Untitled - Electric Scotland

256 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP TAIT [CH. XL
London. It was arranged that services should be held on
Sunday evenings in Exeter Hall, and some of the fore
most evangelical clergymen in England consented to give
the addresses, which were intended mainly for those
unaccustomed to church-going. 1
Bishop Tait gave his
sanction to the scheme, and was himself present at one of
the services. The hall was crowded every Sunday evening,
but a vigorous outcry soon arose in the Church news
papers and elsewhere. It was stated that the audience
consisted largely of worshippers drawn from church and
chapel, and the incumbent of the parish in which Exeter
Hall stands, the Rev. A. G. Edouart, was induced in
November 1857 to assert his legal right, and to issue a
formal veto against the continuance of these ministrations.
He wrote fully to the Bishop explaining his reasons.
"
I am setting my face," he said,
"
against a proceeding
altogether irregular, which, if permitted, would prove thoroughly
subversive of all discipline and order in the Church, and would
tend beyond all conception to destroy that form of sound words
so essential to the purity and power of our branch of Christ s
Church."
By the Bishop s advice the services were thereupon
discontinued for a time, but Lord Shaftesbury immedi
ately introduced a Bill into the House of Lords to deprive
an incumbent of any such right of veto. Bishop Wilber-
force protested successfully against what he called the
indecent haste with which Lord Shaftesbury tried to
force his Bill through Parliament. More than one debate
took place, and, in the end, Lord Shaftesbury, much
against his will, found himself compelled to withdraw his
measure in favour of an alternative Bill of a less stringent
character introduced by the Archbishop of Canterbury
1 The first list of preachers included Bishop Villiers, Bishop Bickersteth,
Dean Close, and Dr. M Neile.