The Sun.
London, England, 1859-01-07 00:00:00

With all our love of liberty there is in us a
wonderful amount of submissiveness to authority,
especially to ecclesiastical authority. It is perfectly
marvellous to see how congregations of good Church-
men will put up with almost anything from a
clergyman or a bishop. " One likes to be well
cursed by one's own officer," was the remark of a
genuine British soldier; and " one likes to be well
set down by one's own parson or bishop," would
express tolerably well the sentiments of thousands
of worthy farmers, shopkeepers, and even merchants,
doctors, and lawyers, who worship in our parish
churches. As to our church-goers of the:fairer sex,
they of course Can but be worshippers-of the cloth.
They are so all the world over ; they seem born to
" honour and obey," if not to " love " the ecclesias-
tical "powers that be." A lady that would beard
the clergyman ! were she not already a matron,
who would venture to take her to wife ? There
are, to be sure, thousands of congregations of Dis-
senters in the land, but they are revolters en masse
against the great spiritual corporation of the king-
dom. And as there is " honour amongst thieves,"
so, and " we mean no offence," there is submission
amongst schismatics. They hearken by thousands
very obediently to the voice of their unauthorised
shepherds, though, as no acts of Parliament or'
courts of law compel them to retain and provide a
living for a misbehaving minister, if he persist in
annoying the better part of his flock, he finds that
he must seek another elsewhere, to which his doc-
trines or doings are acceptable. We have sometimes
wondered that amongst a people so attached to chos-
ing their own parish officers and their own poli-
tical representatives, so little desire should be
shown to choose their own religious officers. But
so it is. The persons who would resent being
deemed incompetent to elect their own temporal
legislators, and their municipal parish administra-
tors, never think of objecting to the absolutism of
Bishops, Patrons, Archdeacons, Rural Deans,
Rectors, Vicars, and Curates too, in matters of re-
ligion. We do not know that this subserviency
to the imposition of spiritual - instructors on con-
gregations is any necessary part of the Establish-
ment as a religious system ; we have not enough
theology in us to settle that question. If it be not
so, our ecclesiastical habits are certainly strangely
in contrast to our municipal and political habits.
These thoughts occurred to us just now in con-
nection with a rather singular affair in which the
parishioners of Sherborne, their Vicar, and the
Right Rev. Father in GOD, WALTER KERR
HAMILTON, D.D., Bishop of Salisbury, figure as
principals. The parishioners do not like " flowers
on the Communion Table," " Candlesticks on d 0.,"
Ecclesiastical processions," " Intoning the service
ordinarily," " the Choral Service on Sundays and
Christmas Days," " tutning to the East at unusual
times," and " preeedenee given in the administra-
tion of the Communion to members of the Choir in
their surplices." The Rev. E. HARSTON thinks
these things very pretty and that they ought to
like them. But de gustibus, &c., and it appears to
be of no more use attempting to alter orargue against
religious tastes than against those of a less ethereal
kind. The parishioners cannot acquire tractarian
aesthetics, and the Rev. E. HARSTON cannot impart
them. Nor will the unperceiving parishioners take
the word, as sufficient, of his reverence the vicar.
If Mr. RUSKIN tells a country gentleman that a
picture is just what it should be, Sir ROBERT
draws the cheque of three figures, perhaps of four,
without reluctance. He confides in the eyes of the
connoisseur. No so the country tradesfolk of
Sherborne. They have the audacity to think that
their ceremonial taste is as good as or better than
that of their vicar.
Now in all this let_the good Churchmen of Sher-
borne know that, whether for good or for evil, they
are renouncing that glory of good Churchmen,
passive obedience. Sherborne is setting an un•
Anglican example. If this spirit should spread it
will end in each parish choosing its own parson,
and in each parish sending him in search of
another if he did not preach and pray to the satis-
faction of the parish ! This is surely a grave
subversion of all the ecclesiastical order of our
Church since the time of its foundation by
HENRY VIII. Only think of any parish thus
misbehaving in his time, or in that of his virgin
daughter ! Its heads would have atoned for their
effrontery in a gaol, and have ended their days in
beggary, if not in person or at the stake.

Happily we live in milder times. The parish
appeals to its diocesan, and the good man endea-
vours to throw oil on the troubled waters. He
answers them that there is no "immediate connection
between these practices and obedience to the Bishop
of Rome." Which, logically interpreted, would
imply that there was a mediate connection, an
opinion in which the Sherbornians no doubt par-
ticipate. But he warns them against suggesting,
by their complaints, that the difference between
Popery and our Establishment is not doctrinal and
ecclesiastical, merely but ceremonial sentimentality.
He sympathises with the parishioners' aversion to
change, with their love of legality, with their dread
of unreality in the worship of GOD. And, we sup-
pose, by way of exemplifying these principles, he
forbids the bouquets, pretty as he thinks them,
because the people misunderstand them. About
candlesticks he gives no orders, herein differing
from our late Metropolitan,, who allowed the sticks
and candles too, only they were not to be lighted.
Processions he has a pretty little martinet rule for
—consecrate a church, and all the clergy are to be
surpliced ; reopen it, and the active performers are
to be in white, all the rest in black ! The white
dove the model for one occasion, the magpie for the
other. " Intoning"—what shall he say to that—
the 14th Canon enjoins "reverence and distinct.
ness," and doubtless a voice high pitched, to fill the
spacious church, was mistaken for intonation. As
to the choral performance, the Episcopal father
thinks it "tells' out most distinctly the praise and
honour due to GOD ; "—still "milk for babes," and
the untrained ears and voices of SHERBORNE can
" most easily join in a metrical hymn."
Excellent advice all this, we doubt not. Well
worth keeping a Bishop forat Sarum, salary £5,000
per annum, and fifty-three livings to give to rela-

I KNIGHT—a name by us ever to be honoured—his
lordship inaugurated a series of publications which
were the first seeds of what have since become
so fruitful of good and have so wondrously multi-
plied—our el leap periodicals. The Penny Magazine,
the Penny Cyclopeedia, the Treatises and Maps
issued by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge, have done more for the education of
the people than all the grants of public money ever
yet directed to that end by the hesitating munifi-
cence of Parliament. How abundantly, then, are
we not indebted, one and all of us, to this great
national Benefactor. Honour to his great name,
now in his green old age, when, though he
is a veteran of more than eighty winters, his
genius shines as bright, as ever in the vivacity of
his youth and the vigour of his manhood. After
so noble and laborious a career, it is fitting there
should be some such conspicuous evidence of
national gratitude and Popular admiration as that
to be evidenced towards HENRY, Lord BROUGHAM,
through the banquet preparing for him in his
native city of Edinburgh.