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and lime of the building, were they the mere furniture of the church, were they mere vestments and instruments of a man who called himself a priest? Certainly not. These things were the externals. It was not the consecration of a building by a Bishop, or by any number of Bishops that gave it its sanctity. It was the pure worship rendered within it, the sacred associations which gathered round it, the desire of those that went there to worship God according to their conscience that consecrated a church. Yet they were told forsooth that one reason for their not being admitted was that some office of consecration had been pronounced within them by officials of the Anglican Church. There could not be a more essentially superstitious idea than that, an idea against which they ought to protest, not only as Scottish Churchmen, but as members of the great Reformed Church throughout the world."

The time, however, for such a protest is not yet. The Indian Government has never yet said that the Act of Uniformity or any Canon Law applies. The very orders complained of assert the right of the Civil Government to use its churches as it pleases. They may conceivably be worked by the Metropolitan and his subordinates in ways annoying to the Presbyterians and Wesleyans; but it would be unfair to foresee any such malign desire. Moreover the state of Indian revenue will prevent the Government from doing what many English Burial Boards have done, I mean building two churches in the same place, confronting each other on different sides of the road. There are no funds to spare; and any plan like this would be watched by the native politicians and attacked in the discussions on the Budget as a waste of public money.

There is much in the Assembly debate which virtually impeaches Lord Canning and Lord Elgin as well as Lord Curzon. In 1860 Lord Canning framed, and the two other Viceroys each in turn re-enacted, the rules that in every case the English Bishop's consent must be got, and that he may withdraw this consent whenever he likes. This does indeed look like trampling on the Thistle, but yet Lord

Elgin allowed it. The Bishop or the English chaplain appoints the hours for the other Churches. But this rule dates from 1860 also. So does that which gives the Episcopalian chaplain the full control over the furniture and over the hamal or beadle who sweeps the building, pulls the punka and puts oil in the lamp. It is plain that a humorous Oxford ritualist might easily use these powers in the way of practical jokes. Lord Elgin found out some substantial causes of complaint, and put in his edition of the rules that his Government had noticed with regret that instances occurred when the use for Presbyterian worship of buildings provided by Government and consecrated for the services of the Church of England had been disallowed, and further that in one case the use of an unconsecrated building (a regimental school-room) was refused for such worship. "The Governor General in Council trusts that such instances will not be allowed to recur." This last sentence is minatory, as the whole establishment in India is under him; and the wishes of Cæsar can be enforced, not only against erring chaplains, but also against the Indian Bishops, whose Patents may be revoked by the Crown. The policy of the Crown had been declared to Lord Canning in these words :-" It is most desirable that the ecclesiastical buildings in India should be made available for the purpose of divine worship to the greatest possible extent." Therefore Sir Charles Wood ordered the Government churches to be opened to the chaplains of the Church of Scotland serving Presbyterian troops. Lord Elgin went some steps further. He announced a fact of much interest, i.e., that the number of Wesleyan soldiers has greatly increased, and so he gave that flourishing body of Christians the benefit of the rules. He must have known as a Scotsman how the Presbyterians have always girded at Episcopal interference; and he wisely appointed as Final Courts of Appeal such impartial dignitaries as the Commander-in-Chief and the Local Governor. This saved the religious feelings and the personal self-respect of the two religious bodies who are

to use the consecrated churches. But this avenue to justice is blocked up by Lord Curzon. He sweeps away these authorities and puts the Bishop of Calcutta in their place. The canny laymen of the General Assembly aver that if Bishop Welldon claims to be a liberal and broad-minded man he will renounce the jurisdiction on the ground that his theological prejudices must conflict with his impartiality. The Wesleyan Conference also, we hear, is up in arms. We would fain know why Lord Curzon has done this thing. But there is no answer forthcoming as he gives no reasons. Is this sudden change of policy due to a desire to exalt the Bishop of Calcutta as a sort of Pontiff or Patriarch over all Protestant communions? Is he also to be made Archbishop? When asked the other day to do this, Lord George Hamilton did not give a point-blank refusal in the House of Commons.

We would here put a further question. Lord Elgin flatly declared as follows:--"The power of allowing or disallowing the use of regimental schools and other unconsecrated buildings for purposes of worship rests with the officer commanding the station and not with the ecclesiastical authorities." This statement is not found in the paper whereby Lord Curzon propounds the "supersession" of Lord Elgin's rules. One would like to know if the Metropolitan is now supreme over unconsecrated buildings. This is a matter which touches on general religious equality.

So also does another omission, perhaps in the long-run the most serious of all. We have seen that Lord Elgin levelled up the Wesleyans. He took power also in his rules to apply their benefits to any other denomination from time to time, a valuable earnest to the Independents and Baptists of good things to come. Lord Curzon silently drops this enabling rule without a word of reason, thus shutting the church-doors against soldiers like Havelock and his "saints," against scholars like Carey, and missionaries like Judson.

Principal Story's Protestant arguments ought to help the Wesleyans and the two other Nonconformist bodies I have just named. They will be accepted by such great communions as the United Presbyterians and the Free Kirk, which have no pretext for calling themselves established churches in India. But one may doubt whether the Church of Scotland has much to gain by asserting equality with the Church of England in that Empire. As the East India Company was peculiarly English, of the Puritan City of London, so from its earliest start the Church of England has had the lion's share of Indian Church patronage. The Clapham movement too was profoundly English: and naturally the Protestant Church of England as by law established became the mould and form. Successive Acts of Parliament provide for the salaries, furlough allowances, and even the expenses of the visitation tours of the Bishops of Calcutta, Madras and Bombay, which are charged, as also their pensions, on the revenues of India. Acts of Parliament settle what their jurisdictions and functions are to be. In Sir Courtney Ilbert's work on India, he sets out the Letters Patent of Bishop Welldon's immediate predecessor, which show at tiresome length how thoroughly Parliament has set to work in thus regulating spiritual things in the East Indies. The Crown expressly takes power to revoke and recall; but so long as the Metropolitan holds the Calcutta Bishopric, he has to keep open a spiritual court to try other clergy if need be, including even the other Bishops; and over him again sit the Judges of the High Courts, who are required as a Queen's Bench to restrain and correct his encroachments and errors by means of their writs of Prohibition and Mandamus. He has title and precedence and a seat in the high places. A royal warrant assigns him rank next to the Chief Justice of Bengal, above all other Her Majesty's Chief Justices and Judges, above the Members of the Viceroy's Cabinet. Were he raised to be an Archbishop, English sentiment would favour still loftier rank, if only to impress the

natives; and official reasons would soon be urged for grants of higher salary and visitation allowances out of Indian revenues. Advantages like these have at all times been due to facts never to be lost sight of. The East India Company was English, the creature of an English Parliament, as its mention of Anglia on its arms told all the world. It was English doctrine and ritual it shipped to the East, along with English iron and cloth; and it was natural that religious institutions under that sun should expand after English fashions. Cælum non animum mutant qui transmare currunt. Less than a century ago the English Church ministry of India was made up of two salaried services without any Bishops or Archdeacons. There were military chaplains under commanding officers who might reprimand them or arrest them for insubordination. At a few civil stations there were, as in the old Puritan times, other chaplains under the civil authorities. In 1814 when the See of Calcutta was erected for the whole of India, Bishop Middleton found only 32 clergymen in this ample area. In a celebrated Memoir written in 1805 advocating a regular ecclesiastical establishment, the Rev. Claudius Buchanan tells us that the number was hardly greater than those found in the East India Company's factories in the time of Lord Clive. There were four in the Bombay Presidency, five in the Madras Presidency and three in Calcutta. Six military chaplains in Bengal made up the whole tale. Churches were only found in these three Presidency Towns. At the Presidency of Bencoolen, at Malacca and in the great Canton Factory, there were no clergy at all. The two British Armies in Hindustan and in the Deckhan, lately in the field, had not one chaplain. Buchanan was scandalized by the results. "Marriages, burials, and sometimes baptisms, by the civil Magistrate or by a military officer, are not only performed, but in a manner sanctioned by a precedent of thirty years." Why a born Scotsman should think a civil marriage offensive is not clear to me; and Bishop Heber took a less anxious

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