A POULTICE RESOLUTION. .
TORD BEACONSFIELD speaks somewhere of "John A I Bull puzzled, but still subscribing."• We may perpe- trate a parallel aphorism in " The House of Commons puzzled, but still passing Resolutions." As a rale, the House of Com- mons acts with good sense and discretion, and we have no desire for a moment to speak with disrespect of that body. It has, however," its faults, and one of them is' a certain infantile belief in the power of words.. Its action, indeed, often inclines one to the belief that Members of the House of Commons seriously believe that a Resolution is a kind of moral poultice, and that a well-prepared _--Resolution is a specific in certain cases of disease in the-body politic. We all know the old nurse who thinks that there is nothing like a good poultice when you are out of sorts." So think the Commons about their Resolutions. On Tuesday this view was very much in prominence, and a whole night was wasted in debating what kind of poultice should be applied to the Church question. Practically no one ventured to assert that no poultice should be used, for that would have been regarded as a kind of treason to Parliament. The only question was whether it should be made of plain linseed and used merely to soothe, or whether it should be a good stiff mustard poultice intended to act as a strong counter- irritant. In the end a very English compromise was arrived at. The poultice was to be linseed, but with a good dash of mustard in it,—enough to make the skin red and produce a reasonable amount of counter-irritation.
Personally we hold that it would have been much better not to have used the verbal poultice of a Resolution at all, but that if it had to be used, plain linseed was the proper ingredient. But though we strongly object to the dash of mustard, we cannot profess to think that any very great harm has been done. The Motion will not be, and indeed cannot be, applied. The Government is not even asked, and certainly would not consent, to put persons to whom preferment is offered to the question. Imagine Mr. Balfour, after he had selected a man whom he thought likely to prove a worthy incumbent of a Crown living, asking him to pledge himself in the abstract to obey any and every decision of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. He will, of course, do nothing of the kind, though doubtless he will do what he has always done before,—that is, make loyalty to the-Church and to the law a most important con- sideration in the giving away of Crown benefices. There- fore, the House of Commons has really accomplished nothing by its poultice Resolution, except to a certain extent alarming and irritating moderate High Churchmen. These men, though before inclined to dislike the views of the extremer sacerdotalists in doctrine and Ritual, will now feel tempted to make common cause with them. For remember what the Resolution has done is to excite feeling upon a matter which is by no means exclusively the property of the Ritualists. There are a great many otherwise moderate men who are perturbed by what we should call the bogey of Erastianism, but which they most conscientiously regard as a real and imminent evil. They are troubled by the notion of mixing up spiritual and worldly matters, and desire, if possible, a larger measure of spiritual autonomy. But this is in no sense a Roman view. To most Nonconformists the power of the State and of civil Courts in Church matters is the chief cause of offence in the Establishment. They object to the Establishment and want to see it abolished because they declare that it involves the Anglican Church in secular bondage. Many Anglicans feel very bitterly the taunts that-are based on this feeling and that are flung about in the heat of the Liberation controversy, and out of this disquiet has, in some measure, grown up the desire to be free from civil Courts. No doubt the extreme Ritualists may desire to be free from the Privy Council for other reasons, and chiefly because they think such freedom would give them more latitude. But while we take this fact into account, we must also not forget there are other grounds for desiring spiritual autonomy within the Church. Hence the Resolu- tion has distinctly worked toward a concentration, of feeling among High Churchmen, both moderate and extreme.
But though from many points of view we deprecate the debate and the Resolution, we cannot altogether regret that the matter was raised by Mr. G edge. It has had at least one good result. It gave us Mr. Balfour's speech. • A speech more fraught with wisdom and good feeling has not yet been made in Parliament on any Church question, and we do not doubt that it will have an excellent effect throughout the country. It represents what, in our opinion, is exactly the standpoint that ought to be taken by those who have the true interests of the English Church at heart, and who desire _to save from harm an institution which with all its faults has been the spiritual home of more noble natures and self-sacrificing lives than any other institution in the world. The Church of England has known days of bigotry, of selfishness, of materialism, and of worldliness, but even in her darkest hour the Church of England has always contained men of true piety and devotion. And always, and this is her supreme glory, the spirit of freedom, and of a large and holy tolerance—not indifference, but that tolerance which partakes of the divine—has been somewhere alive and among her members. Often this flame of. liberal inspiration has burnt neglected and almost unseen, and often the attempt has been made to obscure and stifle it, but never with success. And the reason is that in the hour of danger we have never wanted men—laymen perhaps as often as clergymen—who have shown the spirit which Mr. Balfour showed on Tuesday night. At the moment it is not either easy or popular to display such a spirit. Some call it interested, some say it shows inconsistency and weakness, others declare that it is vague and unpractical, but for all that it is the only spirit which can ultimately save the Church.
A word may be said more in detail as to the nature of Mr. Balfour's attitude towards the Church. Institutions, like men, have their " ruling passion," their domi- nant characteristic, and only by those who grasp this fact can they be properly understood. Mr. Balfour has realised this fact. He knows the dominant characteristic of the English Church, and he knows also that if it were once destroyed the Church would not survive. That leading characteristic is the spirit of comprehension. He under- stands also the true nature of loyalty to the Church of England. Men can be good men, and sincere men, without understanding truly what the Church of England is, but they cannot without that knowledge be really loyal to her. The extremists—i.e., the followers of Lord Halifax—may realise well enough that the English Church is a branch of the Universal Church, but they do not realise that since her reformation and during the last three hundred years she has developed many characteristics which are of vital importance to her life and work. To ignore those three hundred years, and to seek to transform a state of things which sufficed for Hooker and Butler, Simeon and Keble, Maurice and Pusey, is to fail in a knowledge which is essential to true loyalty to the Church of England. Yet other elements in Mr. Balfour's manner of approaching the problems aroused by the present unrest in the Church may be dealt with. They are, first, his steady refusal to yield in any degree to the demand for measures of persecution—he is not one of those who imagine that persecution cannot exist as long as the persecutor sincerely dislikes the opinions of his victims—and next, his desire to endow the English Church with greater spiritual autonomy. Here we are heartily with him. We do not ourselves believe that the jurisdiction of the Judicial Com- mittee of the Privy Council is the least essentially injurious or without sanction, but we realise that there are thousands of people who think otherwise, and we would, if possible, try to find them a Court which their consciences would tell them they must obey. It may prove difficult to constitute such a Court, but that is no reason why the attempt should not be made. In other directions also we would endeavour to enlarge the spiritual autonomy of the Church. Naturally the Church, which is the Church of the whole nation, cannot be left as free as are the Nonconformist Churches, but we still think that while preserving national control the Church might with advantage be allowed a great deal more latitude of internal legislation than she possesses at present. As long as the appointment of all Bishops remains in the hands of the Government, and as long as Parliament retains its supreme power of legislation, there is very little danger of the Church narrowing her boundaries, —always, we admit, a danger in purely ecclesiastical ordinances. But this is not the occasion to discuss eccle- siastical jurisdictions ; all we want to insist upon to-day is that though the virtual carrying of Mr. Gedge's Motion in Parliament was a mistake, it has done some good, for it has enabled Mr. Balfour to show the country the true spirit in which the present unrest in the Church should be met. If only the majority of Englishmen would act in that spirit we should soon see Mr. Kensit and his friends on one side, and the English Church Union on the other, made to take their proper places. Mr. Balfour's steadfastness in upholding the essential principles of the Reformation will prevent any dangerous reaction towards institutions and ceremonials from which our Church was properly purged three hundred years ago, while his equally strong and equally persistent demand for comprehension will save us from a narrow and petrified Church,—a body without freedom of growth and movement, and so, in the end, a body without life.
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