"I'm very glad. And, heaven help us," cried Ralph, "how tickled

Gilbert Osmond will be."

His companion frowned.

"I say, don't spoil it. I shan't marry his daughter to please him."

"He will have the perversity to be pleased all the same."

"As that? My dear Warburton, the drawback of your position is that people needn't be fond of you at all to wish to be connected with you. Now, with me in such a case, I should have the happy confidence that they loved me."

Lord Warburton seemed scarcely to be in the mood for doing justice to

say it."

66

Yes, you do; you know how to say everything."

"Well, it's awkward. I hope you are sure that among Miss Osmond's merits her being a-so near her stepmother isn't a leading one?"

"Good heavens, Touchett!" cried Lord Warburton, angrily, "for what do you take me?"

HENRY JAMES, JR.

In the discussions which occasionally take place on the subject of Subscription, several points have appeared to me to receive less consideration than they deserve, and there are some important topics which seem to be passed over unnoticed. On several of these I propose in the present paper to offer a few remarks, and possibly what I have to say may have the effect of calling attention to these neglected parts of the general subject.

What is meant by Subscription is no doubt familiar enough to all. It is not so clearly understood that others, besides the clergy of the Church of England, are affected by the same thing under a different name ;—that is to say, that the Nonconformist ministers are, for the most part (though not universally), as much under the same restrictions as to doctrinal belief, and freedom of discussion, as the national clergy. How this comes to pass it is easy to point out. The Methodist Conference, for example, exercises a careful supervision over all candidates for the Wesleyan ministry, and requires them virtually to engage to believe and preach according to the teaching of Wesley's Sermons and Notes on the New Testament. And

this is no imaginary restriction. What Wesleyan minister would have ventured to speak out as Canon Farrar has done on the subject of Eternal Punishment? The result of such speaking, it is well understood, would be, as it has been, expulsion from the body, and the loss of the privileges of ministerial position.

Similarly among the Congregationalists there are such things as trust deeds, with schedules of doctrine at the foot, to which it is required that the minister shall conform his preach

ing. The model deed of the Chapel Building Society in that denomination is well known; and it is probably correct to say that no new chapel is erected at the present day, with the aid of that Society, without care being taken that only such and such doctrines shall be preached in the new pulpit as are considered by the managers of the Society to be Christian and orthodox. The Huddersfield Chapel case, lately before the courts of law, is a case in point. It well shows how stringently such restrictions may be made to operateand a doctrinal schedule is not the only form in which they appear. The consequence is that a minister who deviates even a little in his ministrations from the Trust conditions, may be expelled from his pulpit by process of law. Nothing worse can happen to a clergyman; and it is clear, therefore, that the Nonconformist who is under such trammels, exposed, we may say, to the theological dictation of a body of chapel builders, or a chapel committee of perhaps ill-informed persons, is in no way exempt from "control" of a galling and offensive kind-certainly no more exempt than the clergyman who is amenable to his bishop, or the law courts.

It is an easy inference from all this that, in any measure for the relief of the clergy in the matter of Subscription, the similar case of the Nonconformists should not be forgotten. It would be a fair and appropriate return for the long-continued exertions of the Liberation Society that whatever may be possible should be done for the release of Nonconformist ministers from the "control," if not from the "patronage," of conferences, schedules of doctrine in chapel deeds, and

A second point which deserves grave consideration, and one not usually brought forward in these discussions, is this-how far it is right in any man (supposing him to have the power) to impose upon another a specific confession or profession of religious belief, enforcing it so as to make it essential to the enjoyment of certain pecuniary and other advantages. In general terms, it would, I should think, be admitted without argument, that no man is possessed of any natural right to exercise such authority or control over another. This position may be illustrated from the case of a father and his son--one of the closest of the ties which can exist between two human beings, one in which authority and affection on the one side, respect and confidence on the other, may be assumed to exist in as pure and disinterested a form as can be well conceived. The question is, Will it be morally right in the father, well aware as he must be of the fallibility of his own judgment, to make use of the advantage which his position gives him, either with or without the son's consent, to bind the latter to say "I assent and believe," "I will continue to assent and believe," to bind and pledge him to do this by attaching to it a valuable pecuniary interest? Unquestionably, such proceeding on the father's side would be wrong.

a

It would be even morally wrong, and this from several points of view, into which I do not consider it necessary to enter in detail-necessary at least for any thoughtful, earnest reader.

But if the proceeding be wrong in the case supposed, can it be right in any other, as in that of a sovereign and his subjects, a legislature and those for whom it makes laws, or a chapel committee or a ruling Church body and a minister? This question too must surely be answered in the negative. When, therefore, Queen Elizabeth and the statesmen of her time set up our

existing National Church, prescribing its belief as they did, and dictating the very words of praise and prayer that should be used by its ministers— words which necessarily imply the profession of very definite doctrinal beliefs and permitting of no deviation whatever from the prescribed forms-when they did this, they were exercising only a usurped and illegitimate authority. Their proceeding inay indeed find some justification in the circumstances and beliefs of the age, much as the laws relating to witchcraft may be thought to do. But nevertheless, as in the case of those laws, the course taken was founded in error. It was essentially inconsistent with a high morality. The authority exercised could not, by the nature of the case, really belong to those who exercised it, any more than it would be possible that the faculty of thinking in a given man should be taken away from him and made the property of another person.

When men disobey a natural law, even in ignorance, and act habitually in neglect of it, this is usually followed by some penal consequence. It is so in the case of nations and legislatures, and it is so in the case before us. Witness, generation after generation of disquiet in the Church, the multiplication of sects, the alienation on religious grounds of large classes of the nation from each other. Such are and have been the consequences of the Church policy of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries-the uniformity of national faith on which it tried to insist having hitherto proved to be the most vain and visionary of ends. And so it was in the more terrible case of witchcraft. The unnatural laws founded upon that belief, and the untold miseries which resulted from them, gave dreadful testimony to the falsehood and wrong involved in the ideas upon which they were based.

If then, to pursue our main idea, the animus imponentis could have no right to impose, can it be right in the subject mind to submit to the imposi

tion, and to forego that natural and sacred privilege of liberty of thought which, quite as much as any of the bodily senses, belongs to each man as a human being-to give this up, in a certain sense, at the command or to the disposal of another? This question too, I should think, few persons of clear and healthy mental vision will answer in the affirmative; and so, I venture to add, the entire system of imposition and subscription of creeds and articles of faith is demonstrably wrong and out of date, and ought to be got rid of as soon as may be.

But then, the creeds and articles exist; and subscription to them is required, and must be given and is. given-voluntarily given-by those who minister in the Church. The question of questions remains, What does it mean? What does it involve in the way of promise and engagement? This has been abundantly discussed, and that, too, quite recently and from different points of view. I would add to the discussion the following consideration, which appears to me to be one of the greatest importance. I refer to the relation which exists between the

Subscribing clergy and the general public.

The nation at large must be held to constitute the body of the National Church, of which the clergy are the ministers. By the will of the nation the Church exists-so far, that is to say, as it is in the exclusive possession of the national endowments and various connected privileges. The public has therefore a direct interest as of right, not only in the services of the clergy, but also in what they assent to and profess to believe and to act upon as teachers of the people. When, therefore, a clergyman "assents" to the Articles, and says that he believes the "doctrine" they contain to be "agreeable to the Word of God," he does not say this in any abstract kind of way, as if for his own sake only. He says it to the nation, which is thus in effect a party

with him in this joint contract. It is therefore a question to be asked, What do people in general understand him to mean?

If, at the time, he makes no sort of open qualification or reservation, as to the particular sense in which he assents and believes, he may reasonably be held to do so in the obvious and popular sense of the words to which he subscribes. It cannot be questioned that in the estimation of the great mass, not only of those who may hear him in church, but of the whole nation, he does so; and that he assents to and undertakes to believe and to use the words of Articles and Services in their ordinary and unqualified sense. When, then, time after time, he repeats, "I believe," in the Creeds, as, for example, the Article of the Incarnation, in the words "conceived of the Holy Ghost," when he uses expressions which distinctly imply his own consent to them, as in telling his congregation that "without doubt" they shall "perish everlastingly" if they do not hold and keep the Athanasian Creed,-when he says, in the Baptismal Service, that the child is "regenerate and grafted into the body. of Christ," and delivered from God's "wrath," by the rite performed-in all this people do, and will, and ought to understand his words according to their obvious meaning. Is he, then, at liberty to go away from his readingdesk, and by virtue of an address or lecture, a tract or pamphlet, or an article in a magazine, or even by a private conversation with his bishop, to put his own private construction upon the words he has used, and so to exonerate himself from the assent and belief which he has professed before the nation and in the sight of God? There is something in this kind of proceeding which, to say the least, is questionable and unsatisfactory. It seems to come too near to double dealing, and this in matters of a very sacred character, in which sincerity and straightforwardness should be eminently conspicuous. It

looks too like making a contract in one sense and keeping it in another, in a way and to a degree which could not be permitted in the ordinary transactions of common life.

The case would be bad enough if there were no personal interests involved. It becomes a dreadfully bad case when it is remembered, and it is impossible to forget, that very large personal interests are involved. Those who show themselves anxious to qualify and explain away the words they have used, and to prove that they mean either very little, or something different from what is commonly supposed, are, in effect, defending themselves in the possession of great and substantial advantages. I am far from wishing to impute mercenary motives; but there are multitudes in the country who are not so scrupulous. It is evident, at any rate, that it is at least an unhappy feature in the position of affairs that personal interests of an important kind are so intimately bound up with, and dependent upon the assent and belief which are first professed, and then so considerably qualified or nullified.

The case is one which can hardly fail to exercise an unfavourable influence the national morality. upon By many it will be interpreted in the worst sense that can be put upon it, and will be held to warrant the assertion that the religious guides and teachers of the people are not so delicately sensitive and disinterested in this matter of Subscription or their defence of it as they ought to be.

I speak thus plainly on this point, because I wish to set forth what appears to amount to a most cogent reason for sweeping away and getting rid of a system which exposes multitudes of excellent men to ungracious and painful reflections of the kind just referred to.

A similar line of objection may be taken, as I have before noticed, in reference to the position of Nonconformist ministers, pledged and fettered as most of them are by schedules of doc

trine to which they are legally bound to conform, or by doctrinal conditions imposed by chapel committees and conferences. The force of the objection must be fully allowed. There is

no more to be said in defence of the pledging and binding of Nonconformist ministers than of so treating the national clergy. Clearly they ought all to be free men; free to think and to speak what they believe to be the truth; and it is unworthy of the nation and unworthy of the sects and churches to require their religious teachers to stand before the world in any other character; and, let me add, it is unworthy of clergymen and ministers alike to submit to it. They ought all to "strike"!

Another point to notice is that explanations and qualifications which have been offered as to the import of assent and belief, elaborate as they sometimes are, are not found to be very happy, when actually applied to the doctrinal statements in reference to which they are made. A man assents to the Articles, but, we are told, he need not believe them, at least as they stand. As Mr. Haweis has expressed it, he accepts their "substance," but not necessarily their "form."

"1 He has (or claims) the right to distinguish between form and substance. Apply this to a particular case, as, for example, the Fourth Article. In this we read, "Christ did truly rise again from death, and took again His body, with flesh, bones, and all things pertaining to the perfection of man's nature; wherewith He ascended into heaven, and there sitteth, until He return to judge all men at the last day." The "substance of this is, that Christ went up to heaven with His material body, there to remain till He return to the earth at the last day. The subscribing clergyman "assents to this; but does he believe it? In many cases, no doubt, he does so; in others most probably he does not, at least not in its obvious sense. He rejects the 1 Contemporary Review, February, 1881.