Untitled - Electric Scotland

400 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP TAIT [CH. xv.
Lindsay as its President. On February 7th, 1863, the
first number of the Church Times appeared, and by the
time the Church Association, in November 1865, rallied
the militant forces upon the other side, the number of
London churches was considerable in which an elaborate
and significant ritual was coming into use, as distinguished
from what was, comparatively speaking, the mere
aestheticism of *
restored churches, choral services, sur-
pliced choirs, and other orderly and reverent arrange
ments. 1
Considering the objections which have in recent years
been felt by moderate men of every school to litigation
upon these ritual matters, it is curious to notice how
general at that time was the opinion of High Churchmen
that the questions in dispute might be, and indeed ought
to be, set at rest by obtaining fresh decisions in the
Courts of Law. It would be easy to multiply examples
of this advice being given. The Rev. C. W. Furse, for
example, then Vicar of Staines and Rural Dean, a pro
minent and trusted High Churchman, wrote as follows
in a published letter on February 5, 1866 :-
"There is only one efficient mode of settling the vexed
question at issue between the extreme Ritualists and the Mode
rates of the Church of England, and that is the course which was
taken in the case of stone altars, crosses on chancel screens, etc.
Until the legal question be decided, it is utterly
futile to ask
Bishops to take steps to suppress, by moral persuasion, such and
such practices. We may as well provoke them to preach to the
wind. . . . The silence of the la-v, if continued, may provoke
priests to claim licence instead of liberty, and Bishops to mistake
irritable impatience for a firm administration of the Church s
law." 2
1 On the aesthetic rather than doctrinal character of these changes, see an
important letter written by Bishop \Vilberforce to Archbishop Longley on
Dec. 16, 1865 ( Wilberforce 1
s Life, vol. iii. p. 188). See also the speech of
Lord Nelson in the House of Lords on May 14, 1867 (Hansard, p. 506).
2 Guardian, Feb. 7, 1866, p. 123.