The Sun.
London, England, 1866-03-19 00:00:00

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LITERATURE.

Beyond the Church. Three Vols.

Blackett.

••• 110

Hurst and

This is the work of an earnest, thoughtful mind,
and very forcibly are the opinions of the author
illustrated by the narrative. With the result of
his opinions we cannot say that we ourselves con-
cur, nor probably will the majority of his readers;
but the book is well written, and contains little to
offend the taste or feeling of the reader. The scene
opens at Oxford, where, among other gownsmen, we
make the acquaintance of Cyril Ponsonby, John
Fordyce, and Edgar Purcell. John Fordyce is the
principal hero of the tale. Startled by a sudden
calamity to a sense of the sin and folly of the " fast"
life that he is leading, John Fordyce ponders
deeply upon life and religion. He is destined for
the Church, but as the time for his ordination
draws near he feels that he cannot conscientiously
become an English Minister. He does not turn
Catholic or Dissenter, but, while attending the or-
dinary public worship, believes in his heart in a
religion " beyond the Church."
" Where and how may I learn the truth ? How know
what the Church of England holds, and whether she hold
that aright ? Is there no certainty, no assurance ? Is all
to be vague and shadowy and unsettled? Does any party
represent and embrace the Church ? Can I learn the whole
truth from any one section, be its pretences what they may?
Must I not go deeper and farther for the final great truth,
underlying and pervading in various degrees all these iso-
lated expressions of it. There must be a Church, and
that Churcli must be universal ; can any National Church
then express and contain that great body of truth en-
shrined in the whole ? How is it that scarcely two of
the clergy agree upon all these vital points ? How is it
that they argue differently—come to opposite conclusions
—and each maintain so stoutly the absolute truth of their
own conclusions ?"

John's refusal to enter the Church and accept the
hereditary living in store for him arouses the fierce
ire and indignation of his father, the reverend rec-
tor of Easimore-cum-Singabed, in the Fens. " The
comfortable rectory, spacious conservatory, pinery,
melon-pits, and fruitful gardens, the envy of the
country," with an income of eleven hundred per
annum is rejected by John, and his father disowns
him on the spot. Heavy trials await the conscien-
tious thinker, and he finds that the same society
that thought little of his sinful deeds, while he
was indulging in his wild career, look with
very different eyes upon the religious scruples of
his conscience which they regard as unpardonable
iniquity. The character of John is very genuine
and earnest, but his religious opinions are assuredly
somewhat misty. If every one followed his religion,
or rather his no-religion, they wanld. be " berand.
the Church," indeed, but in the regions of spiritual
chaos.

" A kingdom of the Just then let it be,
But first consider how those Just agree."

Other types of character and various examples
of clergymen quite indifferent to the responsibilities
of their position, are introduced. The best indivi-
dual in the book is Maxwell of St. Catherine's, a
man of practical religion ; by his side alone bewil-
dered John is enabled to see clearly the
duty of the hour, and to find comparative
peace. Cyril Ponsonby, the polished, used up
gentleman, is alogether too elegant and refined
to be designated a villain, but altogether too despic-
able to be called anything else. Cyril takes life
easily. When he goes on a Welsh expedition he
thinks mountains "a mistake, and a horrible

nuisance."—
" Why on earth couldn't Nature be content to lie flat
instead of bumping up in hillocks like a school apple-pie ?
It is a waste of energy on her part ; I think a mountain
always means—to me at least—a groat deal of fatigue and
a great deal of perspiration, and all for nothing but to be
a few feet nearer the sky than SORLS other Tom fool.
Why not say you have been up there, as Sheridan ad-
vised his son about the Mine ? People tell so many lies
themselves, that they dare not find you out."
Cyril Ponsonby and John Fordyce, cousins as they
are, are throughout their whole career a perfect
contrast to each other, but we will not reveal the
various relations of the story. As an evidence of
the thoughts and feelings which pervade these
pages, let us quote this brief allusion to
THE IRREVOCABLE PAST.
There is nothing so terrible to contemplate as the irre-
vocable Past. Future evils, however near, are softened
and alleviated by hope. Present troubles bring their own
cure by enforcing action ; but for the Past there is neither
hope nor remedy. The Past with its burden of miser-
able sin, of fruitless sorrow and suffering, of
neglected opportunities and wasted hours, with its
ceaseless dirge of " too late," the saddest sound which
language frames, is lik3 an impenetrable granite rock
which no efforts can pierce, or tears melt.
" It might have been," "I once could," " If:I had," " Ob,
that I had not", whose life memory is free from these
ghastly echoes of the past ?
As giving a glimpse, a tolerably truthful glimpse,
of some phases of university and clerical life, this
book may be read with interest. It is also a sound
exposition of its writer's thoughts and feelings, as
far as they go, for we hardly think the end is
here.

The coloured population of Nashville celebrated
the anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation on the
22d ult., by a large procession, consisting of two regiments
of coloured soldiers and two thousand coloured people.
After .their parade they were addressed by Governor
Brownlow, who congratulated them upon their emancipa-
tion.

The Trustees of the Washington National Monu-
ment Society show that, after paying all liabilities against
the fund, there is a balance of nearly $12,000 invested in
good securities for the monument.

A South Carolina planter has sent North for one
hundred German immigrants to work his plantation, and
others propose to do the same.

A special despatch to the New York Times says
that the receipts of the internal revenue, from July Ist,
1865, to February Ist, 1866, reached $200,939,968. It is
estimated that under the present system the receipts for the
balance of the year will amount to $300,000,000.

There are in San Francisco, according to the di-
rectory, 119,000 inhabitants. Of these there are 376
lawyers, 58 apothecaries, and 243 physicians. There are 23
printing offices, 1,722 liquor shops, and 29 breweries.
The important controversy between the Pennsyl-
vania Railway Company and the Atlantic and Great
Western Railway Company has been decided against the
latter, the Court granting an injunction denying the right
of the Catawissa Railroad Company tt make a lease with
the Atlantic and Great Western. The decision caused an
immediate transfer of over four thousand shares of the
Catawissa stock. The course which may be adopted by
the Atlantic and Great Western to overcome this obstacle
to their proposed consolidations will be looked to with
much interest. •

Both Houses of the Missouri Legislature have
passed resolutions disapproving the President's veto
by a vote, in the House, of 77 to 25; in the Senate, 21
to 5.

The courts of Texas admit negroes to testify like
other persons. They hold that the law against this fell
with the reasons of the law. They also decide that Texas
is not a conquered country, and therefore an unconquered
State of the Union.

The Irish Church Establshment—Facts or
Fiction ?

TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN.

SlR,—The small book compiled by the Rev. A.
Lee in defence of the Irish Church Establishment,
and printed and circulated by the Church Institu-
tion, under the title of " Facts respecting the pre-
sent State of the Church in Ireland," will probably
form a kind of brief for Church advocates in Par-
liament. Part of it has appeared in the Times, in
Dr. Lee's reply to the letter of Mr. Aubrey de
Vere. As I believe that compilation contains very
erroneous views, unfit to be advertised as "Facts "
by one who, though an Englishman, writes in the
name of the Irish Clergy, I venture to offer a few
remarks upon the leading " statements" which Dr.
Lee advances :
I. The assertion that " the Established Church
is the old Catholic Church of Ireland," and that it
is " the same in doctrine, discipline, and govern-
ment as the church founded by St. Patrick," is not
believed to be true by Irishmen in general. The
greatest of modern Irishmen, Edmund Burke, did
not believe it, for he wrote, in his tracts on the
Popery Laws—" It is proper to recollect that this
religion (the Roman Catholic) which is so perse-
cuted in its members, is the old religion of the coun-
try, and the once-established religion of the State."
(Burke's works, vol. ix., p. 367). The English in-
vaders in 1172 did not introduce a new church into
Ireland, but cherished the old one which they found
there, and which, 20 years before, as is proved by
the Kells Synod, at which Cardinal Paparo assisted,
was in full communion with Rome.
11. The assertion of Dr. Lee that " The Estab-
lished Church is the rightful possessor of the tithes
of Ireland" is in one sense a truism, for the Angli-
can clergy do legally, at present, receive tithe rent-
charge ; but if it be implied that the Anglican clergy
were and are entitled to claim the tithes of
Ireland as their inalienable property, then the state-
ment is untrue ; for tithes are not to be regarded as
a benefit " to the actual holders of the endowments,"
as Archbishop Whately well remarks, but as a bene-
fit "to the community for whose sake they were
bestowed." And as " the community, for whose
sake" tithes were originally bestowed in Ireland,
was the whole Irish nation, and not any part of it,
it is not difficult to perceive the inference to which
Archbishop Whately's premises inevitably lead.
111. " The Church of England and the Church
of Ireland were," says Dr. Lee, " ecclesiastically one
before the Union." This is not a fact. The two
churches had separate Canons, and their unity, or
rather agreement, was merely, as one of those
Canons states, au agreement " in the profession of
the same Christian religion," and "in the confes-
sion of the same Christian faith and the doctrine of
the sacraments." The Scotch and American Epis-
copal churches have the same agreement, but no
ecclesiastical unity.
IV. " The temporalities of the Church in Ire-
land," so far from being, as Dr. Lee states, " placed
on the same footing as those of the Church in
England by the Act of Union," are not so much
as mentioned in that act. Lord Plunket, in refe-
rence to that article of the act which concerns
the union of the churches, asks :—" Was there
anything in that article which identified the
temporal possessions of the Church of Ire-
land with those of the Church of England ? There
was nothing of the kind. The Irish tempo-
ralities were altogether distinct from those of
the Church of England." Archbishop Whately,
also, when asked before the House of Lords in
1832--" Does not the tithe in England stand upon
a very different footing from that in Ireland ?" gave
an affirmative reply.
V. " The attack on the Church in Ireland" need
not be considered by Dr. Lee as " virtually an
attack on the Church in England also." That
attack is only made on the monopoly of temporal
endowments and the ascendancy at present enjoyed
by the Church of the minority. The existing
ecclesiastical settlement of Ireland could only
have been maintained by the armed power of
England. What did Archbishop Whately, say
about coercion regarding religion ? " Christ him-
self (wrote Richard Whatciy in 1820) has ex-
pressly renounced all secular authority and for-
bidden all coercion in the cause of His religion."
VI. "The Church in Ireland has," no twithstand ing
Mr. Lee's assertion to the contrary, very consider-
ably " lost ground since the census of 1834." The
members of the Established Church have, indeed,
obtained a relative numerical advantage to a small
extent over Roman Catholics, owing to the fact that
the severity of the famine of 1848 fell chiefly on
the poorer classes, the Roman Catholics. But the
United Church has lost ground to an enormous
extent as respects Protestant Dissenters ; for while
Anglicans have, since 1834, introduced themselves
into only five parishes wherein they had no footing
in that year, Presbyterians have introduced them-
selves into 623 new parishes, and " other Protestant
Dissenters" into 526 parishes in which they had no
residence in 1834—(Census of Ireland, 1861, p. 36.)
VII. Dr. Lee, alarmed at the incontrovertible
fact that 199 parishes in Ireland had not a single
Anglican inhabitant in 1861, labours to point out
" the difference between a benefice and a parish
in Ireland," where unions are very common. But,
admitting that there is only one parochial clergy-
man without a single parishioners of his own faith,
the significant fact remains, that these 199 parishes,
most of which, if in England, would have a rector,
and each of which (except a few which are impro-
priate) pays for one, contain 98,017 Roman Catho-
lics, being an average to each parish of 492 indivi-
duals, which is far higher than the average Anglican
population of the benefices in Ireland.
VIII. Mr. Lee expresses an opinion (perhaps
intended to do duty. as a " fact") that it is unfair
to speak of the gross population as less under the
care of the Established clergy in Ireland than in
England. It may be true that many of the Irish
clergy treat all their parishioners as under their
care, but the attitude of the flock towards the
legal shepherd differs widely in the two countries ;
for, in England, Dissenters occasionally use parish
churches, and accept the ministrations of parish
ministers, but in Ireland Roman Catholics never
do so. In fact Romanists cannot even enter an
Anglican church to join in the funeral service,
without incurring the risk of ecclesiastical censure
and punishment.
I.K. As to the " necessity of maintaining the
parochial system" in Ireland "in all its integ-
rity," Archbishop Whately was of a very dif-
ferent opinion from Mr. Lee. In his " Notes on
Tithes in Ireland," the Archbishop mentioned, a
plan (proposed by the Hon. Mr. Baring in 1835)
which would have entirely destroyed the paro-
chial system, for it recommended the vesting of
all church endowments in a Board of Commis-
sioners, who should have " the power (on the de-
mise of each incumbent) to re-distribute the re-
venues according to the wants of the congregations
in each district, instead of adhering to the mere ter-
ritorial divisions. This appeared to me (continued
his Grace) a most important improvement, consi•
dering how unequally the Protestant population o:
Ireland is distributed."

X. The " present revenues of the Church in Ire-
land" are, according to Mr. Lee, not sufficient to
remunerate the clergy for " the work they have
to do." Ile states, or rather understates, those
revenues in a somewhat uncandid manner. He
says they may be calculated " with some degree of
certainty" by aid of recent parliamentary returns,
that is, those of Captain Stacpoole and Sir F.
Hey gate. Mr. Lee then quotes the net incomes
of bishops and clergy, as if those incomes made
up the revenue of the Church. It happens, how-
ever, that the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, when
they estimated " the aggregate amount of the re-
venue of the Established Church (whether derived
from land, rent-charge, or any other source) at the
sum of £586,428 Bs. id., omitted the sums which
they themselves receive out of the see estates for
church purposes. In calculuting the gross
revenue they also wholly omitted the value of
the see houses and glebe houses, and in valuing
the glebe lands they adopted a rate of valua-
tion lower in many instances than even the
poor law valuation, which is well known to be