EXCLUSION OR COMPREHENSION?
IT is very difficult for a layman to write of the Kikuyu controversy in that spirit of gentleness and patience which is in truth the only spirit in which theological controversy ought to be approached. Yet it must be admitted that there is some excuse for the layman's indig- nation at what he is inclined to call the harshness, the bigotry, and the un-Christian feeling of those who cannot bear the thought of Bishops of the Church of England administering the Communion to Nonconformists. It seems so plain to him that the religion of Christ must be essentially opposed to such ritualistic punctilios, must be inclusive and not exclusive, embracing and not repellent. It seems so plain also that it is the special glory of the Church of England to have inherited above all other Churches the spirit of religious benevolence—to be the Church of the open door. Yet his indignation, though natural, must not be indulged, for if it is indulged it is certain, like all forms of anger, to lead him to injustice. Unquestionably a great many of those who take the opposite side to the layman of our thought, who hold what we may call for convenience, though without the slightest desire to create prejudice, the extreme Anglican view, hold it on perfectly conscientious if mistaken grounds.
We dealt last week with some of the wider religious aspects of the question. To-day we want to deal more especially with a somewhat narrower, though very important, point concerning the controversy as to the admission of Nonconformists to the Communion. There are a very great number of clergymen who at heart are most anxious to give free access for Communion to all Christians honestly and reverently desiring it, and to whom the thought of repelling any such Christians is most abhorrent. But though they are anxious not to exclude or to shut the chancel gates against any of those who seek spiritual sustenance at their bands, they are haunted by the thought that they may be doing something illegal and something contrary to the canons of the Church of England if they knowingly administer the Communion to unconfirmed Nonconformists.
It is to the men thus perplexed that we desire to address ourselves to-day. We believe that their doubts and diffi- culties here are quite unfounded. So far from it being wrong or contrary to the law of the land or of the Church of England for a clergyman to administer the Communion to persons who do not generally conform to the practices of that Church, it is very doubtful whether in law the Non- conformist has not an absolute right to claim admission to the Communion in his parish church. The question has not been tested in the Courts, but there are persons of high learning in matters of ecclesiastical law who hold that the Courts would make good such a claim on the part of a Nonconformist, even though the Nonconformist had not been confirmed. It is quite clear that the intention of the law of the land and of the law of the Church as set forth in the statutes and in the rubrics and canons is that no man or woman shall be repelled from the Communion on account of their religious views. No declarations of faith or orthodoxy are required. Again, the clergyman is not bound to satisfy himself that the claimant is in fact leading a good life. Such questions are left to the would-be com- municant. The responsibility is on the individual who communicates, not on the clergyman. The only grounds on which the clergyman can repel are the grounds of open and notorious evil living. Otherwise the Church guards most jealously the right of free and unfettered access by adults.
It will be urged at once that this view of the free right of access to the Communion is made untenable by the rubric which requires confirmation, or the assurance that the person is ready and desirous to be confirmed. Though we cannot to-day enter in detail into the question of authorities, we believe that what we may call" the prohibition of unconfirmed persons" view is not the true view of the rubric. The rubric was intended, not to bar Noncon- formists, but merely to prevent any revival of the pre- Reformation practice of giving the Communion to children of tender years. The alteration made in the time of Charles II., while closing the door to this abuse, was intended to allow the very thing which the altered rubric is now invoked to prevent—i.e., the admission of Noncon- formists. Usage supports our contention. If that contention is bad, how comes it that foreign Princes and Princesses, though unconfirmed, have always been admitted to the Communion of the Church of England without doubt or question ? Again, how is it that the occasional con- formity of the eighteenth century was actually prescribed for persons many of whom were unconfirmed, and that up till a generation ago the admission of unconfirmed persons was constant and unchallenged? We do not intend, however, on the present occasion to argue the point that clergymen of the National Church, the Church which is the Church of the whole nation and not merely an Anglican sect, a Church, that is, in which nonconforming persons have rights as well as conforming persons, must admit the demand of unconfirmed Christians to partake of the Sacrament. All we want to do now is to point out that it is absolutely certain that no clergyman who does admit unconfirmed persons to Communion has committed any offence for which be can be punished or censured by any Court of Law. But where no offence has been committed and where no punishment can be given there has been no illegality. To reiterate, we say without fear of a contradiction which will hold good in law that any clergyman who so desires can, with a perfectly clear conscience as to the legality of his act, admit persons to the Communion whom he knows to be unconfirmed. Any attempt made to question his action as a breach of the law would be certain to fail. We shall, of course, be asked, and rightly asked, what warrant we, who are neither ecclesiastics nor lawyers, have for laying down the law with such assurance. Our answer is to be found in what took place in 1869 when Dean Stanley administered the Holy Communion in Henry VII.'s Chapel in Westminster Abbey to the distinguished body of scholars and divines, including prominent Scotch Presbyterians and English Nonconformists, none of whom had been confirmed. This beautiful act of Christian fellowship was unfortunately denounced by a certain number of extreme Anglicans as a grievous wrong and scandal. One High Church paper, indeed, went so far as to declare that a dignitary of the Church had "cast pearls before swine and given that which is most holy to the dogs." Happily we have advanced a little in Christian charity since that date, but still, in the main, the gravamen urged against the Bishops in Uganda is the same as that urged against Dean Stanley. Tait, as Arch- bishop of Canterbury, was at once approached in a. memorial put forward by the President of the English Church Union (the present Lord Halifax), who depre- cated as "a dishonour to our Lord and Saviour" the concession of "the sacred privilege of Church Com- munion to persons who deny the Church's characteristic doctrines." To this memorial Archbishop Tait sent as soothing a reply as he could, but at the same time he made it clear that, in his opinion, it would not have been right to repel, "as you seem to desire, any individual who is willing so to join, and who had been thought fit to take part in the great religious work of revising the present version of the Holy Scriptures."
Later on Canon Carter transmitted to the Archbishop a memorial in protest signed by fifteen hundred and twenty- nine clergymen of the Church of England. This memorial quoted and laid special stress on the rubric at the end of the Confirmation Service in regard to unconfirmed persons, and thus raised the exact issue which we have been debating. In his carefully reasoned reply, Archbishop Tait lays down, to begin with, "the responsibility as to attendance on the individual conscience of those who join in the Holy Communion." He then expresses his agreement with the Ritual Commissioners, "who in their recent Report have appended to the directions respecting the Administration of the Lord's Supper the following note : 'The foregoing directions are not to be held to authorize the refusal of the Holy Communion to those who humbly and devoutly desire to partake thereof.'" We may remind our readers that the Ritual Commissioners included the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Archbishop of Armagh, the Bishops of London, Winchester, Gloucester, Bristol, Chester, St. David's, and Carlisle, and a large number of leading Churchmen among the laity.
Archbishop Tait in his letter to Canon Carter then goes on to ask whether "error of religious opinion" is to be a disqualification, and to deal with the hypothetical case of an avowed infidel being admitted, even if it was known to the officiating minister that he came only to scoff. "I answer, that in any case where a minister is in doubt the Church points to the propriety of his consulting his Bishop, and if the case is such as to require him to act at once, he must forthwith inform his Bishop, with whom, and not with the officiating minister, the ultimate responsi- bility of deciding the case must rest." The Archbishop dwells upon the fact that he is not insensible to the honest anxiety of those who have memorialized him. He believes, however, that "they have no ground for alarm lest the solemnity of the Church's ordinances should be lowered." :— "But some of the memorialists are indignant at the admission of any Dissenters, however orthodox, to the Holy Communion in our Church. I confess that I have no sympathy with such objec- tions. I consider that the interpretation which these memorialists put upon the rubric to which they appeal, at the end of the Corn- munion Service, is quite untenable. As at present advised, I believe this rubric to apply solely to our own people, and not to those members of foreign or dissenting bodies who occasionally conform. All who have studied the history of our Church, and especially of the reign of Queen Anne, when this question was earnestly debated, must know how it has been contended that the Church of England places no bar against occasional conformity. While I hail any approaches that are made to us by the ancient Churches of the East and by the great Lutheran and Reformed Churches of the Continent of Europe, and while I lament that Roman Catholics by the fault of their leaders are becoming further removed from us at a time when all the rest of Christendom is
drawing closer together, I rejoice very heartily that so many of our countrymen at home, usually separated from us, have been able devoutly to join with us in this holy rite, at the inauguration of the solemn work they have in hand. I hope that we may see in this Holy Communion an omen of a time not far distant, when our unhappy divisions may disappear, and, as we serve one Saviour, and profess to believe in one Gospel, we may all unite more closely in the discharge of the great duties which our Lord has laid on us of preparing the word for His second coming."
For the present we must be content to leave the matter as Archbishop Tait left it. His words certainly show that we have high authority for our declaration, which we make once more—namely, that no clergyman need feel that he is doing a wrongful act as regards the law of the land or the law of the Church if he acts in the spirit in which Archbishop Tait upheld the action of Dean Stanley.
As we have said above, we mean later to deal with the point whether a clergyman is not in fact guilty of an illegal act when he repels a Nonconformist parishioner who is unconfirmed, provided, of course, the parishioner does not come under the only absolute prohibition in the rubric—i.e., is an open and notorious evil liver. No doubt many of our readers will desire to write to us on the various points at issue, but we would ask them to withhold con- troversy till we return to the question in its widest and fullest aspect—till our whole contention as to the legal position is before them.
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