as from these benches, especially as there is no one in Church to call "Question." Would it not be a dangerous temptation to you, Sir, and to all of us, if this Bill passed, to make it a condition of our presentations that the pulpit should not be cruelly shut against the patrons?

Now, I come to the Bishops. If there is one thing that would condemn this Bill more than another it is the position in which it puts the Bishops; for it starts the Bishops on a totally new line of action, while it affords them no guidance for their conduct. There are 28 Bishops in England and Wales with the Isle of Man—28 individual minds—28 different qualities of intelligent thought that are all to be simultaneously brought up to consider this vague and Sibylline scrap. One Bishop will think caution is the best policy, and he will refuse licenses all round. Another will look upon an Act of Parliament as imperative, and he will license all round. A third Bishop will think that the Gospel can lose nothing by free inquiry, and will look out for preachers of startling views to stimulate the flagging orthodoxy of the beneficed incumbents. Another Bishop may have decided opinions upon one set of doctrines, and will only license Nonconformists who hold views similar to his own. Another Bishop may be a High Churchman who will, in working the Bill, ignore Dissenters, while he uses it as leverage to introduce preaching Orders into the Church of England—gentlemen who put on brown or white or black gowns, and live according to a rule. There are some hon. Members who know that I am not talking at random, but that there are men of singular dress and high rhetorical power who call themselves English Benedictines or Cistercians. These persons—whose zeal and devotion are undoubted—might fairly come forward and plead that the right hon. Member for South Hants had carried an Act which was intended to remove all doubts as to the legality of the preaching Orders in the Church of England; and any Bishop who sympathized with them would have the right to work that Act in that sense just as his brother would have the right to work it in a sense favourable to Nonconformist ministers. I am not now going into the right or the wrong of these opinions and practices; I point only to what the Bill would sanction. It may—it must—sanction not only free trade in preaching, but it will also sanction the creation of religious Orders in the Church itself, which may be right or may be wrong in themselves, but which ought not to be brought in by a side-wind in an obscure measure like this one. My right hon. Friend talks of unshackling the Church. How does he unshackle it? He will, perhaps, unshackle a few restless individuals, but he will lay heavy burdens upon the great body of quiet clergy who know little or nothing of this Bill, and who will certainly be startled when they take up their newspaper to-morrow and find to their surprise what important interests of theirs have been discussed behind their backs. My right hon. Friend would hamper the Church for the personal benefit of some persons well able to take care of themselves, and that at the expense of others in every respect as good as themselves.

Now, a few words to those Nonconformists who may fancy themselves complimented by this Bill. Where is the compliment? If it were proposed to admit into the Church pulpits all Nonconformist ministers who were duly quali- fied according to the respective by-laws of the different denominations, and give them the same right of using the pulpits as the ordained clergy possess, I should oppose the Bill, because it would destroy the existing Church of England and substitute a totally novel body. But, at any rate, such a proposal would be logical and consistent, however revolutionary. But this Bill is not a compliment, but an affront to Dissenters. It gives the right to a clergyman to patronize his own favourites at the expense of all the others. The man of free thought will patronize preachers of one denomination, and the Calvinists will go in for another, while the invitation will in each case not be to the body, but to the man himself; and thus every Nonconformist whom any clergyman may invite, will, in virtue of such invitation, be placed by an external influence in a position of notoriety above his equally, or more deserving fellow-ministers. If the Nonconformists accept this Bill, they will put it in the power of the eager, and the fussy, and the self-seeking among the clergy to trot them out and exhibit them as cats-paws for the purpose of filling the churches. And when a Nonconformist has accepted such a situation, he will have accepted it as we all accept invitations to public meetings. Do we not all of us know the feeling of going to a public meeting with which we have, perhaps, a very limited sympathy, and the object of which we do not fully approve? But when we are there, the rules of courtesy compel us to sink our doubts and differences. We get diffuse and rhetorical, and we express sentiments much warmer than what we really feel. So, by the very fact of accepting a preaching invitation, the Nonconformist will give ground for the assumption that he has for the time agreed to sink his differences with the Church. Now, it must be plain to anyone who considers what are the enormous advantages which the Established Church possesses, that no man would be a Nonconformist unless he had a real difference of opinion with that Church. The difference may be a mere hair's breadth, or it may be a wide chasm; but a difference there must be. But once let a Nonconformist accept this invitation, and then the laws of courtesy will compel him to prophecy smooth things; and, instead of counselling the congregation as he himself feels in his heart, to go out of Babylon, he will tell them that Babylon is the same as Jerusalem, and Jerusalem is the same as Babylon, and each very like the other. There may be people who will say of this sort of preaching—"What Catholic sympathies! What wide and generous views!" But when he gets up next morning he will feel that for the honour of being allowed to preach in some stately minster or fashionable church he has lost his unique opportunity for testifying to the cause of truth, and has sacrificed an apostle's position for the sorry triumph of stealing the applause of the giddy crowd, who would run anywhere to listen to a florid oration. And what would his own people think of such backsliding? They would feel that their favourite guide had lost his influence, and that he had lost it for that one day of sterile peacock triumph. Yet it is for that result that my right hon. Friend proposes in this helter-skelter way to alter the whole tone and discipline of the Church. My right hon. Friend appeals to the Act of Uniformity. But I took the trouble to look at the Act of Uniformity while he was talking about it. That Act provides that any lecturer or preacher must previously have been approved and licensed by the Archbishop or Bishop, must have read the appointed service, and must have declared his conformity to the whole Book of Common Prayer. That meant, when the Act passed, that he must have been a priest or a deacon of the Church of England. It is very true that there is an exception made afterwards, allowing the preacher, in a certain case, merely to declare his assent and consent. But that only applies to cathedral and collegiate churches and chapels, and can anybody suppose, in reading the Act of Uniformity of 1662, that there is any intention of giving liberty to any person to preach in a cathedral unless he were a clergyman of the Church of England? This whole Bill is intended for those who hanker after the dissipation of rhetorical displays. But the people who wish to worship God as their fathers did before them—the clergy who are only anxious to do their duty in the way in which they have sworn to do it—these would feel all their deepest devotional feelings disturbed by these novel arrangements. And why should they be so harassed? There is no lack of other facilities for any man to make himself heard, who has anything worth saying. There are lecture rooms, there are public halls, there are journals, there are Nonconformist chapels of every description, in which all men may put forth all and every kind of doctrine whether sound or whether mischievous. With all these resources of our busy age ready, let not the House sanction this vague and perilous inroad on the existing system of the national Church, with which its members are thoroughly well content. I therefore call upon hon. Members to reject this Bill.

Amendment proposed, to leave out the word "now," and at the end of the Question to add the words "upon this day three mouths."—(Mr. Beresford Hope.)

MR. T. HUGHES

said, he must express his almost entire divergence from the views of the hon. Member who had just sat down. The hon. Member had expressed great regard for precedent; but had he considered that for more than 100 years after the Reformation, by the law of the Church of England the Presbyterians of that day, whom we now called Puritans, occupied Church of England benefices and preached in Church of England pulpits? The Act of Uniformity unhappily put an end to this state of things, but even that Act, narrow as it was, allowed lecturers of other denominations to officiate in the Church of England, as the hon. Member was constrained to acknowledge. Since that time there had been other Acts passed to modify the stringent operation of the Act of Uniformity, such as that of the 32nd Geo. III., by which Protestant Episcopalian ministers were allowed to preach in Church of England pulpits, and that of the 3 & 4 Vict., which admitted American Episcopalian ministers to perform service in the Church of England. But did the hon. Member know that in the American Episcopal Church the Athanasian Creed was rejected? His hon. Friend pleaded on behalf of the quiet laity, and protested against the tyranny of the clergy; but he conceived that the safeguards given by the Bill were as good as any one could in reason demand. Who was most interested in keeping congregations together? Was there the least reasonable fear that the clergy would risk emptying their churches by allowing unfit persons to preach in them? The hon. Member also said that the Bill was a revolution in the whole system of the English Church. Well, really, that was a very large phrase. What did the change proposed in the Bill amount to? It amounted to nothing more than that the two persons chiefly interested in the matter—to whom it was most important to see that the congregations committed to their charge should have proper doctrine taught—should have the power of allowing persons not connected with the Church of England, to preach occasionally in the pulpits of the Church. His hon. Friend asked what was the meaning of the word "occasional." Anybody with the least common sense would say "occasional" meant "now and then," and not "continuously," as his hon. Friend had apparently interpreted the word. The next objection taken to the Bill was that though it gave power to the Bishop to license, it gave the Bishop no power to revoke the license. But the power to revoke would have been surplusage, the Bishop having absolute discretion by the Bill as to whom he should license, and for how long. They might be sure, however, that the power given would be exercised with sufficient discretion. His hon. Friend then went on to put cases by which, if they happened, decency would be outraged, and he spoke of a Mahommedan, a Brahmin, a Comptist, or Mr. Howard Paul receiving this license. That was not a proper way of meeting a Bill of this kind; and he thought it deserved to be treated with respect at least by those who professed to represent the Church. It was also argued that it would place Bishops in an invidious position, but it would not put them in a more invidious position than they were in at present. They had at the present time constantly to say whether they would allow certain Episcopalian clergymen of the Scottish and the American Churches to do duty in the Church of England. Surely it could not be felt by the Bishops as a serious increase to their responsibilities if they had now and then to consider the question whether they would allow such men as the late Dr. Norman Macleod, or Principal Tulloch, or Mr. Baldwin Brown to occupy a Church of England pulpit. That was not putting any very heavy responsibility on the Bishops, and he conceived that Bishops would be quite ready to accept that responsibility. His hon Friend said that the Church of England had not been consulted in the matter. But the only place where the Church of England could be consulted on its discipline, practice, and ritual was in that House. The Church of England had, therefore, been properly consulted by this Bill, which had been brought before the House in the usual way for its consideration. Then the hon. Gentleman gave the House a picture of some Nonconformist preacher getting into a Church of England pulpit and saying that Babylon and Jerusalem were, after all, very much like each other. Well, he would only be saying the truth. They were very like each other in our country, in our time. Would the hon. Gentleman point out any vital difference between the doctrines of the national Church and that large body of Protestant Dissenters some of whose ministers might, under the Bill, be asked occasionally to preach in the pulpits of the Church of England? It must be known to every Member of the House that those distinctions which were really alive at the time of the Act of Uniformity had almost disappeared. The real question was whether the hon. Gentleman and those who agreed with him wished to maintain the national Church or did not. Generally, when he heard them speaking he thought they must be in league with the Liberation Society, and that they wished the national Church to be turned into a sect, and taken from under the control of the House. If that was the desire of the hon. Member for Cambridge University he was going the right way to bring it to pass. The national Church must be the broadest and most tolerant of all religious bodies, and able to conform itself to the new conditions of society in which it found itself; whereas, those who pretended specially to represent it seemed to delight in narrowing its boundaries. The other day when the Nonconformists asked to be admitted to bury their dead in the burial grounds of the national Church, they had been refused, and now their best men were about to be pushed back from the pulpits of the national Church. He himself was an attached member of that Church, but he felt that if it was to be sustained it could not be sustained in the future by the policy of his hon. Friend and those who supported him. He trusted the House would see its way to allow the Bill to be read a second time, with any modifications which might be thought necessary.

MR. SCOURFIELD

said, he demurred to the statement of the hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. T. Hughes) that the persons most interested in having good preachers in church pulpits were the clergyman of the parish and the Bishop. He thought the congregations had the greatest interest. There were those who talked and those who had to listen; and his sympathies were, therefore, with the congregation. Conventional respect compelled one when at church to listen to a man who might be an intolerable bore, which involved the loss of valuable time and perhaps damage to one's morality and Christianity; and of all the injuries the most irreparable was the loss of time. A congregation had a claim to have their rights respected. If there were a class of persons in the country who could not exist without perpetually holding forth, he would suggest that they should be enrolled as a body of penal lecturers, who should go about the country preaching, and let persons who had been convicted of light offences be compelled, as a secondary punishment, to listen to them.

MR. J. G. TALBOT

said, he thought the question involved in the Bill was of a really serious character. He had hoped on that occasion to have the views of some Nonconformists on the subject, who, if they were going to support the Bill, ought to state why they did so. The words of the Bill were exceedingly wide, and would admit anybody, from the Pope down to the Brahmin, into the pulpits of the Church of England. That being so, they must consider who and what were our Bishops in esse and Bishops in posse. Among the former there were right rev. Prelates on the Bench, who were known for their broad sympathies, and who, holding that it was well to listen to both sides, might introduce very undesirable persons into our Church pulpits. Among those in posse there were men who might go farther than any that sat on the Bench. He would not venture to name any, but there was a clerical dignitary not far from the House who desired the public utterances of almost anyone who would call himself a Christian, and who, under the operation of this Bill, would probably have offered his pulpit to a distinguished Eastern philosopher who recently visited this country. The hon. and learned Member for Frome had said that that House represented the Church of England. That was a new doctrine, which he had never heard before. To say that that House was the only body that was entitled to legislate for the Church of England was a doctrine which he would venture to dispute. It was equally a new doctrine to say that the Bill came from the Church, because it came from two of its members. The hon. Gentleman seemed to suppose that this Bill would reclaim Dissenters to the Church of England. It was idle to suppose anything of the kind, as the differences between Dissenters and the Church rested on far other grounds than those dealt with by the Bill. He admitted that the Bill opened a question worthy of consideration; but that the House should be asked to pass clauses which threw the pulpits of the Church of England open to the most extravagant doctrines was a proposal which he for one would not affirm.

Mr. RICHARD

said, as a Dissenter, he must respond to the appeal made to them. He did not feel any great anxiety on the subject. No doubt the promoters of the Bill were actuated by Christian charity, but unhappily that was a plant which did not flourish in the Established Church, which was shown by the fact that it was too great a stretch of charity to allow Dissenters to have their own services in the churchyards. What struck him with regard to the Bill was the humiliation to which the Church was subjected in having to submit such a question to Parliament—a humiliation which must continue as long as the Church remained an Establishment. The best thing that the Church could do would be to escape out of their worse than Egyptian bondage to the State as quickly as they could.

MR. D. DALRYMPLE

said, he was in favour of the principle of the Bill being carried into practice, especially as he believed that a large number of members of the Church would gladly accept the change. He did not think that any danger or difficulty would arise from the Bishops having the power to allow other than those in Holy Orders to preach in the pulpits of the Church. He remembered once hearing the Bishop of Norwich say to Mr. Brock, an eminent Nonconformist divine—"I hope to see the day when you, Mr. Brock, will preach in Norwich Cathedral." "I hope so too, my Lord, but it will not be until you come to preach in St. Mary's Chapel." That such a consummation was desirable few would deny, and he looked to the Bill before the House as a step towards its production.

MR. HENLEY

said, he thought that the Bill opened two very large questions. He was quite sure that his right hon. Friend (Mr. Cowper-Temple) had brought forward the Bill in the full belief that that there were many highly-gifted persons of whom it might be said that it was desirable that they should preach in the pulpits of the Church. But what would be likely to be the operation of a measure like that in our present state of society? It seemed to be intended that the persons introduced into the pulpits might use places hitherto used only for prayer for the delivery of lectures or the preaching of sermons. Would that tend to the promotion of peace, charity, or edification? Persons of scientific or other pursuits might wish to use places of worship for scientific or other purposes. Many would think that harmless, others would think it very good; but a great many more would be put about and shocked by such a use being made of churches. They recollected what was said about using cathedrals for musical festivals for charitable purposes. How much feeling would be excited if a similar system were put into operation in every church? Would they get any good for this possible evil? Now, as to sermons—suppose in one parish Archbishop Manning were asked to preach, and in another Mr. Spurgeon. Now, they could never have all the people of one parish of the same opinion, and therefore a great deal of ill-feeling would be sure to be excited. The system would not tend to promote peace, charity, or good, but rather evil, heartburning, and uncharitable feeling; and they would lose more than they would gain by the minister of a parish bringing in somebody whom he thought had greater talents and gifts of God than himself. He believed that the evil would very far outbalance any possible good, and therefore he should vote for the Motion for the rejection of the Bill.

MR. W. M. TORRENS

said, he did not think that Bishops and clergy would be guilty of the folly imputed to them in reference to the persons whom they would admit into their pulpits. He believed it was most desirable that Church congregations should have the advantage of the teaching of the eminent ministers who were not members of their own Body. Archbishop Tillotson, in the seventh of his Articles of Comprehension, was in favour of some such principle as that embodied in the Bill. He objected to the manner in which the hon. Member for Cambridge University (Mr. Beresford Hope) referred to the Bill, associating in loose phraseology Mahomedans, Brahmins, and Mr. He ward Paul. If he could believe the Bishops and the parochial clergy capable of the folly and faithlessness of giving such persons unlimited use of the Church pulpits that would be a strong reason for getting rid of the Establishment. He thought that the Bill had not been criticised fairly; and, indeed, most of the things which had been objected to would properly be considered in Committee and not upon the present occasion. The discretion which it was proposed to give to the clergy might surely without danger be entrusted to their hands.

MR. NEWDEGATE

said, that it was curious to consider how Liberalism warped the highest intellect. The hon. Member (Mr. Richard) said that the Church was under Egyptian bondage to the State, and if they of the Church were not protected by the law that description would be accurate enough. Then the hon. Member (Mr. W. M. Torrens) would, in the name of freedom, deprive the laity of the Church of England of the protection of the law in reference to the doctrines to which they should listen. That protection was the condition of their allegiance to the Church, and to the law itself. The law had hitherto enacted that no one who had not been duly educated and trained, and who had not formally and deliberately accepted the doctrines of the Church, should be privileged to preach in the pulpits of the Church. That was the guarantee of the freedom of the laity. He refused to delegate to any clergyman or Bishop the right to place over him a teacher, unless the teacher had undertaken the same obligations as the Bishop who appointed him. It had not been considered that there were persons who were retained members of the Church by the protection which the law afforded in this respect. When the Pope was at war with England, as he now was with Germany, it appeared from Archbishop Usher's papers that the Pope sent ministers to preach in the pulpits of the Church of England; but that danger the existing law now protected the laity against. It would be too much to ask Churchmen for their continued allegiance if the protection against objectionable doctrines which the law at present afforded were withdrawn from them.

MR. MACFIE

supported the Bill, believing that its object was to obtain for the Church of England the freedom which the Church of Scotland had long since obtained, by removing the restriction which prevented ministers of other denominations from preaching in her pulpits.

SIR CHARLES ADDERLEY

said, he would only ask this one question—whether, bearing in view the avowed intention of the Bill, it would not be more honest to liberate an incumbent, if he wished it, from the restrictions of the Thirty-nine Articles, and to preach accordingly, instead of giving him in a round about manner power to put a layman in the pulpit to preach in that manner?

MR. COWPER-TEMPLE

said, he was not a believer in the power of Acts of Parliament to settle what doctrines should be preached in the pulpit. In his opinion, the security given by this Bill was the best that could be obtained—the personal responsibility of the Bishop of the diocese and the incumbent in the choice of the stranger to be introduced into the pulpit. The hon. Member for Cambridge had asked whether a layman would be admitted under the Bill? He would reply that if the Bishops saw no objection to lay preaching, neither did he. The hon. Gentleman need not be so much alarmed for the feelings of the congregations, because if a congregation did not like to listen to a layman they could stay away. ["Oh, oh!"] There would be plenty of other churches open to them. He looked forward to the time when the congregations of the Church of England would have a voice in the management of its affairs; and, in the meantime, he repeated that if a congregation should dislike any preacher appointed under this Bill, they could take French leave, and stay away.

Question put, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."

The House divided:—Ayes 116; Noes 177: Majority 61.

Words added.

Main Question, as amended, put, and agreed to.

Second Reading put off for three months.