THE GREAT “REVEREND” QUESTION.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4553, 23 October 1875, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE GREAT “REVEREND” QUESTION.

(From the Scotsman, June 12.) Perhaps the chief clanger of Church Establishments in these days is that, in connection with various matters not properly religious nor oven ecclesiastical, projecting parts of them are always coming in the way, so that persons orinterests ecclesiastically neutral or unconcerned break their shins over them. From great matters, such as national education, clown to many matters much smaller than the law or right of burial, something possessed or claimed by one or other of the Established Churches is constantly being found an obstacle in the way of some desirable end, especially the end of peace. It may be said for the Church of Scotland that she nowadays presents herself in the attitude of au obstacle almost as little as possible, and indeed on the most important subjects not much more of an obstacle than the unestablished Churches by her side. But the Church of England, though in her corporate capacity she is, owing mainly to that weakness of her constitution which is her real strength, not chargeable with activity or offensivoness, contains persons and parties whose main object would almost seem to be to render her sometimes ridiculous, sometimes odious. The latest specimen of this kind of work is the controversy raised, mainly by the Bishop of Lincoln, about the right to use the title or prefix “ Reverend”—a question to which a legal decision has within these two or three days given increased magnitude and formidableuesa. It will be remembered that Mr. Keet, a Wesleyan preacher having lost a daughter, was about to erect over her grave in the churchyard of the parish where he resides a tombstone, on which the deceased was described as “daughter of the Rev. H. Keet, Wesleyan minister.” The vicar of the parish objected, on the ground that a Wesleyan preacher has no right to style himself “ Reverendthe • Bishop of Lincoln (£)r. Wordsworth) approved and sustained the objection ; the Archbishop of Canterbury, though giving no legal opinion on the matter, disapproved of the objection, and addressed :the Wesleyan minister by the title to which the vicar and the Bishop had denied his right. But an appeal having been made to Mr. Phillimore, a barrister, the Chancellor of the diocese, that authority has decided that no Protestant not an ordained clergyman of the Church of England is entitled to be styled Reverend, nor even to call himself “ minister,” and has based that decision on principles which will be very apt. indeed to make even the most amiable and 1 amicable Dissenters conclude that their natural rights and freedom cannot co-exist with the present or perhaps any Church Establishment. To say that “ the Rev. H. Keet, Wesleyan minister,” will be the death of the Church of England might seem a ridiculous prophecy; but it is keeping well within the bounds of possibility to say that a few Keet cases—and every month or two pi-oduoes similar oases—will prove fatal. It has to be kept in view that such cases are not merely individual —the hurt or offence is given to individuals belonging to large masses, every individual among whom feels that the indignity may any day be inflicted on himself, and is already inflicted on the body of which he is a member. Take this particular case : In protruding this question about the word “ Reverend,” so as to break the shins of Mr. Keet, the. Church is breaking the shins of tiie largest, most friendly, and least widely separated body of the English dissenters. There is another respect in which this proceeding tends to the Church’s discredit and injury—those acting in her name have procured this unhappy “favorable decision” by a process at utter variance with certain principles of which they are the distinctive professors, having virtually set the opinion of a very subordinate instrument of “ Ctesar” above the opinion, entreaty, and example of the head of the Church. 1 .

If the Bishop of Lincoln's party in, the Church had desired to have their opinions expressed arid their spirit manifested in a manner the most violent and' offensive, they were fortunate in having ' Mr. Walter Philliraore for the Chancellor of the diocese. It would almost seem as if he had earnestly set himself to mnko a repulsive caricature of the principles on which his decision proceeded. “He had to inquire,” he said, “whether the inscription proposed could be made the means of disseminating doctrines inconsistent with those of the established religion.” The assumption here is, that what had to be considered was not the civil or natural rights of parties, but the supposed interests of the ' Church—no matter what, on the ordinary way of viewing cases, might be tho right of this or that man to bo called “Reverend,” if so to call him was not for the interest of' the Church, no right could ho allowed to exist. Tho process by which tho judge arrived at tho conclusion that to call Mr. Keet “ Reverend,” and equally to call him a “ minister,” would be injurious to the Church, seems this ; that none but clergy of the Church of England and the Church of Romo are “in holy orders” ; that Mr. Koet not belonging to either of those bodies, was “ a schismatic " ; that, by the very act of- calling himself “Reverend” and “minister,” he admitted himself to bo “ a chief among schismatics ” ; and that “to describe a person as being a Reverend Wesleyan Minister ” would bo to describe a nmu as being what the Church holds that he cannot possibly be, and that so the tombstone “might bo made the means of disseminating doctrines inconsistent with those of our Church.” The proposed inscription would, in short, be a heretical sermon in stone, and therefore cannot bo allowed.

Perhaps the only remark worth- making upon this argument takes the shape of the mere mention of a matter of fact—the fact that that it is scarcely even pretended that the law confers the title “ Reverend” on ministers of the Church of England any more than on ministers of other churches. As to the designation “ minister,” the question about which has been newly and gratuitously raised by the Chancellor of the dioceso of Lincoln, there is not even the shadow of a pretence for any assertion of exclusive use, any more than there for the exclusive use of the name of any

other occupation. The Chancellor founds his decision as to “ the appropriation of the word Reverend to our clergy ” merely on “ ordinary usage.” But it has been the ordinary usage of other Churches as well, so that those other Churches have the same right with the same derivation as the Church of England. There was, as it happened, a partial and temporary exception in the case of the Wesleyans, who at first did not encourage, nor even authorise the use of the epithet by their preachers. That was because for a time they did not look upon themselves as a body quite separated from the Church of England ; but then, as now, they had an equal right with all Churches to use the name when they chose, and so to establish that “ usage ” which is admitted to be the only authority in the matter. The Chancellor sought to strengthen his argument as to “ usage ” by pointing out that the disputed epithet was applied to clergymen of the Church of England by official and especially Crown documents, whilst he had no sufficient proof of any document of that class applying the name to preachers of other Churches. He should have looked to Scotland, where, out of several thousands, we have only several scores of ministers “in holy orders"; and so entitled to be called reverend. The Crown has a good deal to do with a certain body of ministers in Scotland; but it addresses itself almost solely to those whom this decision utterly disreverends, and it always addresses them as reverend, excepting when on great occasions it addresses them as something more. It was only last week that we had a Lord High Commissioner, directly representative of the Crown, sitting among or over a body entirely composed of “ schismatics,” and all his addresses to them began, not even “ Reverend gentlemen,” but “Right Reverend.” But, according to a decision obtained by the Church of England, words used from the throne are to be forbidden as illegal aud “ schismatic ” on tombstones.

“Is the Church of England prepared to submit to the decision of a secular lawyer of ten years’ standing ?”—■“ Are her sons so fatally demoralised as to recognise the judgments of a youthful barrister-at-law on questions which need the mature wisdom of divines even to entertain ?” These questions were asked and indignantly answered in the negative in a sort of manifesto by the High Church part, to which we called attention last week. The reference there was to the new Court to be established under the Public Worship Regulations Act. Contrast that grand repudiation and threat with what the same party have done in this case about “Reverend.” They virtually appealed from the opinion and advice of the Archbishop of Canterbury to “a secular lawyer,” one Mr. W. Phillimore, who, we think, has not even the “ ten years’ standing,” which was considered as an insultingly small amount of qualification in the other case ; and they are next to appear in the “ Reverend” case before another “ secular lawyer,” Sir R. Phillimore, the father of the secular lawyer with whose decision they are meanwhile so much delighted. Any tribunal that decides in their favor is rightful, sacred, and “ordained of God”—any other is “secular," usurping, and of merely earthly if not actually diabolical origin.