The Liverpool Standard, and General Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1854-07-11 00:00:00

ROCK FERRY

TO THE EDITOR OF THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD

513,—1 shall feel obligee

' by your allowing me to ask,

througi

e medium of your paper, whether there are no
means of putting an end to the disorderly scenes taking
place on the Sunday, at Rock Ferry, in consequence of the
exhibitions of one sort or the other being got up in that
locality.—Yours, AN INHABITANT.
July 10, 1854.

♦
SAINT PAUL'S CHURCH,! PRINCES-PARK.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD

Sts,—The district connected—hitherto by courtesy—
with my church, has been erected into a consolidated
chapelry, or district parish, by an order of the Queen in
Council, which appeared in the London Gazette of the
13th of June.

The law in such cases requires that, during the process,
there should be a temporary suspension of the license for
the celebration of marriages in the district church. This
took place, and was advertised accordingly.
The law requires, also, that within two months after the
formation of the district parish, churchwardens should be
appointed at a meeting of the parishioners, convened
as the incumbent may direct. _ _

In compliance with this, a meeting, convened by public
held in the church on Wednesday last, the sth
that meeting, James Robertson, Esq., was
the incumbent, as one of the churchwardens
rrent year.

notice, was
At

instant

seconded by Mr. Evans

It was moved by Mr. Green,
and carried unanimously,
"That Robert Crosbie, Esq., be elected as the seeond
churchwarden." _ _ _ _ _

v It vas
moved by Mr. Robertson, seconded by Captain
M'Leod, and carried manimously,
"That the cordial thanks of this meeting be given to
John Grantham and Arthur Steains, Esqrs., who have
hitherto acted as churchwardens for this church ; and
that this meeting desire to record their sense of the
kinviness, urbanity, and efficiency with which those
gentlemen have conducted the affairs of the church, and
the correspondence both on the subject of the formation
of the chapelry, and with reference to the new schools."
On the subject of the suspension of our license, there
has been a display, in divers= quarters, of ignorance and
ill-nature: It is hoped that the facts of the ease will
The parties concerned can easily

remove tfie ignorant
pardon the ill-nature_
By inserting this statement is your journal, yen will
oblige, Sir,-your obedient servant

HUGH M'NEI2X,

St. Paul's-

Church Vestry

, Bth Jam, 1854

WEEKLY COMMrNION

TO THE EDITOR OF THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD

Srn,—l perceive that "A Churchman of Liverpool"
returns to the attack upon the subject of weekly Com-
munion in your impression of last week; I shall confine
my observations to' those parts of his letter which concern
myself, premising that, when I replied to his first letter, I
did so from recollection, not having a copy of your paper
at hand. In consequence of this, I misquoted his signa-
ture, and I may possibly have omitted to notice some of
the rubrics to which he referred; but, assuredly, I noticed
all of any consequences regards the point in. dispute, and
succeeded in showing, as. I conceive, that the. celebration
of the Eucharist is intended to take place at least on every
Sunday and holyday; nor has "The Churchman?' attempted
a reply to my reasoning. He now conform& the two
distinct questions of celebration and reception: " These
gentlemen," he says, "declare it to be the Church's rule
that her members shall communicate at the least fifty-two
times in the year." When he wrote this sentence he was
guilty either of disingenuousness or most inexcusable
carelessness. Nothing ofthe kind was declared, nor yet
implied. We maintain that every Sunday and holyday the
priest should be prePared.: to celebrate, and that he is
bound to do so whenever three are prepared to commu-
nicate with him. The fourth rubric of those which are
post-fixed to the Service says nothing about celebration,
and yet " The Churchman' refers to it as if it constituted
an exception in this point as. regards cathedral and colle-
giate churches and colleges. It says that in such places

"where there are many priests. and deacons, they. (i.e., as
I pointed out before, the clergy) shall all receive with the
priest every Sunday at the least." If, in deffonee of
grammar, he insists that the word " they" does not. refer
to the priests and deacons exclusively, he must thenaccept
the startling conclusion that the English Church requires
the whole congregation to communicate every Sunday in
cathedral and collegiate churches, but not in others.
However, as I have already said, he has confounded:cele-
bration with reception, and of the former the rubric in
question says nothing ; and this is a sufficient reply to all
that he attempts to build upon or infer from it.
The remainder of " The Churchman's" letter I, may
leave to Mr. Wray to answer, if he think it worth his
while to do so. I would only, in conclusion, ask one
question. Admitting, for the sake of argument, " The
Churchman's" very gratuitous assumption, that- daily
prayer was only intended for a people who were unable to
read. Are there none now who are unable? Are there not
thousands who have never been taught ? Are there not
thousands of those who have been taught, who have by
disuse lost the facility which they once possessed ? How-
ever, as this is very low ground, which I have no wish to
occupy, I say no more. I merely throw out the-hint for
"The Churchman's" use; and I would venture to suggest
to him, if he determine to write again, the propriety of
not confounding the question at issue with another from
which it is entirely distinct. His last letter I can only
regard as a sort of cuttle-fish attempt to escape-from the
contest under cover of a confusion of his own. creating.—

I am, Sir, &c.,
Liverpool, July 6, 1.854.

K. MACKBNZIE FUGUE,

DAILY PRAYER, AND WEEKLY COM-

MITNION."

TO THE EDITOR OF THE LIVERPOOL. STANDARD.
Sia,—Like many others, I felt somewhat indignant that
such barefaced assertions should have been advanced in
your columns as those which were of late set forth on the
above subject by a so-styled " Churchman of Liverpool."
It has been already sufficiently shown, on all sides how
fond and presumptuous are those bold appeals of his to the
Prayer Book. When, however, he vaunts that "Scrip-
tural authority for weekly Communion cannot be pro-
duced," one cannot help wondering how that passage in
the Acts (xx. 7), which bears directly on the question,
could ever have been omitted in, reply. The Rev. Cecil
Wray, after justly remarking that "in the Bible we shall
find the witsess and confirmation of all truth," enters at
once into the history of the early Church, and proves to
the conviction of any impartial inquirer, that the one
great object for which Christians then assembled, either
weekly or daily, was " the breaking of bread"—the
oblation of that "Liturgy" (or services), which alone
" shows forth" in action "the death of the Lord Jesus
until He come"—which is the " communication of His
body," and the "communication of His blood," and the
means whereby we, " being many members, are one bread
and one body in Him, for we are all partakers of that one
bread"—(l Cor. x. 16, 17). Why, then, did not Mr. Wray
" witness to and confirm" this great historical truth, by
quoting from the Bible the text alluded to above. (Acts
az. 7)—" Upon the first day of the week, when the dis-
ciples were gathered together to break bread, Paul
preached to them." Surely this statement settles the
matter. If any loving, child-like Christian would follow
out even a hint that was given to him of his Father's will,
how much more would any such be anxious to keep so
solemn a custom as that which is thus positively handed
down by inspiration. Would not the great apostle and
father of us Gentiles, who begat us into the Gospel, say
with truth in this respect, if he were yet present with us
in the flesh, " I marvel that ye are so soon (and so far ?)
removed from Him that called you into the grace of
Christ ?" Now-a-days, whilst in some of our pew-penned
churches, people act as if one text ran, " 0 come let us
worship and sit down and 101 l before the Lord our Maker ;"
so perhaps this might be more elaborately adapted to
accord with facts (and the travestie is in THEIR actions
rather than in my words), that " when the disciples came
together to hear the doctor preach, it happened that,
being the first Sunday in the month, a few of the aged,
more leisurely or scrupulous, tarried to break bread !"
But even here a Protestant foot-note would perhaps be
required to make matters plainer ; and a lengthy caution
should be appended to remind the reader that tins after-
ceremony was a mere putting of ourselves in mind of the
crucifixion—that there is no mystery, no extraordinary
grace attached to it—(a grave heresy, by-the-bye, of those
quiet argumentative Prayer-Book Churchmen !)—and that,
though a " very good thing in its way," yet that the
greatest apprehension must ever be entertained by
thorough-going Protestants, lest its frequency create
superstition (convenient word !)—than which total neglect
or incredulity is, in their eyes, far, far preferable.
Yes, Sir ! whatever the ultra-Protestant theory
may be, this is the practical result, when, in direct con-
tradiction of the Bible, which is one means of grace, those
other means—viz., the Church, the Sacraments, and the
Priesthood (which have a like Divine institution)—are
either wantonly ignored or ignorantly denied ; the result,
I repeat, must be either faithlessness or incredulity, or
else a culpable apathy in working out our salvation
according to these means, which have been vouchsafed to
us by Christ,—either of which is a thousandfold more
soul-destructive than all the cumbersome formalities of
the heretical Papacy. I wish, then, to be informed of
what earthly or what heavenly use this eternal clamour
about," preaching" and "sermons" can possibly be, if they
fail to lead the hearers to daily private and (if possible)
to daily public prayers also, to frequent Communions, and
to the " knowledge by the Church of the manifold wisdom
of God ?"
If I may still further trespass on your space, to criticise
a critic, I would make note of an error committed in Mr.
Wray's letter, as well as of an omission supplied. He
quotes the text, " The foolishness of preaching,' in a sense
which one would naturally expect to hear delivered by a
dissenting minister, who knows neither Greek tenses nor
Greek terminations, but which one would hardly have
suspected to have been used by him. The misquotation,
however, of the passage is not only common, but by no
means a novelty ; it was so urged by Travers, and the
misinterpretation exposed by the judicious Hooker (a. v.,
ch. xxii.), more than two centuries and a half ago. The
fact is, that the text has nothing whatever to do with
sermons, as such ; it does not in any way allude to the
act of preaching (which would be another word with a
different termination), but to the subject-matter of the
preaching, viz., to the Gospel and to the doctrine of the
cross. The thing, then, thus preached is the love of "God
in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself;" the experi-
ence of which to the soul abounds ten thousandfold more
—as I think—from the participation of the Lord's Supper,
rightly and duly administered, than from any such purple-
patched, stilted, and enthusimtic diewei al may mite