1874.] INNOVATIONS IN THE CHURCH. 435 'dozing pans,' together with the 'three-deckers,' as they were called, and other ugly and ridiculous church furniture, were silently but swiftly supplanted by fittings more in harmony with the style of the buildings into which they had been introduced, and with the services carried on in them. The psalms and canticles, which had hitherto been read in almost all churches, even in London, begun to be chaunted. Hymns of a more poetical character gradually supplanted the religious doggrel of Sternhold and Hopkins, or Tate and Brady. These changes were not effected without loud and angry protests from those in whose minds the old fashions were associated with ideas of sacredness, and those which replaced them with mediæval doctrine. Still, in spite of all opposition, good taste prevailed, and was improved by a careful study of those grand minsters that stud our land, and churches began to rise in various places which vied with the old churches, and were fitted up with a tasteful magnificence which extorted the admiration even of those who feared that the revival of medieval architecture might in some unexplained way lead to a revival of medieval doctrine. And they were so far right in their suspicions that, owing to the circumstances we have already explained, the two developments went on together. Though there was no necessary connection between medieval doctrines and mediæval architecture, yet, owing to the form and direction which the Tractarian movement assumed, they did as a matter of fact go on together. The men who found so much to admire in those ages, which they had once regarded as 'dark,' began to regard all connected with them as admirable. The medieval church suggested the mediæval ritual. The clergyman ministering in one of those new and splendid basilicas, felt, that in his surplice of modern cut, he was a sort of living anachronism amidst all the gorgeous mediavalism by which he was surrounded, and began to desire vestments that harmonised with the temple in which, and the altar at which, he ministered. He was further prompted to carry out this desire by the consideration that the habits for which he sighed tended to distinguish the service of the eucharist from the other services of the church, and to elevate, in the eyes of the multitude, that sacrament which was the keystone of his system of doctrine, and which had fallen into a neglect greatly deplored by the religious school to which he belonged. The desire thus awakened seemed to be warranted by the rubrics prefixed to the Book of Common Prayer, which directed that 'the ornaments of the church and the ministers thereof, at all times of their ministrations, shall be retained and be in use as they were in this Church of England, by the authority of Parliament, in the second year of King Edward VI.' It seemed highly probable that the vestments in question had been in use at that period, and eminent lawyers and antiquarians gave their opinion that this was the case. The consequence of all this was, a gradual increase in the ceremoniousness with which the services, especially the eucharistic service, were celebrated, and the re-introduction into our churches of ornaments which had not been used in them since the Restoration. These innovations, warmly championed by a few, were condemned by the overwhelming majority of churchmen, and those who practised them were denounced as Ritualists. Various ineffectual efforts were made to put them down, both in and out of Parliament; and with this view a society-which took the title of the Church Association, composed chiefly of persons belonging to the Evangelical party in the Church-was formed for the avowed purpose of stamping out rationalism and ritualism, but especially the latter: for though the former laid its axe to the very root of evangelicalism, yet, as the latter more palpably presented itself to the eye, it excited a keener hatred and a more strenuous opposition. The Church Association, in its attempts to put down Ritualism, relied not so much on the force of argument as on the force of money. That party, whose peculiar boast it had hitherto been that the weapons of their warfare were not carnal, entered the field trusting in the very carnal weapon of 50,000l. Proceedings were taken by this wealthy society in the Ecclesiastical Courts. Of course, those who were assailed by it felt that they could not contend with an adversary whose wealth enabled him to purchase the very best legal assistance, while they had no means of retaining counsel at all. Some of them allowed judgment to go against them by default, others pleaded their own cause. Decisions so obtained naturally did not command the 1874.] ADVANCE OF RITUALISM. 437 respect with which Englishmen are wont to regard the decisions of a legal tribunal. The feeling with which an unequal struggle is generally regarded was powerfully evoked by the spectacle of a poor clergyman contending against a great and wealthy association commanding the best advice. The consequence was, that while individual Ritualists suffered-one of them even to death-Ritualism gained ground; the persecuted clergymen were regarded as martyrs, and the popular feeling against them rapidly abated. The principle by which the Court of Appeal seems to have been guided in its decisions-if any principle is to be traced amidst the varying, and apparently conflicting, judgments of a tribunal whose members were changed every time that a case was brought before it was that of great indulgence with regard to doctrinal uniformity, and a strictness that would have astonished Laud himself with regard to ritual uniformity. Thus during the period over which this work extends there were no fewer than six distinct schools or parties in the Church: the old orthodox High Church party, still embracing the majority of the clergy, and keeping aloof from the strifes and prosecutions to which we have referred, except when it found itself or its practices interfered with by them; the Evangelical party, the best members of which repudiated the Church Association; the Broad Church party, of which Dr. Arnold and Dr. Hampden had been the first leaders; the Rationalistic and Ritualistic schools, comprising a large number of young and energetic clergymen and laymen; and, lastly, the Tractarians, who still adhered to the principles originally laid down in the Tracts for the Times, without adopting the developments to which they had given rise. These parties shaded away into each other, and each might be subdivided into several different schools, the ultimate ramifications of which it would be useless and impossible to trace. While the Church was torn by the struggles and controversies we have narrated, another movement was being carried on in her bosom which attracted much attention from men of all classes and opinions. It was generally known as the free and open church movement, set on foot and carried on mainly through the exertions of Mr. Edward Herford, the coroner of Manchester. Mr. Herford had been brought up as a Unitarian, and while he belonged to that communion had distinguished himself by his interest in Sunday schools, and his zeal in promoting various useful institutions. In his maturer years he had embraced with warmth and earnestness the doctrines of the Church; but was distressed to find how little she was in anything but in name the church of the nation, and especially how completely the working classes had become estranged from her. He at once began to consider the cause of this alienation. He found that in every part of the kingdom the sittings in the old parish churches, which had once been open to all parishioners alike without distinction of person, had in many instances been appropriated to the wealthier inhabitants, who, though they had no legal right to the pews they occupied, had excluded all others from them, and in some instances had put locks on the doors to prevent any one from entering them when they were absent from church. In this manner the poor had been gradually excluded from all but a few remote sittings, which were the hottest places in the church in summer, and the coldest in winter, and in which it was often difficult either to see or to hear the officiating minister. In the locality in which Mr. Herford himself resided matters were still worse. Owing to the rapid growth of the population, churches had been erected for which little or no endowment had been provided, and in which the income of the minister depended on the pewrents. The consequence was, that the system of exclusion, which in other parts of the country existed in spite of law, had here been legalised, and the exclusion of the poor was more complete, and the distinction between the pews and the free sittings more ostentatiously invidious, than in any other part of the kingdom. Mr. Herford at once saw that this was the cause of the evil which had so much shocked and grieved him; and he devoted himself with indomitable energy and perseverance to the endeavour to remedy it by insisting that all the sittings in churches should be free, and open to every parishioner, and that nothing should be placed in them which would imply a right to prevent its being occupied by any one who might find it vacant. Mr. Herford did not contend that this change should be carried out at once in all churches. As a lawyer, he was naturally disposed to regard vested interests even when they had 1874.] MR. HERFORD. 439 been improperly created, and he wished to see the clergy placed in a position of independence by deriving their support from fixed endowments rather than from any precarious sources of income. But he earnestly contended that the offertory collected during the communion service, in accordance with the rubrics of the church, afforded a means of support to the clergy which was far preferable to pew-rents; and in order to bring this opinion to the test of practical experience, he actively promoted the erection of the church of St. Alban, Manchester, in the midst of a poor population, the seats of which were to be free and open to all, and in which the support of the minister, the various expenses connected with the due performance of the services, and the maintenance of the fabric, were to be provided for by offertories collected in the church: a design zealously and ably carried out by the Rev. J. E. Sedgwick, the first minister of the district in which the church was erected, under circumstances of peculiar difficulty and discouragement. Early in the year 1852, Mr. Herford started a periodical, The Church of the People, the name of which indicated with energetic conciseness the object he sought to attain. In 1857 he set on foot a free and open church association for the purpose of endeavouring to procure the gradual adoption of his views in existing churches, and their immediate adoption in those which might be erected at any future time. He laboured with untiring diligence to promote this object, by letters to various periodicals, by discussions at church-congresses, and in various other ways. The system thus originated and urged forward has been carried out in twelve churches in Manchester alone, and in a great number of churches in other parts of the manufacturing districts. In many old parish churches throughout the kingdom pews illegally appropriated have been restored to the parishioners; in others the weekly offertory has been established in lieu of pew-rents. In numerous new churches, in which the pew-rent system would have been adopted, the free and open system has been preferred, in consequence of the protests made by Mr. Herford and those associated with him; and in a still larger number a compromise between the two systems has been effected, in virtue of which one half of the church, and that at least |