1,Err E It,S TO THE EDITOR.
" FENCING THE TABLE." LTO TIlli EDITOlt OF Till -srserAvou...] SIR,—When a daughter has left home against the wish of her parents, and elected to make her own living, she loses caste, and is not even a welcome guest at her father's table. There is no hope of a renewal of affectionate relations between parent and child until the parents cease to upbraid her as a disobedient, headstrong child, and set themselves to win back
the love of a free woman.
When a Colony has determined to break off from the Mother- country and establish a Government—perhaps of a different character—for itself, there is a weary transition time of strained relations. So long as the terms "rebel" and "upstart" are used on the one side there is no disposition on the other for anything but angry recrimination. But when the position of the new nation is assured, there begins to be a turning of the hearts of the children to their fathers and of the fathers to the children. Which things are an allegory.
The Church of England is not an old commercial firm that is sore and jealous because some of its clerks have set up for them- selves, have infringed the firm's patent, and are stealing its customers, though you are tempted to think so as you listen to some who pretend to speak in the Church's name. The daughter- Churches that have claimed a separate life are in very truth bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh ; and whatever faults there may have been on both sides which led up to their claiming independence, all that remains now is to accept the situation. The recognition—if necessary, the restoration—of unity, not the bring- ing about of corporate reunion, is the object to be aimed at. With that end in view, we must give up talking of rebellion, and grant full recognition of the independent ecclesiastical life which they claim. In a word, they are grown-up daughters with homes of their own, colonies that have won and proclaimed their inde- pendence. Wherever and whenever their new status meets with respectful recognition the kindred blood begins to claim its own ; natural affection and respect for the old mother and the old home slowly but surely revive. How is it, then, we sometimes wonder, that such a desirable state of things is not already an accom- plished fact? What stands in the way. The answer is not far to seek. It is undoubtedly the lingering belief in the minds of some in the mother-Church that the exact form of her constitution exists "by divine right," that only princes of the royal blood (as it were) can be recognised as rulers in a rightly constituted State. Such men hold implicitly—at least, they speak as if they did—that the precise form of the frame- work of the Church's traditional government and institutions dropped from heaven, or was prescribed by the Divine Founder, and that all who attempt to organise Christian fellowship and citizenship on any other Hues are flying in the face of heaven, and must be denounced as rebels and traitors. Sound learning, honest discussion, and the experience of life have combined, it is true, to undermine and discredit their exclusive claim. It cannot hold its own in any Court of just and fair inquiry. The historians cannot justify it. But it dies hard, as other "divine right" claims and theories have done before it; as does also that Ad family pride that so long kept all upstarts out of the select and exclusive circle of the well-born.
Now Christians thus cut off from fellowship with one another are not ashamed to own—whether they be hereditary Conformists or hereditary Nonconformists—that their hearts go out to one another. It must be so, or they would not be true disciples of Christ, uor would all men know them, as our Lord said they would, by their love for one another. Furthermore, the disputes of their forbears mean little or nothing to them. The only loyalty most of them are capable of understanding is that to the system in which each was brought up. Active work in the Master's service (especially in the performance of their duties as citizens) draws them occasionally together. But it does not satisfy them. They would like to meet periodically at the table of the Lord, ' in token of their common. Christianity, and their eyes naturally turn to their parish church. I say " naturally," for they know that the parish church and the parish priest alike belong to the whole parish, and are meant to minister to their spiritual needs. The parish has perhaps inherited a charitable bequest to provide for its bodily needs (say baths and recreation ground), and others to provide for its mental needs (say a grammar school and library), so it understands that its spiritual endowments were intended, as much as the rest, for the good of all.
Surely, Sir, the proper rallying-point of local Christianity is the ancient mother-church of each district, uplifting its head and carrying on its services as the symbol of Christian unity. Separated, if it must be so, in our regular worship according as we believe in conformity or nonconformity, we might just now and then forget our differences as we " all partake of one loaf " and all recognise our membership in (and " discern,' as St. Paul has it) the one Body of Christ, the One Universal Church into which we have all been baptised.
Once more, as in my former letter (Spectator, June 2nd), I plead for fuller recognition of the principles on which our national Church "fences the Table" of the Lord. In the Order of the Administration of Holy Communion it is made as clear as reiterated and vigorous statement can make it—in opening rubrics, in prefatory exhortations, in words of invitation, all in harmony with the closing paragraph of the Catechism—that the Church's test of fitness is a moral test. Those who truly repent, have an unfeigned faith, and are living in charity are welcomed. Ill livers and the unloving are warned off.
Perhaps I may venture in a closing sentence to use once more an illustration with which I began my letter. It seems to bring out the position of Confirmation as the Church's beautiful rite— founded on Apostolic example, but not claiming divine authority —for admitting the baptised to participation in the Holy Eucharist : applicable to the Church's own family, I would maintain, rather than to her guests.
It is only when a returned emigrant from the United States seeks repatriation in the Mother-country, or when an Englishman seeks naturalisation in the States, that he must perforce bow to all the domestic laws, customs, and ordinances of his adopted country. That a man has been presented at Court in his own country gives him the entrée to the same privileges in allied countries that he has been admitted to in his own.
Eccles Vicarage.
[The spirit which animates this letter is, we believe, the authentic spirit of the Church of England,—a spirit most worthy of a Church that is national in the true sense.—En.
Spectator.]
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