ANGLICAN CHURCHES. 



authority of their lordships of the upper house, 

 and its readiness, on their direction, to give its 

 careful consideration to subjects tnat concern the 

 ritual and doctrine of the Church. " At the same 

 time, having reasons to fear lest individual cler- 

 gymen may be led to make changes on their own 

 responsibility, this house feels constrained to ex- 

 hort its brethren in the ministry to entertain 

 with caution modes of thought and action which 

 may weaken not only the rightful authority of 

 the synod, but the very independence of the 

 Church itself." 



In the House of Laymen a resolution was 

 adopted declaring that the house, " while wel- 

 coming the noble effort now making to elevate 

 and instruct the people of the Soudan and Upper 

 Egypt through the means of the Gordon College, 

 at Khartoum, is nevertheless of the opinion that 

 no effort to perpetuate the memory of Gen. Gor- 

 don can be considered adequate which does not 

 include the direct proclamation of the gospel of 

 Jesus Christ to all the races inhabiting the upper 

 basin of the Nile, which has recently been 

 brought under the control of England. They 

 would express their earnest hope that at the 

 earliest moment consistent with public safety the 

 Government of the Soudan will remove the re- 

 strictions at present existing upon the entrance 

 of missionaries into Khartoum." 



At a joint meeting of the upper and lower 

 houses and the House of Laymen, held on the 

 first day of the sessions, the archbishop made 

 a full statement in regard to matters affecting 

 the existing crisis in the Church. He spoke first 

 of the offer of the archbishops to hear cases of 

 disputed ritual. Next he explained the nature 

 of the bill which they proposed to introduce into 

 Parliament. A bill had been drawn up about ten 

 years previously by Archbishop Benson and in- 

 troduced into the House of Lords, but not pro- 

 ceeded with. It was now reprinted, in order to 

 make it a basis of consideration for any such 

 reforms as would be desirable for them to intro- 

 duce into Parliament and endeavor to induce 

 Parliament to accept. If that was to be of any 

 use, it must be considered with very great care. 

 They ought not, however, to be in any great 

 hurry, but should thoroughly look at the bill 

 from all points of view previous to putting it 

 before either house of Parliament. The arch- 

 bishop felt very confident that they would be 

 able to get things straight if only they could 

 get the clergy and the laity to second their en- 

 deavors to proceed quietly and gently, and to 

 - seek, above all, not each his own particular 

 fancy or predilections, but the good of the Church 

 as a whole. 



At the meeting of Convocation, April 25, the 

 Bishop of London in the upper house presented 

 a petition, signed by 768 medical practitioners 

 from all counties in England and Wales, upon 

 the subject of the communion of the sick. The 

 petition represented that there were many ex- 

 ceptional cases in which the office for that serv- 

 ice provided in the Prayer Book was too long, 

 and its use detrimental and even occasionally 

 dangerous to the sick person. Such exceptional 

 cases were acute disease; long-standing wasting 

 diseases, such as the latest stages of consump- 

 tion and cancer; infectious diseases, when the 

 priest and others are unnecessarily exposed to 



I infection and liable to spread it; cases of sudden 

 emergency, in which there is no time to conse- 

 crate the elements; and where there is no con- 

 venient place in which the sacrament can be 

 reverently celebrated. As professional men the 

 signers thought that " the sacrament should be 



administered in the way which is easiest to the 

 sick and dying, and that in the cases mentioned 

 the custom of taking the sacrament to the sick 

 ought to be specially permitted, as in former 

 times, to the end that these very real difficulties 

 and dangers may as far as possible be avoided." 

 The experiment having been recently begun by 

 the proprietors of two of the daily newspapers 

 of London of publishing their journals on Sun- 

 day, as well as on the week days, the house took 

 occasion to express its regret at the action, 

 and its trust that the innovation, which would 

 put a great pressure upon other journals to take 

 a like course, and which, " if allowed to spread, 

 will lead to a great extension of Sunday labor 

 and an obliteration of the distinction between 

 the Lord's Day and other days of the week, may 

 be emphatically and effectually discouraged by 

 public opinion, and that Churchmen will take an 

 active part in the protest." 



A resolution was passed in the lower house 

 with reference to a license from the Crown or 

 a declaratory act authorizing the draft of a 

 canon for the more adequate representation of 

 the clergy and laity in convocation. In another 

 resolution the house expressed its opinion that 

 " the present difficulties in the Church will be 

 most permanently met by finding a fuller ex- 

 pression, consistently with the union between 

 Church and state, for the principle of corporate 

 Church action in the conduct of Church affairs, 

 and its trust that a larger measure of freedom in 

 the management of her internal affairs may be 

 accorded to the Church, acting in and through 

 her duly constituted assemblies, regard being 

 had to the respective responsibilities of clergy 

 and faithful laity," and requested the archbishop 

 and bishops constituting the upper house to take 

 such steps with a view to securing these objects 

 as in their wisdom they might think fit. 



Resolutions were passed in the House of Lay- 

 men asking the archbishop to take into con- 

 sideration the desirability of a service being 

 provided by authority to be used in cases of cre- 

 mation; expressing the hope that the Govern- 

 ment would speedily see its way to carry out a 

 policy for conferring greater autonomy on the 

 Church; and declaring that, while deploring the 

 practice of any observances which could not fair- 

 ly be held to be within the comprehensive limits 

 of the Church of England, the house strongly 

 protested against the Church discipline bill as 

 inconsistent with the episcopal government of the 

 Church. 



At its meeting in July the Convocation, in all 

 its three houses, discussed the ecclesiastical pro- 

 cedure bill. 



Convocation of York. The Convocation of 

 York opened, Feb. 9, with a joint meeting of the 

 two houses, when the archbishop spoke concern- 

 ing the crisis in the Church, and particularly con- 

 cerning the arrangement with the Archbishop 

 of Canterbury for the archiepiscopal hearing of 

 cases of disputed ritual and of the contemplated 

 ecclesiastical courts bill. The upper house hav- 

 ing resolved that the increasing practice among 

 the clergy of encouraging habitual, systematic, 

 or compulsory private confession demanded the 

 serious attention of tbe bishops, a committee 

 of the whole house was appointed to consider the 

 subject. A resolution was adopted approving the 

 assembling at an early date of the synods of the 

 two provinces in one place. A resolution similar 

 to one adopted in the lower house of the Con- 

 vocation of Canterbury thanked the archbishop 

 and bishops for proposing to rehabilitate the 

 ecclesiastical courts of the country, and expressed 



