s 



ANGLICAN CHURCHES. 



limns respecting bills before the house affecting 

 Church interests. 



At the tliir.l meeting of the Convocation, July 5, 

 the upj>er house adopted a report concerning the re- 

 marriage of divorced persons, explaining that in 

 Mjuence of recent legislation the Church had 

 had to consider the matter from the point of view 

 of principle. In so doing it could not shut its eyes 

 to a conflict of opinion on the subiect of the Lord's 

 words, and to the course adopted by the Eastern 

 Church in allowing dissolution of marriage for 

 adultery. The resolutions of the Lambeth Confer- 

 eii<-e of 1888 were quoted, declaring divorces for 

 adultery the only valid ones, with absolute prohibi- 

 tion of marriage of the guilty party during the life 

 of the other, and recognizing difference of opinion 

 within the Church as to the right of the innocent 

 party to marry, in view of which the clergy should 

 not l>e instructed to refuse the sacraments or other 

 privileges of the Church to such parties remarried; 

 and continued : " It ought, in our judgment, to be 

 clearly ami st rongly impressed upon the faithful and 

 ui ii >n the clergy as their advisers in matters of disci- 

 pline and conduct that the Christian ideal is that of 

 indissoluble marriage, and that the most dutiful and 

 loyal course, even in the case of the innocent party, 

 is to put aside any thought of marriage after 

 divorce. But if any Christian, conscientiously be- 

 lieving himself or herself to be permitted by the 

 Lord's words to remarry, determine to do so, then 

 endeavor should be made to dissuade such people 

 from seeking marriage with the rites of the Church, 

 legal provision having been made for marriage by 

 civil process. The language of the marriage service 

 is unsuitable for repetition, except in case where 

 the marriage tie has been dissolved by death or the 

 marriage is proved to have been invalid from the 

 beginning." Further, the report cites the declara- 

 tion on the subject in the evangelical letter of the 

 Lambeth Conference of 1897, uttering " earnest 

 words of warning against the lightness with which 

 the lifelong view of marriage is often taken, against 

 the looseness with which those who enter this holy 

 estate often regard its obligations, and against the 

 frequency and facility of recourse to the courts of 

 law for the dissolution of this most solemn bond." 



The Convocation of York met Feb. 16. A resolu- 

 tion was passed expressing the opinion that the 

 inv-ciit method of procedure at the confirmation of 

 bishops needs to be amended, and requesting the 

 archbishop to counsel with the Archbishop of 

 Ciinti -rlniry on the subject. The archbishop was 

 also n-i|in-sti-il. in view of the possible legal repre- 

 sentation of the laity, to appoint a joint committee 

 to determine what shall be the qualification of 

 persons elected to serve as legal lay representatives. 

 The lower house requested the archbishop to con- 

 fer with the Archbishop of Canterbury with refer- 

 ence to the appointment of a committee duly repre- 

 sentative of the Houses of Laymen of both provinces 

 isider and re|M>rt upon the position which the 

 laity -hould occupy in any scheme for the self-gov- 

 ernment of the Church : but advised that " it is not 

 advisable to delay legislation on ecclesiastical mat- 

 ter- until a reform of the Houses of Convocation 

 and the legal representation of lay members have 

 been effected." 



At the second meeting of the Convocation, June 

 8, the Bishop of Liverpool moved, in the upper 

 house, "that, in tin- (.pinion of this house, the in- 

 M of lawlessness on the part of many of the 

 Hrriry in the conduct of divine worship in their 

 churches, and especially the introduction of unau- 

 thori/.ed services in the practice and celebration of 

 the holy communion, and the growing dissatisfac- 

 tion of the laity in consequence of such lawlessness 

 demand the special attention of the bishops, and 



therefore this house considers it necessary at the 

 present juncture that the clergy of our respective 

 dioceses should be called upon to remember the 

 solemn declarations, subscriptions, and paths made 

 and taken by them at their ordination, licensing, or 

 institution, and in particular their legal and moral 

 obligation to use the form prescribed in the Book 

 of Common Prayer and none other, except so far as 

 shall be ordered by lawful authority." The bishop 

 observed that he regarded the Church of England 

 as at the present moment in a very perilous posi- 

 tion, above all, from the dangerous fact that the 

 people were complaining continually in every part 

 of the land that the bishops would not speak out, 

 and would not do anything to show whether they 

 approved or disapproved of the movement that was 

 going on in the Church of England. The result of 

 that must certainly be that sooner or later, drift- 

 ing as they appeared to be, the end of all would be 

 disruption and disestablishment. Churchmen all 

 over the land were angry, and many refused to go 

 to church because they said the clergy were going 

 behind the Reformation. The evil was increasing 

 more and more, and was a cancer eating into the 

 very vitals of the Church of England. The motion 

 was supported by the Bishops of Manchester, Dur- 

 ham, and Sodor and Man, who recognized equally 

 with the archbishop the gravity of the crisis and 

 advanced arguments in substantial harmony with 

 those which he had presented. The Bishop of 

 Wakefield moved an amendment, declaring that, 

 " in the opinion of this house, there is a serious- 

 danger at the present time of wide divergencies in 

 liturgical practices, owing to the introduction on 

 the part of some of the clergy of services and cere- 

 monies unauthorized by lawful authority and alien 

 to the principles of the Church of England, and 

 especially owing to the alterations by way of omis- 

 sion or addition to the order for the administration 

 of holy communion, and that these practices need 

 some restraint and guidance, due regard being had 

 under the authority of the ordinary to modern needs 

 and the reasonable liberty which has always ob- 

 tained in the Church of England." Supporting 

 his motion, he claimed that the bishops had acted, 

 and were acting, and held that it was futile to un- 

 dertake to govern the Church of England as a sys- 

 tem of machinery which was two centuries old, and 

 which could not be applied in its entirety and 

 strictness to the ends of the present day. A great 

 growing and lively Church like this must have 

 constant developments tried in order to provide an 

 outlet for the religious needs of the present day. 

 The Bishop of Chester did not regard the crisis as 

 acute, and thought it would be better for them to 

 content themselves with the utterance of opinions. 

 The archbishop, closing the debate, thought that 

 to regard the state of things as found in some 

 quarters as characteristic of the Church as a whole 

 would be a very grave exaggeration. His own im- 

 pression was that there was, no doubt, in every 

 diocese a certain number of instances in which the 

 things described in the complaints were done, but 

 these were a mere handful among the clergy of the 

 Church of Kngland; and he believed that the pres- 

 ent evil, so far as it existed, was a temporary ail- 

 ment which would sooner or later run its course 

 and pass away. The amendment offered by the 

 Bishop of Wakefield was adopted. 



The Ritualistic Crisis. The attention of the 

 people of England has been forcibly directed to the 

 development and extension of ritualism by a course 

 of proceedings of novel and rather sensational char- 

 acter. The feelings of the antiritualists among 

 the laymen were emphatically expressed in the 

 House of Laymen of the Convocation of Canter- 

 bury by Sir Henry Embree, M. P., who said they 





