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"THE CHURCH IN THE ARMY AND NAVY.”

A CURIOUS case of ecclesiastical contention took place last summer in Dublin. The Rev. Herbert Craig, a Church of England chaplain to the forces, appointed to the Dublin garrison, had presumed to pass beyond his barracks, and visit officers and soldiers living in the city with their families. He thought that these persons were part of his charge, wherever they were to be found, and that he was in duty bound to attend them anywhere. If he and they had been beyond the ocean, in a remote colony, or in an enemy's country, he would have gone to the sick or wounded soldier, wherever he might be laid, without heeding any superable obstruction. But in Dublin the chaplain trespassed on the parish of St. Jude. The reverend gentleman at present incumbent there prosecuted Mr. Craig, accordingly, in the Archbishop's Court, and obtained judgment against him in the terms following:

"That the Rev. Herbert Tudor Craig be admonished and inhibited to abstain from performing Divine service, or administering the sacraments, or preaching in the chapel, or barracks, or buildings, in or attached to Richmond Barracks, mentioned or referred to in the petition of this case, or elsewhere in the parish of St. Jude's, without the consent of the Rev. Thomas Mills, incumbent of the said parish, and license of the Archbishop of Dublin; and let the said Rev. Herbert Tudor Craig pay to the said Rev. Thomas Mills the costs of this suit, when taxed by the Registrar of this Court."

Here was a legal triumph. The pleasure of the incumbent of St. Jude's, and the license of the Archbishop of Dublin, are declared necessary to give effect to Her Majesty's Commission, not only in the houses of Her Majesty's military servants, living in the city, but within her own barracks. The Parliamentary sanction under which the Mutiny Act and the Queen's Regulations are framed, and the higher law of Christian duty, are expected to bend under the sentence of an ecclesiastical court, and one of the gravest questions of religion and humanity must depend on a decision in the case of Mills v. Craig, by the authorities of the Irish Church. The decision, according to principles with which we have no familiarity, may be correct enough, and ecclesiastical boundaries in Ireland may be stronger than they seem to be; but that is not our concern. Neither do we profess to know anything of the parties litigant.

A cleverly written, but notably imperfect, article in "Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine," wholly in the interest of the Church of England, contains an historical exposition of the law in regard to religion in the Army and Navy, which has no doubt been perused with various interest, and would even be instructive, if most of the matter were not utterly obsolete. That, also, may be passed over, and a few observations offered by way of supplement to the article where it ceases to tell all the truth, and then dismisses with a few hasty and inaccurate sentences the case of that portion of the Army and Navy which is neither Anglican, nor Roman, nor Presbyterian, or, to quote the language of a gentleman once, for a short time, Secretary of State for War, not

"Church of England, Church of Ireland, nor Church of Scotland." The writer in "Blackwood" speaks thus :

"The case is different in regard to Protestant Dissenters. Between one sect of Nonconformists and another the shades of difference are so minute, that more than the amount of casuistry appertaining to lay men, in or out of office, is needed to discover wherein these differences lie. And in the ranks themselves, Dissenters are not only few in num ber, but they are so split up into units among the different arms and regiments that you can rarely find in any one corps above a dozen, if so many, professing exactly the same faith. To appoint chaplains for these, or even to take account of them at all, when estimating for the cost of Divine service, would be clearly impossible. Wherefore the Govern ment contents itself by commissioning, or paying for their services if uncommissioned, first, the clergy of the Established Church; next, priests of the Church of Rome; and, thirdly, Presbyterian ministers; -the last of whom take, to a great extent, all the Dissenters belonging to their respective brigades and regiments into their charge."

It will be remembered that in the census of 1851 account was taken of the number of persons actually present at Divine service, on one and the same Sunday, in England and Wales. The calculations of average attendance, after counting the actual numbers at the several services on different hours of the day, were in all cases made on the same principle; so that whether the numbers were too high or too low, the excess and the deficiency were uniformly balanced, and did not appreciably affect the relative proportions exhibited by Mr. Horace Mann in his tabular summary.

On making the last census of 1861 no such account was taken, because some members of the Church of England objected; and, therefore, the statement we have now to make is that of the number of worshippers in England and Wales seventeen years ago; with a note, however, as to Wesleyans,—that their congregations were at that time reduced by an extraordinary secession which had recently taken place; but that since that time the increase in their congregations has been very great indeed; and that, were any numeration now made, it would exhibit a very much larger aggregate, and a considerable proportionate advance. Bearing this in mind, we must observe that the proportion of Methodists shown in the following statement is far below what it would have been if taken in the last census, and very much lower than what it probably will be if taken in 1871. The grouping of denominations is not our own, but that which naturally followed from distinctive positions they were found to occupy in the country, and from the recognised affinity which draws many of them together, as well as the differences which keep them apart from others. So the Church of Eng. land stands alone, rigidly distinct. The original Wesleyan-Methodist Church, although separate from the Methodist bodies which have risen out of it from time to time, differs not from them in doctrine; the distinetion between them is only economical; there being, in fact, a disposition to reunite among the seceded bodies, and a general tendency to agreement with the parent Church, which becomes more and more clearly pronounced. In the army that agreement is practically accomplished, and the "Associated," or 66 Reformed," or "Free Methodist" soldier

is almost sure to return himself as a "Wesleyan," when he understands that he is free in this respect to choose. In England, which still yields the majority of recruits, as we have reason to believe, the Independents and Baptists habitually consort with Presbyterians, or, rather, the Presbyterians with them; and it is therefore most certainly true that the Dissenters, as we are told in "Blackwood," prefer Presbyterian services. It is also true that when a regiment is quartered where there is not a Presbyterian congregation at hand, the Dissenters and Presbyterians in its ranks desire to be marched to the nearest Dissenting chapel, where the minister acts as a vice-presbyter, receives head-money as if he were a Presbyterian, and the form of worship is 30 similar that all parties are pleased with the arrangement. It is consequently idle to talk of "minute" and unintelligible differences which split up Dissenting sects; such differences are not in practice perceived, and, therefore, cannot be complained of; it is not true that inconvenience has arisen in the service on any such account; and, as for appointing chaplains for them all, the thought can hardly have entered into the mind of any commanding officer or adjutant, who in such matters takes his daily experience as the foundation whereon to rest his judgment. The census of religious worship shows in summary the following classification and proportions. The grand aggregate of nearly eleven millions is represented by 100, and stands thus:

Presbyterians in England do not nearly amount to one per cent. of the worshippers; and for the reasons above stated we put them into the same class with the minor denominations of Dissenters, who all agree in antagonism to the Church of England, and only by so doing can we make the scale of Dissent outweigh the scale of Methodism. In the Orderly-offices of the army we find them associated in the parties marched to Divine service; so that, with rare exceptions, the denomination "Presbyterian" covers and includes "Dissenter," while "Wesleyan" includes Methodists in general. This done, the following is the practical result of percentages, as concerns recruits from England and Wales, if we base our estimate on the old, but now imperfect, census of religious worship in 1851

But we have ascertained, during many years' close personal inquiry, in camps and garrisons, that there are few soldiers indeed who have not been Sunday-scholars. If, then, the Sunday-schools of England and Wales be taken as an infant population, it is from that population that the Protestant portion of the army is almost entirely recruited; and, in view of ascertaining what relative interest we Wesleyans have in the Sunday-school population of England, we turn to the census of Sunday-schools, taken at the same time, and find as follows:

Looking at these numbers, and making all reasonable allowance for the predominance of Romanism in Ireland, and of Presbyterianism in Scotland, which cannot, however, be said of Canada and the elder colonies which now help to replenish our army, and where Methodism is numerically strong, one wonders at the coolness with which the writer, with the peculiar party whom he represents, while depreciating Dissent, utterly ignores the existence of Methodism in this branch of the Queen's service. But not only the indirect evidence of a census, the actual returns, which one who certainly possesses abundant means of information must have heard of, ought to have guarded him against prejudicing his own cause by a representation so manifestly unfair. He should have known that the Secretary of State for War received from the last Wesleyan Conference the usual note of the appropriation of ministers to the exclusive service of Wesleyans in the army, who do the full work of chaplains, and whose appointment to Aldershot, London, Chatham, Sheerness, Shorncliffe, Portsmouth, Parkhurst, Dublin, the Curragh Camp, the Mauritius, Lucknow, and Barrackpore, were sanctioned by the Secretary of State for War, communicated to the Commander-in-Chief, and by His Royal Highness notified to the general officers commanding on those stations,-except, indeed, that the Indian appointments were communicated to the Indian Office, and thence to the Governor-General of India. A writer who knows so much about the army in Ireland could not possibly be ignorant of the presence of Wesleyan chaplains in Dublin and the Curragh Camp; and while criticizing the present arrangements in this part of mili tary service, it is very remarkable that he found nothing to say

respecting this fact. We must therefore follow him to the close of his paper, and notice his proposal for the future management of religion in the army and navy.

Instead of a chaplain-general he would have a bishop "with canonical jurisdiction over all naval and military persons, and in all naval and military stations, so long as they are used for naval and military purposes." The chaplains would be his peculiars; that is to say, subject to him irrespectively of the bishops within whose dioceses the stations lie. He would have the practice of the British army and navy harmonized with that of continental states; and although he does not clearly intimate that such an agreement would ever facilitate an interchange of religious services between British and French or Italian battalions, in the event of a campaign like that of the Crimea, yet the tendency of his proposal is obviously in that direction. Roman Catholic and Presbyterian chaplains, according to his plan, would continue to officiate; but there would be no room for what is now called "the Fourth Class" in regimental returns; and the Wesleyan chaplains, now acting under the highest sanction on the principal military stations, would of course have to retire; or, if they did not retire, they would be placed under the "canonical jurisdiction" of the military bishop "over all persons," a personage having authority co-ordinate with that of the Secretary of State for War. To him, not to Her Majesty's minister, all complaints would go. *The crown," indeed, by such an arrangement, can at any time, for proper cause shown, cancel the commission of a chaplain, as of any other officer. The bishop alone is the judge, through his proper court, as to the soundness of the doctrine preached, and the general decorum of life and manners of the preacher." War Office, Horse Guards, and Admiralty would no more be troubled with complaints from chaplains or from officers; but the bishop, in the plentitude of his canonical jurisdiction over all persons, Anglican, Roman, Presbyterian, Wesleyan, would, with an oriental singleness of authority, keep them all in order; and this power, dominant within both branches of the united service, both in peace and war, would be only so far dependent on the Queen, as Bishop somebody and the Field Marshal commanding in chief, or the Secretary of State, might happen to agree. There would be, in effect, three powers: the spiritual in the bishop, the civil in the Secretary of State, and the military in the officer commanding in chief. That is to say, three powers instead of two; which two, some persons have thought, and still think, are one too many.

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Religious liberty, the glory of our empire, could not subsist in the united service under such a scheme. It would be "going back," as the writer himself says, to the state of things which existed before 1842; or, to speak more truly, to the state of things before 1838, when every man was required to be of the "King's religion," whether of the English, the Scotch, or the Irish variety; but the Dissenter who opposed them all, and the Wesleyan who troubled not himself about any of them, would again be "not recognised." Thus all that was done for the establishment of religious liberty under the wise administration of such men as Lord Herbert of Lea, and Sir George Cornewall