There is no doubt that in appointing a wealthy Priest to the charge of a benefice, either in town or country, where the inhabitants are well to do, there is a great temptation on the part of a Priest, in order to have everything in his own hands, to regard himself as responsible for Church expenses, as it saves him trouble, and prevents unpleasantness arising between him and his parishioners in money matters; but he grossly neglects his duty by such conduct, for he not only closes the pockets of the laity but leads them to imagine that it is no concern of theirs to interfere. What is really wanted is for the laity to be identified with Church work, to realise the truth that the Church with all its privileges is their heritage, and that the clergy are the servants thereof, and then doubtless the question as to whether a Priest has private means or no would assume its proper proportion, instead of as at present being made to hold the first place.

Again. Some kind of ecclesiastical machinery ought to be set in motion by which the Bishops might have power over the beneficed clergy so as to compel them to work systematically in their respective parishes, and not be as impotent, as they are at present, forced to stand by helpless, unable to punish in any degree those clerical drones who are to be found in every diocese.

A clergyman holding preferment in the Church of England is one of the most independent people on the surface of the earth. He is absolutely free to do much work or none, save the regulation Sunday services, and can in no way be interfered with in his manner of dealing with or neglecting the parish over which he has charge.

At present, no power, no force can be brought to bear upon a Priest, either to control or direct his operations in the management or mismanagement of his parish.

Doubtless the system of the freehold of the benefice being vested in the Incumbent is perfect, and would be admirably suited to the organization of the Church if the clergy were perfect men, but considering they are men of like passions with and subject to the same weaknesses as appertain to the laity, it is monstrous that they should be left practically uncontrolled, and it is a scandal to the Church that lazy and slothful Incumbents are allowed to remain undisturbed in the possession of their livings, being a reproach to their sacred calling and a curse to their flocks.

It is impossible to estimate the harm done to a parish under such circumstances, and every Bishop of every diocese in this country can with

sorrow and sadness place his finger on one or more of his parishes in which the Priest in charge is a disgrace to his high office and a hindrance to the spiritual growth of souls.

At present nothing can be done by the Bishops to eject from their livings those whose lives and conversation are a daily injury to the Church's influence, not only in their own neighbourhood, but far beyond; hence, if some such reforms as have been suggested could be carried out, if the Bishops could have the size of their dioceses diminished, so that they might be able unexpectedly to visit the churches on a Sunday to see how the services are conducted and the size of the congregations, if Priests holding preferment were duly qualified for their position, the fulfilment of such conditions would at least lengthen the cords and strengthen the stakes of our beloved Church, and would also go some considerable distance towards making the Church of England more than she has ever been the Church of the people, a real national exponent of Christianity throughout the land.

There are other things than those to which I have alluded which need reform in our Church, viz., the indifference shown by many of the laity towards helping forward any branch of Church work, the unhappy divisions which exist between many of the clergy in doctrine as well as in ritual and ceremonial, and last, though by no means least, that which is the outcome of these unhappy divisions, the spirit of unbelief which in the present day stalks through the length and breadth of the land, ready to taint every parish with its pestilential breath. I should be tiring you (if I have not done so already) and at the same time should be exceeding the limits allowed if I entered upon these burning questions, but with your permission I would fain draw your attention to one measure of reform which is urgently needed to soften down the feelings of many members of our Church, both lay and clerical, and infuse a degree of calmness and peace where now we all know rancour and bitterness exist. And this measure of reform is that certain limits be assigned to include the degrees of ritual and ceremonial allowed in conducting the different services of the Church. The Church is the Church of the nation, and though on the one hand there is one Lord over that Church, one Catholic faith which the Church has ever held, one Baptism by means of which admission to that Church can alone be gained; on the other hand the ritual which is the outward expression and setting forth of that faith and worship cannot be uniform, cannot be limited only to one Use," cannot be settled and drawn upon a hard and fast line.

Men are made in the image of the Creator, but no two men are alike in countenance or similiar in disposition; a different temperament and constitution and mode of thought are assigned to different individuals, and although men gaze at the same sun, breathe the same air, and are partakers of a common humanity, yet the conditions of the life of each are essentially diverse, and therefore it seems to be quite impracticable, nay even absurd, to expect that all men, if equally devout and equally in earnest, would be satisfied with the same ritual in their acts of worship, although they are professors of a common creed.

No Church has ever existed on earth in which the same ritual and ceremonial have been adopted by every separate congregation belonging to that Church, and St. John, in his glowing description of the New Jerusalem, intimates that the forms and ceremonies of the worship of the Church triumphant is not based upon mere uniformity. Hence in the present distress the only remedy I can see in order to restore peace and tranquility, to put an end to the heart-burnings which are rending assunder the Church of England and making her a byword and a reproach to the powerful bodies of political dissenters who rejoice to see her confusion, would be for the Bench of Bishops to issue a Pastoral to the clergy of both provinces, in which certain limits of ritual and ceremonial may be fixed for conducting the services of the Church. Let such a Pastoral or declaration emanating from the Bishops receive the sanction of Parliament, and let it be made binding upon the clergy. Care should be taken that the limits are sufficiently wide apart, in order that an ornate ritual on the one hand, or a plain and simple one on the other, be made strictly legal, and then each individual priest with his congregation may jointly agree as to the measure or kind of ritual which he and they may prefer.

If it was made penal for any priest to exceed or fall short of the limits assigned, we should hear no more of clergy outraging the feelings of their parishioners, either by too grand a ceremonial or by a cold and slovenly service. If, on the one hand, some members of the Church desire to worship in a whitewashed edifice with bare walls, with the preacher in black gown and bands, let them have it so; if again others prefer an ornate ritual, where vestments and incense (which latter, by the way, is the most scriptural symbol that can be used in conducting divine service), where the altar lights and eastward position are adopted, let such be left alone to enjoy them; above all, let the clergy consult with their parishioners not as to doctrine, but as to the ritual and ceremonial to be observed

in their churches, and then we should not hear of a professedly Christian society persecuting individual priests and their congregations for not doing exactly that which it regards as the only way of setting forth the Gospel of Christ.

I believe that if the Bishops were to put forth some such measure as I have depicted, these discords, these heart-burnings and divisions in the Church of England would be materially lessened, if not altogether in time gradually disappear.

CATHOLICUS.

MY SISTER CECILIA.

CHAPTER IV.

STRANGE fits of childish passion like this have no doubt been often witnessed in private life, and are the romance of the annals of many nurseries. I think they are remarkable only when, looking back, we feel that the child has been truly "father of the man; although very seldom

can this be securely anticipated from the omens of an age beyond others fertile in unfulfilled prophecy. But there were many proofs of the unity of Cecilia's character; and that instance of our dear visionary child's prevailing sensitiveness, as it foreshadowed in truth traits the most authentic of her inmost nature, justifies to myself the space I have given it in my narration. But this knowledge was of course a far later experience; learnt after many years with what pain, with what reluctance! My father, as I shall presently note, may have dimly felt the meaning of the incident; it was lost on my youth, and equally on my mother's mind, so unchangeably youthful. All I have mentioned,-added to the fact that, as Cecilia was in no other respects a. romantic child, and by maternal inheritance clear from all taint of sentimentalism, so these outbreaks were but the more unaccountable, -all this was a perplexity to her mother, solved only at last by her native judgment. And hence, at the first, in the experiment of Cecilia's education (for the education of every gifted child must be inevitably a new thing and experimental), she was anxious to retain from her little daughter's acquaintance those books in which the element of romance makes any prominent appearance. Scott's "Lay," a poem as I thought in the critical vanity of sixteen, peculiarly suitable to youthful readers, stood, I recollect, on this index of the proscribed. Many parents, from that ever-growing temptation to assume infallibility which besets every exercise of power, have, I am aware, acted thus:—but with my mother this prohibition was an effort against which her native taste and