Untitled - Electric Scotland

530 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP TAIT [CH. xvm.
"
I am sorry to say there are in various parts of England
chapels erected under the name of Free Churches, and registered
as dissenting meeting-houses. They have generally sprung from
certain persons being dissatisfied with the teaching of the
Parochial clergy, and adhering so slightly to the law and order of
the Church of England, that they prefer to separate themselves
from its duly constituted authority rather than worship in their
own parish church, of which they dislike the teaching, or take
the trouble of going, as they usually might do, to some other
neighbouring church, the ritual and teaching of which may be
more consonant with their feelings and convictions. That in a
national church so tolerant as the Church of England is of
diversities of sentiment and teaching in non-essentials, and which,
at the same time, rightly concedes so much individual liberty to
all its members, this state of things should have grown up, is more
to be deplored than wondered at. It requires great discretion in
the clergy, and a very tender care for the feelings of those of their
people who differ from themselves, to check that sort of undisci
plined zeal which often makes good and pious men overlook the
evil consequences likely to flow from the rupture caused in the
parish by the erection of such an irregular place of worship as you
complain of. How far it would have been possible for you by
I have not the
greater tact to avert the rupture which has ensued,
means of deciding, but I know that, looking to the contrast and
the not unnatural collision between your own deep convictions
and the equally deep convictions of some of your parishioners,
you have had a very difficult task, and I am bound to say that
you have made various efforts to conciliate those who differ from
you. . . . The result all
[of
that has passed] has been the erection
of the dissenting chapel in question. I call it a dissenting chapel
because the only way in which it can be legally protected is by its
being registered as a dissenting chapel, and I presume it has been
so registered. My advice to other clergymen who have applied
to me under similar circumstances has usually been not to
trouble themselves as to such chapels. The quiet performance
of their own duty is far more likely to win their people from such
irregularities than any direct interference. ... It is only
in very exceptional cases that I think it is wise to invoke the
law in order to prevent members of the Church of England from
being deceived by mistaking dissenting ministers and their worship
for the clergy and worship of the Church of England ; and even