ii. I believe with good reason that those clergy in Portsea who

are doing great work in formerly neglected regions, feel that the scare produced by advanced ritual is seriously detrimental to them.

I wrote back that, if he ordered me, I was perfectly willing to obey the Prayer Book, and to have no other services, but that I felt my duty to my people made it incumbent upon me to impress the fact upon him that such change of services would mean a great diminution in the congregations, especially on the week-days, when the services complained of were used, and that I should like to know who had been his informant, as regards the wishes of my parish, and the opinion of my brethren in Portsmouth. His answer was, “I know that many of the clergy, by whom I certainly do not mean Mr. Young or Mr. Aldwell, regret your action, as calculated to throw suspicion upon all Church work. I do not wish to define legal ritual, but to suggest that you should be satisfied with what is purely Anglican, as sufficient for all purposes of devotion, and not liable to create suspicion, or to stir up strife. Stations of the cross, acolytes in crimson cassocks, incensing the Magnificat, and the like, certainly excite bitter animosity in an eminently Protestant town like Portsmouth. I have had no appeal from your own immediate district.”

I know many people think that ritual rows have generally been the result of a clergyman endeavouring to intrude his own methods upon an unwilling congregation, but I give these extracts from the Bishop’s letters to show that at S. Agatha’s that has never been the case. No complaint has ever come from one singleparishioner. The complaints that have come have been made either by ignorant Protestants, or by my brethren the clergy.

However, at the end of 1889, the Bishop again wrote to us on the subject of ritual, and the following letter from the Bishop of Guildford, which, though it was marked “private,” he has kindly allowed me to print, will show the five points to which the Bishop took exception.

“THE CLOSE, WINCHESTER, “_December 9, 1889_.

“MY DEAR MR. DOLLING,

“I am looking forward with much hopefulness to our interview with the Bishop on Thursday next. I did not go into any particulars in reply to your letter, in which you expressed your readiness to obey the Bishop if you were told by him to obey the P. Book, but that that would involve your reducing your services to a most dreary type. I am sure that on reflection you will have seen that the Bishop could never bring himself to make any recommendation which would bring down your services to such a low level as you suggest. But may there not be a _via media_? My object in writing to you, however, now (without the Bishop’s cognisance, and, therefore, without knowing whether he would agree with me) is to ask you whether, at his request, you would be willing to give up using

“i. Incense at Celebrations and at the Magnificat.