The Express.
London, England, 1858-10-09 00:00:00

LONDON, SATURDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 9, 1858.

LITEIL4TbRIL

Langton Parsonage : A Tale for Children on the
practical Use of a Part of M. Church Catechism.
By the Author of " Amy Herbert." Loadca :
Longman.

The Church Catechism is regarded as an autho-
rised exponent of theological teaching by a large
and influential section of the religious public. Ad-
mitting its merits, we must yet submit that the idea
of illustrating it in novels is a bold one.
Of the literary merits of Lanett)* Parsonage there
can be no doubt. A style singularly free and beau-
tiful—a deep vein of religions feeling—a wonderful
discrimination of character—place Mims Sewell
very high amongst our modern writers of prose fic-
tion. eton Parsonage is the residence of
Mr. Clifford, an exemplary clergyman, his
excellent wife, and his two little daughters
Ruth and Madeline. Close by is the Manor-
hones, where resides Lady Catherine Hyde, with
Alice Lennox, the daughter of a dear deceased
friend, whom she has adopted as her own. Alice
deceives Lady Hyde, and she is sent to school with
the Misses Clifford, at a Mrs. Carter's, somewhere in
the neighbourhood of London. Their school life and
the eliarsetam of their companions and their peculiar
temptations are vary powerfully described. On
their return home Confirmation awaits them, but
Mr. Clifford is exceedingly vexed with ilie state of
Alice, whom he considers very unfit for that mo-
mentous rite. A serious accident at a pia-nic,
to which she went with Ruth Clifford to meet some
old school acquaintances, produces a dangerous ill-
ness, which effects a very beneficial change in her
character, and when she recovers she and Ruth and
Madeline are confirmed together. Here the story
terminates. Slight as are the materials, the author,
with her own peculiar art, makes them interesting to
the very last. We admire the skill, yet is there net
reason to regret the ism to which that skill is
applied, and the popularity to which it has attained?
Let not our readers be alarmed • the author of "Amy
Herbert " is not the Pope of Rome, or even a Jesuit
in disguise. We do not suppose there Is anything
in Laneton Parsonage to which a churchman could
take explicitobjection,and yet the general impression
left upon the mind is undesirable, and is besides his-
torioally false. These are not the days for the re-
vival of High Church claims, claims as much now as
ever opposed to the temporal and spiritual liberties
of the English people yet the tendency of Lanett:*
Parsonage is in thatdirection. We are constantly
directed to what the Church says, what the Church
directs—not what the Bible says, or God commands.
We get the mere human organisation put in the
place of the Divine word. When we forget that re-
ligion is a personal matter, that it is an affair be-
tween man and his Maker alone, priestcraft steps
in, and in its mildest form priestcraft is a heinous
wrong. It is because there are indications of thiakind,
that we should object to seeing Langton Parsonage in
the hands of young people. For instance, Madeline
asks, "Did a bishop make you a clergyman,
paps ?" Mr. Clifford says, " Yes ; no one else
wall de it. Our Saviour does not allow any persons
to teach and administer the h,,,,ziedseorament except
such as have been what is ordained by a
bishop." In what chapter in the New Testament is
this doctrine enunciated ? Why give a child a test
like this, which excludes all the piety and
talent of Dissent, and which makes such men as
Robert Hall, Jonathan Edwards, Dr. Chalmers, to
say nothing of living preachers, unauthorised in-
truders in the work of the ministry ? George 11.
said all his bishops were infidels. Let us hope that
this is an exaggeration ' • but at any rate it must be
admitted that, tried by modern idea', they we
nanything but holy and devout. Are we to be told
that in them there was a special virtue by means of
which their laying on of hands made an illiterate
reprobate a faithful minister of Jesus Christ ? Is
not such a doctrine as this better fitted for the dark
ages than oars P Again are we told, " A church,
when consecrated, is not a place for the care-
less discussion of the beauties of architecture"—that
is, we are to worship the wood and the stone, and to
believe that a ceremony can make a place sacred.
What says the poet ?
To iscantations dost thou trust,
And pompous rites In domes ansrust
See otnul&riag stones and metars rust
Belie the vaunt
That men can blase cue pile of dust
With chime or chsunt.
Places are consecrated by realities, not by forms.
Is not the gaol where John Baty= wrote, are
not the plain tabernacles in which Whitfield and
Wesley preached, as much consecrated as any eccle-
siastical edifice in the land ? Bat we have no wish
to weary our readers ; let us only add, that all
through the book there is a tendency to exalt the
minister, and the human articles and ordinances,
and to put them before or in the place of the
divine.. For instance, Mr. Clifford speaks of what
is called the " Apetles' Creed " as if it were
inspired. When Ruth wishes to feel penitent he
aunt tell her her need of penitence or the scrip-
tural injunctions in its favour, but reminds her of
the Collect for Ash-Wednesday ; and when we are
told the Holy Communion will not save us, we are
told it as if the exception were an extreme case, and
as if the rule were that man depends for reformation
and salvation upon outward acts. Miss Sewell, we
fear, would be very hard upon " Habitans in Siam "
who writes to say that he could not hear the arch-
bishop when he went to hear him preach; and Mr.
1 Trollops, who always makes fun of deans and
' church dignitaries, will, probably, find little favour
at her hands. "It may seem unnecessary," says
Mr. Clifford, explaining the duties of • Christian to
Alice previous to her confirmation, " to tell you to
honour the Queen ; yet I am afraid you would think '
it no harm to repeat idle, disrespectful stories about
her, if they. happened to be amusing, although
this would certainly be a fault; and the same may be
said even more strongly with regard to those who
I have spiritual power—bishops, clergymen in general.
It I. a very serious evil when persons indulge in
iree-
verence of this kind." Surely this is very feeble
trash: honour, nay, reverence, is the due of worth, I
ridicule is the mewl of folly, whether in or out of
canonicals. Miss Sewell need not lay stress on this
subject. In England, at least, a clergyman always
gets his fair share of respect, and generally a good
deal more. But this is not all. As Mr. Clifford
proceeds, we are told : " Alioe remembered a certain
practice which she had lately allowed herself of
studying the newspaper when Lad, Catherine wee
not in the room, without any regard to the subjects
mentioned in it. She had done so from mere idle
cariosity; but Mr. Clifford's warning was not heard
without a pang of pelf-reproach." Now, as Lady
Catherine Hyde was a remarkably strict personage--
as we can imagine that into her boudoir only the
tamest and most inoffensive newspapers found their
way—we fear according to the doctrine taught by the
author of "Amy Herbert," the immense majority
of newspaper readers, specially of course such as
read the Radical and Anti-State-Church papers, are
little better than heathens. We get nervous and ask
what chance have we writers if the mere readers
are in such a bad way. Is there no hope for as P
Miss Sewell cannot be surprised if we stand by wig
order and maintain that if it were not for the news-
paper recording facts, enunciating principles, dis-
cussing subjects in which all are interested, stimu-
lating progress, with some rare exceptions a thick
darkness would rest upon the land. The develop-
ment of humanity, which the press aids, and may
be almost said in these days to initiate, can never
be at variance with true religion ; and to teach the
young that it is, is to help to herbaria' the country,
or at any rats to pave the way for plosive obedience
I ia Church and State. A pleasant doctrine this for the
tits m% hat not very beneficial to the ruled. Whti
isms set member that in the excitement of the
minted while mania Reform, a similar cry was
raised, aid bewailed the spread of in-
fidelity and &mat, as if there were
any connexion balwaaa the two, sad as it a maw

who lives religiously, has not a battle to fight
with the *scalar ills by which humanity
is degraded and undone. Now, it is this
namby-pamby view of life against which
we would earnestly protest. Of course, with
men the thing is impracticable. Immediately the boy
Pats away childish things, immediately he assumes
the toga, all such ideas at once vanish, sad the
danger is that with this vanish, being part and
parcel of the same superstructure, all the real and
the true, which form the foundation and substance
of each tales as Lawton Parsonage. Mile
Sewell, perhaps, writes for ladies. It is a question
how far this aspirate education of the sexes is de-
sirable. Is woman so weak that she may not be
trusted with principles—that she may not think and
act for herself— that she must rely upon authority
and form Miss Sewell herself is an instance to the
contrary. Be this as it may, we cannot bat regret
that her teaching is not mars catholio—that she
seems to see no goodness except in the narrow en-
closure of the section of the Church to which she
belongs, and that she insinuates
,principles which,
if fairly carried out, would establish claims which,
in her brightest days, England boldly laughed to
scorn and trampled under foot.