Untitled - Electric Scotland

2 4o LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP TAIT [CH. x.
of any additional Divine Service beyond the ordinary morning
service, the afternoon (lecture) service, and the evening service,
I have no power to prevent such additional use of the Church,
and certainly I should not employ such power if I had it. In a
parish so vast as that of St. George s in the East, the more services
there are the better, and the incumbent has a legal right to use
his Church as often in the day as possible, and I highly approve
of his multiplying the opportunities of public worship.
"
Again, if your objection is to this additional service being
choral, the law allows the incumbent to have a choral rather than
a read service if he pleases ; and though I may highly disapprove,
as I do, of forcing a choral service on an unwilling parish, I can
only remonstrate. I have, by law, no power of forbidding, or, if
I forbid, of enforcing obedience to my mandate.
"
Again, if your objection be to this additional service being
the Litany and not a third regular evening service, I must point
out to you that there is a very commonly expressed desire, to
which utterance has been given in Parliament and elsewhere, to
have the ordinary morning service of the Church of England
shortened, and I have myself, in my place in Parliament, stated
that an obvious way of legally attaining this object is by separat
ing, as the law allows, the Litany from the ordinary morning
service. It is an open question whether the clergyman has not
the power of effecting such a separation in strict accordance
with the rubric, even without any sanction from his Bishop. If
from my common authority as Ordinary, I have legal power to
forbid this practice, I should be very unwilling to do so, unless I
was satisfied in this instance, that it was the fact of this service
being the Litany, rather than an additional repetition
of the
common evening service, that is the cause of the exasperation
that you allege.
"
But the chief real objection to this 4 o clock service, I
presume, arises from its being supposed
to interfere with the
(lecture) afternoon service. I have already stated to you, how,
as I apprehend, the case stands regarding any legal power to
regulate the hour of that lecture service. I can only point out
to you, further, that I fear the parish would scarcely be satisfied,
if the Rector so far gave way as to incorporate Mr. Allen s lecture
into an afternoon choral service of his own, conducted accord
ing to the model of his own usual services. And if he so far
gave way as to admit the lecturer to his pulpit at his usual after-