DR. MAGEE ON THE BURIALS BILL.
THE Bishop of Peterborough has not shown his usual cour- age in the debate of Thursday on the Burials Bill. There was a time when he was not afraid, as a Bishop, to say that he valued liberty even more than sobriety. He was not even, we grieve to say, afraid, as a Bishop, to make a very notable defence of the practice of Vivisection. But though he clearly sees the absurd- ity of the clause which requires the burial service con- ducted by Dissenters in Churchyards to be " Christian," he is afraid to contend that that clause ought to be abol- Vivisection. But though he clearly sees the absurd- ity of the clause which requires the burial service con- ducted by Dissenters in Churchyards to be " Christian," he is afraid to contend that that clause ought to be abol-
ished. Dr. Magee will hardly class us in either of the two classes whom he credited with the intention to resist this clause. He will not reckon us amongst those " who hate the Church of England a little more than they love Christianity"—an epigrammatic taunt against Dis- senters which, we venture to say, describes their present atti- tude very badly indeed—nor will he reckon us amongst those who " hate Christianity a little more than they hate the Church of England,"—of whom we quite admit that there are plenty. We have always endeavoured to do what lay in us to sustain the Establishment, as a very great blessing to England, so long as it represents the faith of a very large part of the nation, and one by no means uncongenial even to those whom it does not represent ; and we have never concealed our belief that it is only by making England more truly and earnestly Christian, not by undermining its Christianity, that we look for any great progress, even in its political and social life. But none the less, we certainly join most heartily with those who say that to limit the Burial Services in Churchyards to Christian services, is to restrict the just relief afforded by this measure in a most senseless and unmeaning way. What can be greater folly than to permit a Unitarian minister who calls himself Christian to perform perhaps the very same service over a Unitarian friend, which Mr. Voysey, who does not call himself Christian, might be prevented, for mere want of a false profession, from performing over a member of his own congregation ? To exact such a test as the profession of Christi- anity from the minister who is to conduct a burial service in a Churchyard, is inept in the last degree. As we have formerly shown, what it really means is this,—that the Atheist, Agnostic, Positivist, Deist, or Pantheist, must be buried by a clergyman of the Church of England with the burial service of the Church, because you exact from the particular sectary who would otherwise take that duty off his hands, a profession which he cannot make, as the condition of allowing him to take the duty off the clergyman's hands. We should have thought that most Anglican clergymen would have desired to be relieved from the painful duty of performing a very solemn Christian service, full of the highest passion of Christian faith, over the remains of one who scornfully rejected that faith, and probably in the presence of others who scorn-
fully reject it too. Yet that is precisely the duty which the proposal to leave the qualifying Christian clause in the Bill will impose on clergymen still. And what do they get by way of set-off against this unpleasant duty ? They get the pleasure of saying that the Churchyard is still distinc- tively Christian, that no Agnostic or Positivist can, without playing a very shabby trick, pollute the consecrated air by indulging there those meagre hopes as to the " posthumous " life of the deceased, which are all that Agnostic and Positivist mourners can indulge, as they turn from the grave of a bene- ficent man to look upon a future in which even his absence will become daily less and less conspicuous. Now, is this a set-off on which the Clergy have any reason to set value? What is it to them that these thin anticipations of a modified oblivion should be excluded in favour of Christian hopes which do not represent, but misrepresent, the feelings of the • mourners ? What is it to them even, that a certain stigma should still be placed on non-Christian sects,—on not a few, amongst others, which really use the Lord's Prayer,—by excluding them, ex- cept under condition of a lie, from their burial-grounds ? We say that all which is of any use in the limitation,—namely, the prohibition of scandalous attacks on Christianity,—can be effected by other means ; while only what is useless, and not only useless, but inconvenient and trouble- some, in addition to the careful prolonging of a real grievance for all non-Christian sects, is secured by this empty and irritating provision. Are English clergymen really such children as to feel the happier because the name of Chris- tian is still attached to the burial-grounds, and any utterance of an avowedly unchristian thought within these precincts remains in some impalpable sense illegitimate, though not illegal ?
These considerations are so obvious, that we confess we should have expected the Bishop of Peterborough, when avowedly exposing the unmeaningness and hopelessness of. the Christian proviso, to speak out as we have spoken. Not only did he not do so, but he appeared to be irritated in a very high degree by the imputation that he was hostile to that Christian provision, and vented his wrath on the Primate for suggesting it. So we are reluctantly compelled to admit that on this point, at least, the Bishop of Peterborough is conventional, as Bishops usually are. He has not the courage to say that you may be acting a Christian part in deprecating to the utmost so-called Christian limitations ; that you may be serving Christ by giving more liberty to those who do not serve Christ. Nevertheless, we affirm that it is so, and that it is a pity that one of the most courageous and unconventional of the Bishops has not had the clearness of mind and heart to see and declare that it is so.
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