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 THE 
 
 BURIALS BILL. 
 
 CORRESPONDENCE 
 
 BETWEEN THE 
 
 I^EV. T. J. HUGHES, :M. A.. 
 
 RECTOR OF LLANBEDR, 
 
 MR. OSBORNE MORGAN, MP. 
 
 WITH S U P P L E M E N 1 A R Y li E M A K K S 
 
 [Re-printed from the Wrexham Guardicw.J 
 
 t 
 Printed and Published by J. Vaughan', "Gil&rdiaa" Office. 
 
 WREXHAM: i.;
 
 w 
 
 THE BURIALS BILL. 
 
 To the Editor of the Wrexham Guardian. 
 Sir, — I shall be obliged by your iDserting the enclosed 
 correspondence, between Mr. Osborne Morgan and myself, in 
 your Guardian, 
 
 Llanbedr Rectory. T. J. HUGHES. 
 
 " Llanbedr Rectory, Ituthin, , 
 
 Feb. 1, 1872. 
 " Dear Sir, — Personally I have no right to trespass upon 
 your time ; but, as one of no inconsiderable number of your con- 
 stituents, who are at least unfortunate in having you as their 
 Representative in Parliament — as a Churchman — I may perhaps 
 ask the favour of an explanation as to an assertion made recently 
 by you at a public meeting in the County. You are reported in 
 the North Wales Chronicle of January 13th, to have stated in a 
 speech to your constituents at Wrexham, that ' the Churchman 
 possesses a valid, I might say odious, right to read over the body 
 of a deceased parishioner a funeral service which, had he been 
 alive, would have been most abhorrent to his feelings., and which* 
 in nine cases out of ten, is abhorrent also to the feelings of his 
 relatives.' 
 
 "May I ask you to point out definitely what there is in the 
 Burial Service of the Church, which can, upon any reasonable 
 ground, be ' abhorrent to the feelings ' of any rightly-constituted 
 religious mind ? During a parochial ministry extending now over 
 25 years, it has fallen to my lot frequently to celebrate this service 
 over the remains of persons, who bad belonged to various Dissent- 
 
 i
 
 iog Coramunions^Jf I may so describe thein, aud again and again 
 have I had occasion to observe how the solemn words of that 
 sablinie service have administered comfort most true to many an 
 aching heart, and soothed many a heaving bosom ; but never — I 
 use the word deliberately — have I seen the least indication that 
 the service has been ' most abhorrent to the feelings ' of mourning 
 relatives ; and this is the first time 1 have heard any imputation 
 of the kind. 
 
 " Dissenters have made it aground of objection to the Rubric, 
 that a service so full of Christian hope and comfort should be 
 read over the remains of all indiscrhiwintely, and Churchmen have 
 sometimes felt the force of this objection. But this is not your 
 point of view. You would contend, I presume, that the Dissenting 
 parishioner, whom you consider wronged, had died in the ' true 
 faith of Clirist ; ' and granting this to be the case, I ask again, 
 What is there in the Burial Service of the Church which can jus- 
 tify your description of it as being ' most abhorrent ' to the reli- 
 gious feelings of anyone, or of the relatives of anyone, calling 
 himself a Christian, though a Nonconformist ? 
 
 " I can quit© understand an Infidel or Secularist denouncing 
 the right to use the Burial Service over his remains as ' odious ; ' 
 but I am wholly at a loss to conceive how you can reconcile the 
 use of this opprobrious e23ithet, either with the facts of the case, 
 or with the convictions of your own conscience, if I am right in 
 assuming you to be a member of that Church, whose Burial 
 Service you have thus publicly denounced. 
 
 I remain, yours truly, 
 
 "T. J. Hughes. 
 
 '' G. Osborne Morga:i, Esq." 
 
 " 20, Bolton-street, Piccadilly, W., 
 
 " 3rd February, 1872. 
 " Dear Sir,— I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter 
 of the 1st instant, which only reached me laSt evening. I per- 
 fectly admit that you are entitled, as one of my constituents 
 
 UIUC '
 
 though, as you say, an unwilling one — to require from me an 
 explanation of any assertion made by me at a public meeting. The 
 passage in my Wrexham speech, which you quote, is correctly 
 reported, except that the word ' valid' is a misprint for ' barren.' 
 But the meaning which you attribute to it is, allow me to say, 
 entirely misconceived. Speaking for myself, personally, I can 
 truly say that I regard the Burial Sei'vice of the Church of 
 England as one of the most sublime compositions in our language, 
 and I have never been able to listen to it without emotion. I 
 have stated this both in the House of Commons and elsewhere ; 
 indeed, in introducing my Burials* Bill, I spoke of it as ' a form of 
 service which is perhaps the most touching message of peace and 
 consolation ever composed by man, when it falls on softened and 
 sympathetic hearts.' It is possible, nay probable, that many Dis- 
 senters may^ share that opinion. But it is not the use of any 
 particular form of expression, or even the introduction of any par- 
 ticular form of doctrine in the Burial Service, to which Dissenters, 
 as a general rule, object. They object to the compulsory use of a 
 fixed and stereotyped Service in tuto. Such a Service, however 
 unobjectionable, or even beautiful, in the abstract, if unaccom- 
 panied by a single word of prayer or consolation specially adapted 
 to the past life or religious creed of the deceased, or the circum- 
 stances or feelings of his surviving relatives or friends, is, I have 
 not the slightest doubt, ' abhorrent to the feelings of nine-tenths ' 
 of the Dissenters in this country. The best proof of the fact lies 
 in the support which my Bill has received from them. I im sorry 
 you consider the epithet which I applied to the Church Service 
 '' opprobrious." I used it in no such sense, nor is it fairly suscep- 
 tible of such an interpretation. 
 
 " I am, dear sir, yours faithfully, 
 
 " G. Osborne Morgan. 
 " Rev. T. J. Hughes." 
 
 " Llanbedr Rectory, Ruthin, 
 
 " February 6, 1872. 
 Dear Sir, — I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your
 
 letter of the 3rd, and to thank you for the explanation you hare 
 given me of the paragraph in your speech, to which I had asked 
 your attention. 
 
 " Your explanation is, I admit at once, satisfactory, so far as 
 it removes from my mind a very painful impression I had received 
 from your speech as to your personal convictions. It is satisfac- 
 tory also, as containing virtually an admission of the utter absence 
 of all sound reason for the invasion of our churchyards, with which 
 you have though' proper to connect your name, and as indirectly 
 supplying evidence of the evil of such a step, even on the religious 
 grounds on which you are pleased to advocate it. 
 
 "I am glad to find that you appreciate at their proper worth the 
 chastened and solacing tone and sentiments of the Burial Service 
 of the Church : but your speech at Wrexham conveys no such 
 impression. I do not profess to be an exact reader oflParliamen- 
 tary debates, and it is but recently I have become connected with 
 this county. Possibly, therefore, I have not paid to your speeches 
 on other occasions the attention 1 ought to have done ; but, 
 reading your speech at Wrexham per se, so far from having mis- 
 conceived your meaning, I believe the inference I drew was inevi- 
 table, if words are to be interpreted according to the standard of 
 common usage. You spoke of the Burial Service as ' abhorrent to 
 the feelings ' of certain persons. If I use such language, surely I 
 must be understood to mean that there is something to be abhorred 
 for its own sake in the object as to which I profess such aversion ; in 
 other words, I do not know how I am to interpret your words 
 otherwise than as conveying to your hearers that the Burial 
 Service in its subject matter contained sentiments or modes of 
 expression to be abhorred by a religious mind ; but when I ask you 
 to point out dejinitely what these are, you reply by an eloquent, 
 but most just, eulogy on the Service. I tliank you for it, 
 and accept it as a valuable admission that the opposition of Dis- 
 senters cannot, or ought not, to arise from anything objectionable 
 iu the Service itself.
 
 " It appears, however, from the latter part of your letter, 
 that the objection of Dissenters arises, not so much from what the 
 Service contains, as from what it does not contain. It contains no 
 provision for making special reference to the past life of the 
 deceased, or the circumstances of his death. But does this 
 justify your accusation ? Of two modes of discharging the same 
 duty, one may be more gratifying to my feelings than the other ; 
 the other may be less pleasing, but does not necessarily become a 
 thing to be loathed. 
 
 "There is another aspect of the question, as to which I ought 
 not to be silent. I understood you to admit the validity of the 
 Churchman's right ; but this, it appears now, was an error of the 
 printer's. What a 'barren right' means, I do not know; but I 
 do ask you what property exists- in the whole kingdom, the title 
 to which is more sacred, and which ought to be more inviolate, 
 than that of the Church to her property ? The churchyard is 
 God's acre. Your Bill is a throwing down of the fence around it, 
 a laying it open to the service, sacred or profane, of any chance 
 comer ; it is an invasion of the rights of property, wliich can be 
 followed only by an utter unsettling of all the foundations of 
 society. It is becoming rapidly in the School, Church, and Church- 
 yard, a question j?ro am ; it will soon, become ^^ro/ocis also. 
 
 " And what reason do you advance for this measure? It is 
 to be done solely to gratify the feelings of certain dissentients. I 
 ask you, as a lawyer, is feeling a sufficient test of right and wrong ? 
 It might be very gratifying to my feelings to be declared the 
 possessor of a Ducal estate ; but is this sufficient ground on which 
 to establish a title ? 
 
 " But allow me to say a word as to the- only reason you 
 advance for your Bill — the propriet}'', on religious grounds, of 
 introducing personal allusions into a Service for the Burial of the 
 Dead. All allusions of the kind must obviously be, more or less, 
 
 —^ ©f a laudatory character : failings — and who is without them? 
 
 H^ vouldbe glossed over ;^ virtues, supposed or real, would be extolled. 
 
 I
 
 The service would be of the nature of a panegyric ; it would be 
 
 for the glory of man, or the glory of the sect, and not for the 
 
 glory of God. Let me ask you, in all seriousness, is this in 
 
 accordance with the spirit and teaching of Christianity? Are it^ 
 
 ministers to have ' men's persons in admiration ' by flattery and 
 
 by pandering to their vanity ? On the contrary, is not the whole 
 
 tendency of Christianity, as summed up in the Sermon on the 
 
 Mount, in the opposite direction ? 
 
 " The Burial Service is an act of Divine worship. Does not 
 
 natural instinct, and much more, Christian principle, teach the 
 
 impropriety of addressing the Supreme Being, the Searcher of 
 
 hearts, the Judge of all mankind, in terms of human praise, which 
 may indeed be very gratifying to our feelings, but which may 
 
 also be utterly odious in His sight ? Is it not far more in the 
 
 spirit of Christ's religion to content ourselves, as the Church 
 
 teaches us to do, with the exj)ression of a calm and sober hope as 
 
 to the final lot of the departed ? 
 
 " If there should be peculiar circumstances of a domestic 
 nature, as I know there sometimes will be, the home of the family 
 is surely the proper place for administering suitable consolation -^ 
 or if the departed had been a prominent member of one of the 
 sects, then his own usual place of worship would be the most suit- 
 able stage on which to dilate on his labours for his own particular 
 denomination. The Church does not allow allusions of the kind 
 at the burial of the most exalted or attached of her own members ; 
 and to extend such a privilege to those who have not only re- 
 nounced her communion, but who have, perhaps, spent their 
 whole lives in hostility to her, is not merely an act of uncalled-for 
 partiality : it is an aggression, as unlawful in its nature as it is 
 un-Christian in its tendency, and demands the most strenuous op- 
 position on the broad, but solid, principle that it is a measure for 
 the glory of man, and not for the glory of God. 
 
 " I am, dear sir, yours truly, 
 
 "T. J. Hughes. 
 
 " G. Osborne Morgan, Esq. 
 
 I
 
 9 
 
 " P.S. — These letters have not been written with a view to 
 publication ; but circumstances may be such that I may feel com- 
 pelled to ask permission, on your part, to send our correspondence 
 to the Press." 
 
 '' 20, Bolton-street, Piccadilly, W., 
 
 " February 7th, 1872: 
 
 " Dear Sir, — In reply to your letter of yesterday, I beg to say 
 that I have not the slightest objection to your sending our 
 correspondence to the Press, or making any other use of it you 
 please. 
 
 " I am sorry that you persist in attributing to the word 
 ' abhorrent ' a meaning which I never intended it to convey. 
 Surely the word is nothing else than the Latin equivalent to 
 ' distasteful.' Perhaps it would have been better to have used the 
 Saxon expression ; but if I may respectfully venture to say so, I 
 hardly expected that it would have been necessary to have ex- 
 plained the meaning of the word to a scholar like yourself. 
 
 " I really must decline to enter into any further discussion 
 about the merits of my Burials Bill, particularly as it will soon be 
 discussed publicly. 
 
 " I am, d6ar sir, yours truly, 
 
 " George Osborne Morgan. 
 " The Rev. T. J. Hughes." 
 
 " Llanbedr Rectory, Ruthin, 
 
 " 13th February, 1872. 
 " Dear Sir, — Without entering into any subtle discussion as 
 to the distinction between '• eidola specus^ and '■ eidolafoin^^ it is 
 obvious to observe, as to the word ' abhorrent,' that words, which 
 may be interpreted in one sense in schools of learning, may receive a 
 very different interpretation in the market hall of a Welsh town. 
 Hady our address been deliveredinthelecture-room of an University, 
 I should, of course, have estimated your words by a different
 
 10 
 
 standard ; but when delivered to an audierioe consisting largely, 1 
 presume, of Welshmen, and certainly circulated through the press 
 among your Welsh constituents, I had to estimate your meaning 
 by the current standard of our own countrymen. 
 
 " I have been at the pains of ascertaining the meaning 
 attached to ' abhorrent ' in some of our more popular Welsh 
 dictionaries, and the time which this inquiry has taken (for I had 
 not all the volumes at hand) must be my apology for not having 
 replied to you sooner. 
 
 " I give you the interpretations : — 
 
 " Abhorrent. A fo'n ffieiddio, a fo'n fiiaidd gandio. Walters. 
 
 " Abhorrent. Atgas, ffiaidd, ffieiddiol, a fo'n ffieiddio. T. Jones. 
 
 "Abhorrent. Atgas, atgasol, ffiaidd, casaol, &c. Edwards fCaer- 
 fallwch). 
 
 " Abhorrent. Atgas, ffiaidd, cas, gwrthneuol, djgasol, &c. Silvan 
 Evans. 
 
 all agreeing that the Welshman is to understand by the word, 
 ' odious, hateful, loathsome,' &c. (Dr. Owen Pughe), and nothing 
 approaching so mild a term as ' distasteful.' 
 
 " If English words, derived from Latin sources, are to be 
 interpreted according to various shades of classical usage, I fear 
 our dictionaries will have all to undergo serious revision. But 
 surely you have not forgotten the maxim of Horace, generally 
 considered a high authority among scholars, that in matters of 
 this kind the supreme arbiter is 
 
 " usus, 
 Quern penes arbitrium est et jus et norma loquendi, 
 and this is the standard by which I have estimated your language. 
 
 "But I sink willingly all controversy as to a word in the 
 graver issues which are involved in your Bill'; and as I think it 
 desirable that the Churchman's view of the subject should be pre- 
 sented to our countrymen, I shall avail myself of the permission 
 on your part to publish our correspondence. 
 
 " I am, dear sir, yours truly, 
 
 "X. J. Hughes, 
 
 '' G. Osborne Morgan, Esq^"
 
 11 
 
 " 20, Bolton- street, Piccadilly, 
 
 " February 19th, 1872. 
 *' Dear Sir, — I have to apologise for not answering your 
 letters before, but a great pressure of business prevented me from 
 so doing. I regret that my numerous and pressing engagements 
 do not permit me to enter into the verbal controversy to which, 
 according to your last letter, our differences seem to be reduced. 
 " Believe me, yours faithfully, 
 
 " G. Osborne Morgan. 
 '♦ The Rev. T. J. Hughes." 
 
 " Llanbedr Rectory, Ruthin, 
 
 "21st February, 1872. 
 
 " Dear Sir, — Most glad should I be if the difference between 
 us were reduced to the small compass of the meaning of a word. 
 I can quite understand that your engagements are numerous and 
 pressing ; but, amid them all, allow me to remind you that you 
 have not touched my arguments as to two most important points. 
 
 " 1. The right of the Church to the free and undisturbed use 
 of her property. If Sir William Blackstone, at least, is an autho- 
 rity, our ancient parish churches were erected by the Thanes of 
 old, as churches are erected by members of the Church to this 
 day, and, with their endowments, were a gift to the Church, quite 
 as much as the endowments which several of the Dissenting bodies, 
 have in different parts of the country are gifts to them. If Dis- 
 senters object to the Burial Service of the Church, let them, by 
 all means, be relieved from the pain of having its comforting 
 language addressed to them, though I am bold to say that the 
 great mass of religious Dissenters entertain no objection of the 
 kind, except as far as it is urged upon them by a few ambitious 
 preachers. But it is a perversion of terms to say that civil and 
 religious liberty requires that the sects should intrude into the 
 Church's heritage with a service of their own, quite as much as I 
 presume it would be allowed to be that the Roman Catholic should 
 have the power to enter the Calvinistic Methodists' burial ground,, 
 and celebrate a service there with crucifix and thuribule, and all
 
 12 
 
 the emblems of the Roman Catholic ritual. Instead of healing 
 divisions, is it not plain that your Bill must draw the line between 
 Church and Dissent mare distinct than ever? Now Churchmen 
 and Dissenters meet at the same grave, and often bury their diffe- 
 rences, a kind of presage of a happier and more enduring union in 
 the life beyond. 
 
 " Liberty ! Alas ! it is possible to use so precious a gift as 
 Epikalumma tes kakias — a veil of mischief. 
 
 " 2. The evil of personal allusion in prayer unto God. This 
 is, I believe, indulged in largely by Dissenters at their burial ser- 
 vices, and springs, as I have already observed, either from vanity, 
 or from the Pharisaism which says, ' I am holier than thou.' 
 Churchmen have the most conscientious objections, on the highest 
 grounds of religion, that their churchyards should be profaned by 
 such utterances, and that they should very often, from the con- 
 tiguity of the parsonage to the churchyard, have to submit to the 
 pain of listening to matter so offensive. But I suppose Church- 
 men have no consciences, or have no right to have their conscien- 
 tious convictions regarded in the least. 
 
 " One word more, and I have done. The Roman Catholic is 
 true to his Church and Creed. The Dissenting laity are zealous 
 and outspoken in the defence and support of their respective deno- 
 minations. Thank God, the Church, too, has a small and devoted 
 phalanx, even in the House of Commons. But I can scarcely con- 
 ceive a more false and humiliating position than that of one who 
 calls himself a Churchman, who pronounces a beautiful eulogy 
 upon the Burial Service, and yet becomes the leader of the crew 
 who are about to banish that service, as far as they can, from our 
 churches and churchyards. 
 
 " Well may the Church take up the lament of the prophet 
 and say, ' I have nourished and. brought up children, and they 
 have rebelled against me.' 
 
 " I am, sir, yours^ &c., 
 
 "T. J. Hughes. 
 
 ^' G. Osborne Morgan, Esq."
 
 13 
 
 The f.)llowing letter on the subject also appeared in the 
 Wi^exliam Guardian :— 
 
 THE REAL MEANING OF A WORD. 
 To the Editor of the Wrexham Guardian. 
 
 Sir,-^Mr. Morgan, in one of bis letters to the Rector of Llan- 
 bedr, assures him that the word " abhorrent " is nothing else than 
 the Latin equivalent to " distasteful," and expresses some surprise 
 that it should be necessary to offer that explanation to a corres- 
 pondent who is admittedly a scholar, 
 
 I have looked at three English dictionaries which are usually- 
 referred to^ — namely, Bailey's, Dr. Johnson's, and Richardson's, 
 and I do not find the words ." distasteful " or " distaste " in any 
 explanation of " abhorrent," " abhorrence," or " abhor.'* 
 
 Mr. Bailey tells us that to abhor is " to loathe or hate, to 
 detest, to abominate." Dr. Johnson says it is " to hate with 
 acrimony, to detest to extremity, to loathe, to abominate." And 
 Dr. Richardson, that it is " to dislike or detest, to loathe, to dis- 
 dain, to abominate, to be averse from, opposed or contrary to, 
 inconsistent with." 
 
 " Abhorrent," says Dr. Johnson, is an adjective from abhor 
 And he gives as its first signification— " struck with abhorrence^ 
 loathing ; " as its second — " contrary to, foreign from, inconsistent 
 with." 
 
 Before our English dictionaries are altered to suit the con 
 venience of our member, and in obedience to his dictum, it will b 
 well to correct several, if not all, our Latin ones. Scheller 
 notices, in his Lexicon, that the proper meaning of " abhorrere " 
 is " to shrink back from with a shudder," and he nowhere offers 
 " to be distasteful to " as a suitable translation for it. Our old 
 acquaintance, Ainsworth, is still less pardonable ; he has " abhor- 
 rens " in one portion of his dictionary and " distasteful " in 
 another, but he does not translate either word by the other, in the 
 same profound ignorance that they are equivalent, which, unti^ 
 Mr. Morgan's recent explanation, was the condition of, 
 Sir, your obedient servant, 
 
 February 29th. A CONSTANT READER.
 
 14 
 
 SUPPLEMENTARY REMARKS. 
 
 Mr. Osborne Morgan grounded his argument for his 
 Burials' Bill, in the above correspondence, so exclusively 
 upon what may be called the sentimental view oi the question, 
 that the principles of right and wrong, which are involved 
 in it, have not, 1 think, been sifted as closely as it is 
 desirable they should be. Let me ask the reader to give his 
 calm attention to the following statement. The Noncon- 
 formists, by continued agitation, obtained a Bill granting 
 them exemption from liability to all payments as to the 
 proper care of Churches and Churchyards, alleging as a 
 reason that, as they maintained their own places of worship 
 and graveyards, so Churchmen should maintain theirs. 
 Having thus virtually shifted the entire cost and charge of 
 the maintenance of Churches and Churchyards upon Church- 
 men alone, they now come forward with a bold front, and 
 claim that they have a right, with very few limitations, to 
 use the Churchyard just as they please, to be followed, 
 doubtless, in due course, by a claim to use the Church also. 
 
 Now, in order to have a clearer aspect, perhaps, of the 
 bearings of the question, let me, for a moment, take it out 
 , of the region of religious polemics, and exemplify it by a 
 parallel case in civil matters. Suppose a Museum and a 
 Public Park were attached to a town. The Park grounds- 
 require to be kept in order, and, as they are for the use and 
 benefit of the whole community, it is proposed that the 
 expense should be defrayed out of a Town-rate. But suppose 
 a number of residents in the town to say, " We have a club- 
 room and garden of our own which we maintain, and whicb
 
 15 
 
 we prefer to yours ; we object to your rate ; " and by con- 
 tinued agitation the dissentients obtain exemption from the 
 public park-rate. But, after a very few years, suppose the 
 very same persons to turn round and say, " We are burgesses ; 
 we live within the bounds of the borough ; we demand of 
 right to use the park just as we please; only of course you 
 will continue to pay for keeping it in order, while we are to 
 be exempt." Let me ask, can such conduct be reconciled 
 with those principles of truth and uprightness, which ought 
 to regulate the proceedings of honourable and truly 
 conscientious men ? And yet it appears to me that it is 
 the exact counterpart of what is proposed to be done by 
 means of Mr. Morgan's Burials' Bill. 
 
 Perhaps the illustration I have used above will help us 
 also to understand what Mr. Morgan means, by what he is 
 pleased to call the Churchman's " barren right." The 
 Churchman's barren right, it appears, is the right to use the 
 Churchyard, and to pay for its proper care and enclosure. 
 The Dissenter's profitable right is the right to use the Church- 
 yard and not to pay. Very profitable, doubtless ; but the less 
 said about conscience the better. 
 
 Let it be carefully remembered, that this Burials' Bill 
 grievance is admitted to be a grievance of sentiment only. 
 But if every imaginary grievance of sentiment is to be 
 redressed at the sacrifice of truth and honour, what must be 
 the result? For instance, the Alabama claims, in their 
 latest development, are an outgrowth of a grievance of 
 sentiment ; and, according to his own principles, Mr- 
 Morgan would yield to pressure, if brought to bear with 
 sufficient power upon him, and would move that the claims 
 be admitted to their fullest extent. 
 
 Mr. Morgan referred in his speech to the common law 
 right of every parishioner to be buried in his parish Church-
 
 16 
 
 yard. No one disputes this ; but Mr. M. knows well that this 
 right is the result of that union between Church and State, 
 which dates back almost from the first birth of our national 
 life, and which has been interwoven with all our national in- 
 stitutions. He knows well that, according to the terms of the 
 compact, the Church has an equally indefeasible right to the 
 use of her Service at burials, or, under certain circumstances, 
 of no service at all. If the State demands an alteration in 
 the terms of the arrangement, tiien surely the Church, as 
 one of the joint contracting parties, has a right to be heard. 
 If the claim to interment be still maintained (and no one 
 objects to it), it was never in the bond, that every funeral 
 party should demand and exercise the right to use any 
 religious service they please, as is proposed by Mr. M.'s 
 Bill, any more than that every parishioner, who claims, as he 
 can by common law, a seat in the Parish Church, shall also 
 claim the right to supersede the Church's Service and Creed 
 by inventions of his own. 
 
 Moreover, let us trace this Bill to its necessary results ; 
 not only will it empower the Roman Catholic priest to enter 
 oui* churchyards and celebrate a service according to the 
 Creed of his Church ; not only will it give a legal status 
 to schismatics and heretics of every shade and hue, 
 to the latest development of Shakerism,* within the 
 precincts of God's consecrated Acre — more than this, if 
 I understand the Bill rightly, any religious service will be 
 legal. In these days of extensive commercial enterprise and 
 intercourse of nations, when men of all Creeds are to be found 
 on our Exchanges, in our Law Courts, and at our Universities, 
 it is no stretch of imagination to suppose interment in aParochial 
 Churchyard claimed for a Jew, Mormon, Turk, or Parsee, 
 
 * tSfe the Loudon Police Reports 0/ last month.
 
 . 17 
 
 accompanied with a religious service according to the belief of 
 one or other. The Bill, in its original form, contained no 
 distinctive recognition of Christianity. Moreover, what- 
 ever recognition it contains now is due, not to Mr. Morgan or 
 any of his friends, but solely to the Conservatives ; and the 
 circumstances, under which an amendment to that effect has 
 been introduced into the Bill, deserve notice. When it was 
 proposed in 1870, that the religious service, other than that 
 of the Church of England, should consist of the reading of a 
 portion of Holy Scripture, a prayer, and a hymn, Mr. 
 Morgan and his friends rejected the proposal with disdain. 
 Now, however, when they are opening their eyes to the dis- 
 covery that the people of England are not so eager to accept 
 Secularism as their creed, and that they are ready to say as to 
 their Church, what the poet says of old England — 
 
 — With all thy faults, I love thee still, 
 the same amendment, when proposed this year by Mr. J. .G 
 Talbot, one of the Conservative members for Kent, is gra- 
 €iously accepted. Thus the recognition of the Word of God, 
 as an essential part of the religious service, is due solely and 
 exclusively to the Conservatives ; but no limitation can be 
 applied to the remainder of the service. In other 
 words, the Bill both in its conception and in its tendency is, 
 if of any religion, simply pantheistic ; according to it, 
 Christianity is no longer the one True Religion — it is only 
 one of the many forms of Faith prevailing in the world. 
 The Church is to be dethroned from her proper function, as 
 ^'The pillar and ground of the Truth" (St. Paul i. Tim. iii. 15), 
 and it requires but a very slight development of the prin- 
 ciples of this Bill to enact by law, that Pantheism is to be 
 the future Creed of England, and that our consecrated
 
 18 
 
 Churchyards, insteiid of being places of Christian Burial, 
 and our ancient Parisli Churches, instead of being places of 
 Christian worship, are to become virtually Pantheistic Ceme- 
 teries and Cemetery Chapels ! 
 
 Mr. Morgan may say, as I hope he will be able to say 
 that he contemplated no such consequences ; but I do not 
 think he can deny my inferences. His object throughout 
 is that a " religious service," whether Christian or not, may 
 be conducted in our Churchyards.* But when he knows, as 
 he must know, that the Bill will inflict upon his fellow- 
 Churchmen a grievance infinitely more galling than any 
 which can be alleged, even upon Mr. M.'s own showing, in 
 behalf of his Dissenting friends, let me entreat him to 
 abandon this abominable Bill. 
 
 Let me also, with all the seriousness the subject demands, 
 ask earnest and religious men among the various bodies of 
 Dissenters, whether they are prepared for this ? Is a Bill 
 which opens the door to results such as these, in their opinion, 
 a just and righteous Bill ? What would they say, if a Bill 
 were submitted to Parliament empowering a Roman Catholic 
 Priest, or even a Church of England clergyman, to enter 
 their places of worship and hold a service, each according to 
 his respective Ritual? They will thus perhaps be better 
 able to understand and appreciate the grounds of the 
 hostility, which Churchmen cannot but entertain towards 
 this measure on the deepest conscientious and religious con- 
 victions. Let me entreat my fellow Churchmen also, for the 
 
 * I find two limitations. (1) The Service must be that of " a rehgious body 
 having a rei?isterocl place of worship." The Mormon Creed is, but the Moslem 
 and the Parsee Creeds are not as yet in Mr. Horace Mann's catalogue ; but when, 
 to say nothing of Mornnons, such denominations as " Free-tliinkers, Rational 
 Frogressionists, JSouthcottians, &c., &c.," satisty the legal condition, it is obvious 
 that the recognition of Cristianity may be 1 he very slightest, even among reli- 
 gious bodies, by a figure of speech, called Christian. (2) Churchyards given to 
 the Church within the last 50 years 7nay be exempt. That is to say, Christianity 
 was introduced into England and the Church ol England founded in the year 
 1823.
 
 19 
 
 honoar of God, to bestir themselves and offer their most 
 strenuous resistance to this most offensive Erastian 
 measure. 
 
 The only adequate solution, it seems to me, is that which 
 has been arrived at by the Church in her Convocation, and 
 which has been embodied in Lord Beauchamp's Bill. Let 
 increased facilities be provided for enabling Nonconformists 
 to have graveyards of their own ; meanwhile let them 
 retain their right to sepulture in the Churchyard, and if they 
 desire to dispense with the Burial Service of the Church, let 
 them be empowered to do so, their own service being held 
 at their own place of worship, and not in the churchyard. And 
 let not this be maligned as being " the burial of a dog ;" for I 
 am informed that, even where Dissenters have graveyards of 
 their own, their distinctive Burial Service is always held in 
 their Chapels, and, when the body is laid in the grave, not a 
 word of prayer is said. An address is delivered ; but. even 
 Mr. Morgan abandons this, as open to abuse. Let this then 
 be accepted as a compromise ; let their own Service be held in 
 their own Chapel, as is the case now ; and if the remains are 
 brought to the Churchyard for interment, let them be de- 
 posited quietly in the grave without the Church Service, if so 
 desired.* 
 
 To this the Churchman is prepared to assent. The 
 Dissenter has, virtually, declared his approval of it ; and we 
 shall be spared the continued jealousies and heartburnings, 
 which, if nothing worse, must be the result of Mr. Morgan's 
 
 Burials' Bill. 
 
 * The Lord's Prayer, and "The Grace of our Lord, &c.," might be suitably said 
 at the grave ; but the prejudice of some Dissenters against " Forms of sound 
 words " is so strong that, I fear, they Avould object even to thi'se, though a very 
 part of Holy Writ, and though Scripture gives express sanction to such forms, 
 (ii. Tim. i. 13.) 
 
 T. J. H. 
 
 Printed by J. Yaugliau, at th9 ■•Guardian" OfSces, 26, Hope Street. Wrexham
 
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