"THE CASE OF RICHARD ME YNELL.* [To THE Esrros oP
Tax "Srscuroa."(
SIR,—The article in your issue of last week on " The Case of Richard Meynell" is hardly a just appreciation of Mrs. Ward's latest book. It would appear, though I am slow to believe it of the Spectator, that you are content with the present position and prospects of the Church of England and with the fairly general acceptance of its creed and liturgy by its nominal adherents, but I cannot believe that you are really satisfied with its hold on the educated or on the illiterate classes, or even on its own ordained ministers. Is its in- fluence on the morality of the nation all that we could desire for a firmly established and highly endowed Church such as we long to support and defend ?
Mrs. Ward, in the opinion of many Churchmen and Church reformers like myself, is doing good and useful work, and is doing it with tact, discretion, and moderation. Is our country so decadent mentally as to believe that a creed for- mulated in the early centuries of Christianity by men with- out knowledge or opportunity for knowledge of history or of science, a creed manipulated, mystified, and garbled in many of its details by medieval priestcraft, is to be accepted in all its minutim, and for all time, as sacred and as eternal truth ? Are we so hypnotized by a clergy sworn to hold and inculcate belief in their thirty-nine immut- able Articles as to accept a sixteenth-century Reformation as the last word in the improvement of our Church, as amply sufficient to maintain its power and influence for good in our modern life? Are expansion and improvement admissible in everything except in religious belief and religious ordin- ances? Are all demands for Church reform to be dis- regarded; are all we who humbly but firmly claim "the privileged and honoured name" of Christians to be silenced when Parliament and Convocation refuse or neglect to banish the un-Christian Athanasian Creed, when they permit and ratify such abuses as the sale of church livings ?
I recognize fully the great and noble work which the established Churches of England and Scotland have done in the past and are doing in the present, but we are right in demanding, even with clamour, that the wealth and influence and status which the nation has bestowed on them shall be liberally used in admitting to equal privileges of Churchman- ship all professing Christians, and eschewing all narrow- minded attempts to impose rigid formulas of faith on all
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