WOMEN PREACHERS

Nelson Evening Mail, 30 September 1916, Page 2

WOMEN PREACHERS

.MANY PROTESTS BY CHURCH AUTHORITIES. •Sir, -a woman preaching is .like n. ting's walking on his hind legs. It is not. deal,; well; but you are surprised to find it done at -alii.—Dr. Johnson. The permission given by the Bishop of London to the women messengers of the National Mission to preach in church has raised' a protest from many of the olergy in his diocese, says the Evening News. Every London incumbent is to be asked to sign a form declar.ng that— To grant penmissAon to women to pa-each in our ,churches is contrary to the teaching of the Holy Scripture and i o the minxi and) genera! practice of the whole Catholic Church. Still more, we believe that such permission will be an encouragement to those women -who publicly claim the right to be appointed to the priesthood and episcopate ofi the Church, which claim' is heretical.

Mr H. W. Hill, secretary of the English Church Union, saidi The Evening News that Ire regard's the effort to introduce women preachers as a "branch of the Suffrag: io movement." The object of many o: the promoters of the innovation was revealed, he considers, when? Mis's Maude Roy den, at a meeting of the Church League for Women's 'Suffrage, in March 1915, protested against the exclusion of women from, the rurid-ecanal and diocesan conferences, the Houses of Laymen, and: the Representative Church Council. She then' said 1 that her personal view wag 'that there was nothing in the priesthood that would in the- future justifv the exclusion of women. "Attemmts have been 'made." continued Mr Hill, "to break down the teaching of St. Paul. Evervbody would 1 deplore any injury to the -work of the national mission, but any trouble must be laid to the door of those who have lb ought it right to sanction so grave a departure from, Catholic order." THE PAULINIE CLOSURE. The teaching of St. Paul' to which Mr liiilil referred' is set forth in the First Epistle to the Corinthians : Let the women keep Silence in the churches, for it is net permitted unto ■them to speak. On behalf of the women preachers it has been targued that St. Paul's prohibition refers only to "chatter : ng." To this argument the Dean of Canterbury has retorted that "the received interpretation of St. Paul's word's has never sheers 'doubted in the Church."

So far the only bishops who ha.ve favoured the women are the Bishoc® of London and- Chelmsford .Diocese w'Tl take the. same ,s'tep 'as the protesting ciei'.ry o? London.

The fueling against the innovation is very strong amon,r the 'majority of church-wniner),. Lady Henry Somerset and other -wellknown women- who have been in. svm•pathy with the suffragist movement ai'e organising a. orotest of their own.

The Chnrcli Association officially has taken no cart in the controversy, no question of ritual being involved.

For that heavy dpll feeling in the head which accomnanies "NVisnl Catarrh, take a. good inhalation of "NA.ZOL" through a Nazol Inhaler. This will afford immediate relief. Test "NAZOL" to-day.