FACTS AND PROGRESS. 205 WESTERTON versus LIDDELL. THIS important case has at length received an authoritative decision; and although it will subsequently be carried before other tribunals, we are given to understand that Mr. Liddell's party have but little hope that the judgment of Dr. Lushington will be set aside. We may therefore now consider it as finally settled, so far as it legally can be, and congratulate ourselves on the issue. The Tractarians generally are but little influenced by their reverse. We have only to read the arguments put forward by them in this case to be convinced that they are mere flimsy networks which have been elaborated, not from a conviction of their strength, but in the endeavour to support one side of a question by the fairest show of reason. The leaders of the party, if not the overgrown Oxford boys who sometimes join with them in playing at priests, know very well the legal weakness of their views; they are conscious that the letter of the rubric is against them as well as its spirit; and their aim is not so much to bring themselves into harmony with the rubric as to build upon it as much of their own dogmatism as they possibly can. Their proofs are not legal but moral; they speak of our weak faith and its need of external aid; of our sense of beauty, and the assistance which it gives to devotion; of our faint longings for holiness being strengthened by an exquisite symbolism; of our feeling of the weariness of life being refreshed by the sight of the rood-screen or the altar-cross. We give the full force to these arguments. We are quite sensible, with Jeremy Taylor," that outward acts of religion are for the weak not for the strong; they are to minister to weakness and infirmities, and by bodily expressions to invite forward, to entertain, to ferment, to endear the spirit of a man to the purposes of God." But if these actions were in the Tractarian economy what Bishop Taylor calls them, "the mere crusts and outsides of religion," we should cease to find so much fault with the proceedings at St. Barnabas: they are far more than this. We cannot accept them without accepting also all that is symbolised by them. Variegated altar-clothes are harmless in themselves, but we cannot retain them if they are not merely ornaments, or "decent coverings," but parts in a system of Romish errors. Still less can we retain a stone table if it is not merely a table, but quâ stone, an altar. We must either put away the symbols, together with the bad doctrine which they necessarily involve, or we must retain both. And, again, granting that the cross, credence-table, and other pieces of church furniture in question, are in themselves innocent, they are no longer so when they are contrary to law. "He that says," (again to quote Jeremy Taylor's 'Rule of Conscience')" that without a surplice we cannot pray to God acceptably; and he that says, we cannot pray well with it, are both to blame; but if a positive law of our superior intervenes, that is another consideration." We are referred then to the law: if the law prohibits these things, the excuse of a tender conscience can no longer be pleaded to justify their use. The onus probandi rests with the Tractarians. These ornaments, with very few exceptional instances, are not found in the English churches-the spirit of the Reformation has swept them away. What valid reasons can be assigned for their restoration? It is with this part of the question that Dr. Lushington's judgment deals, and we consider his arguments irrefutable. They are summed up into five heads; so that the judgment is founded (I) on Acts of Parliament bearing on the question; (II) the canons in force; (III) the ecclesiastical common law; (IV) previous judicial decisions; (V) the usage and custom that have prevailed. Based on a fivefold foundation, the judgment has a fivefold effect: 1. It substitutes a wooden communion table for a stone altar; 2. it removes altogether the credence table; 3. it directs the use of one decent covering of silk on the communion table during divine service, and a fair, unembroidered linen cloth at the ministration of the Sacrament; 4. it disallows the erection of crosses either in front of the reredos or over the rood-screen; 5. it asserts the illegality of lighted candles on the communion table, except when absolutely necessary for the use of the minister. And now that the case is decided let both sides abide honestly by the issue. The ornaments in question are found to be contrary to the church's usage and commands, and they who would use them must seek them elsewhere. Those Tractarians, whose worship is inseparably bound up with the symbols disallowed, must not halt any longer between two opinions; they must not taint the purity of the English church by the infusion of the Romish element which she now openly disowns. If these symbols are necessary to them they must go where they can use them freely; if, however, they stay in our midst, they must surrender both the symbols and the doctrines which they involve. FACTS AND PROGRESS. 207 THE AMERICAN EPISCOPAL CHURCH. AN eminent German Professor, Dr. Philip Schaff, in his new work on America, gives it as his decided opinion that the Episcopal Church has a better chance of ultimate success than any of the numberless " religions" which now count their followers in the United States by tens of thousands. Statistics which have reached us strikingly confirm this opinion. We read of the multiplication of missionary dioceses; the establishment of asylums, and hospitals, and church training institutions in all parts of the Church; the admission of large numbers of young men to the diaconate-the primitive not the modern diaconate-and, besides this, of an unwearying activity on all hands which shames our own proudest. efforts. Let us bid our Trans-Atlantic brethren God-speed, and let us strive not to be behind them in zealous earnest endeavour to beat down Satan's strongholds. BIBLE BURNING IN IRELAND. THE influence of the Irish priesthood over the laity became very feeble a few years ago: the upper classes associated with them on terms of the greatest familiarity, and consequently were reluctant to expose to them, at the confessional, the secrets of their inmost heart; the lower orders were found to need what our Wesleyan brethren term "revivals," to give them a fervent religious enthusiasm, and to stir them up to repentance. It was considered by the Catholic hierarchy that these difficulties would be best overcome by employing a number of foreign missionaries, who would have no social ties to lessen their authority over the rich, and who would be invested with a kind of sanctity in the eyes of the poor. Accordingly an order of stranger monks was founded, who took Alphonsus Liguori as their patron saint, the rule of Ignatius Loyola as the chief guide of their asceticism, and the preaching of repentance, under the title of the "Redemptorist Fathers," as their prime function. The order now includes several Greeks, several Belgians, and one Russiana political exile from Odessa-named Vladimir Pecherine. Father Pecherine distinguished himself by his vehement and restless impetuosity: the fiery eagerness of his pulpit and altar declamations scarcely knew any bounds, and it last descanted upon the duty incumbent on all true Catholics to give up every immoral and dangerous book, in order that it might be hidden in the recesses of the monastery, or burned with igno miny in the churchyard. Amongst the publications thus denounced, was the Protestant version of the Holy Scriptures, many copies of which- we are informed by the written evidence of the superior of the order-were delivered up at the demand of the Redemptorist missionaries. When a considerable number of proscribed books had been collected, some barrowsful of such trash as Reynolds's Miscellany, the Mysteries of the Court, &c., were conveyed from Father Pecherine's house to a bonfire, which had been kindled in the graveyard of the Kingston Roman Catholic chapel. They were then all burned, by Father Pecherine's distinct and positive orders. So far we look upon the Father's proceedings as being indiscreet, rather than culpable: but the case is vastly altered, when we consider that among the books thus burned were several Bibles, whose charred fragments were rescued by the bystanders from the flames. The natural inference was, that as the other books had been deliberately taken from a room in Pecherine's house, and deliberately burned with the rest whilst he was standing by, so it was also with these Bibles. With commendable alacrity her Majesty's law officers instituted a prosecution: it was followed up with vigourthe excitement among all parties was excessive-the case came before the commission-indisputable evidence was given of the fact—all seemed quite clear. And then came the miserable defence-" it was a mistake; the Bibles were taken from the people not to be burned publicly, but to be made away with privately;" the counsel for this version of the affair made a long and grandiloquent oration about his Church's love for the Bible, about the numerous copies of the Douay version which had been printed, and then defied the jury to prove that Father Pecherine had intentionally committed the act in question. The jury-seven Catholics and five Protestants-believed him, and the Redemptorist Father was acquitted. We cannot but express our unqualified indignation at this perversion of the plainest evidence, this disregard of the clearest facts. Such a verdict, in the face of such testimony, would disgrace a jury even of savages; it is a sad omen for the future, for if acknowledged actions are not in the case of a sane man to interpret the motive, we know not how the motive is to be tested at all. However, the case against Rome is not affected by the result; her agents have not shrunk from owning that the Bible is a prohibited book to the poor; they have deprived them of the one edition, but they have not substituted the other; they have classed our version FACTS AND PROGRESS. 209 with the bad and blasphemous publications of the most debased panderers to morbid sensuality. And now, forsooth, a jury was found to believe his paltry subterfuge, Father Pecherine is exalted to the dignity of a martyr-the deluded victims, whom he has deprived of the source of life, crowd round him as their deliverer and their benefactor; the general joy amongst Catholics in Ireland, exceeds all possibility of description, and warns us very sternly that we have yet a work to do, that we must not calculate too much on the waning authority of the priest, and that if Ireland is to be won for Christ, no labour must be lost, no effort spared. FRANCE. THE French exposition met with the success which it deserved, and closed under circumstances of the greatest éclat. On the last day the medals of honour were distributed by the Emperor to those exhibitors who had gained them, the adjudications being very fairly made, except in the cases of the Fine Arts, where many sad blunders were perpetrated. The Emperor prefaced the distribution by a speech which will long remain fixed, we hope, in the hearts of ourselves and our neighbours. Like all Napoleon's other words, these too are vigorous, and wise, and Christian: they point to the significant fact that, in spite of the great war which is going on, men have brought together to the French capital the choicest trophies of art and science; that they have met in mutual brotherhood to share in plans for further civilization, as though European liberty, instead of being staked on the issue of the battle, had the firm immovableness of the everlasting hills. The speech concludes with these noble words-" As for ourselves, allied for the triumph of a great cause, let us forge our arms without slackening the labour of our furnaces or manufactures; let us be great in the arts of peace as in the arts of war; let us be strong by our concord; and let us put our trust in the Almighty, that he will cause us to triumph over the difficulties of the day and the uncertainty of the morrow." The whole character and policy of the Emperor is at unity with itself: it is marching onwards in the cause of right, not with blind enthusiasm or careless confidence, but with the stern courage and sound wisdom which the spirit of the age and the force of circumstances require. There is probably no country which presents so many enigmas to the political economist as France, and there is certainly none which is now managed so well: there are diseases which the old constitu VOL. XXXIX. P |