MOBBING A BISHOP.

Inangahua Times, Volume II, Issue II, 4 February 1881, Page 2

MOBBING A BISHOP.

»■ There ia a worse scandal than a clergyman in prison, and that is a bishop in peril of boiily assault from a mob whom he had j ust tried to> disperse with the Apostolic Bened'c* tion. This (says the Pall Mall Gazette) is what is reported to have happened to the Bishop of Bochenter last night. The living of St. Paul's, lorrimore Square, "Walworth, is vacant, and the bishop is Billing it up by an Evangelical clergyman. This he announced to the congregation at the end of hi* sermon. * I tell you face to face,' be said, ' with my own lips, what will not surprise you, that whatever is illegal in the service here will have to be discontinued/ A great; commotion instantly followed— loud hisses on one side and shouts tf applause on tba other, with the screams of women sounding shrilly over both. .On his way to the vicarage to disrobe, the report prcceed% the bishop was the subject of a fcostiledemonstration, a great mob followed him with many uncomplimentary re* marks. At one point a rush was made, and' but for tbe interposition of the police his lordship would have been assaulted. As he left the vicarage and drove away the ill-feeling of the congregation was again manifested, and his carriage was followed to the confines of the parish by a large crowd who kept up a continuation of groan* and hisses. This pretty scene is the practical comment on the bishop's aphorism that ' congregational in. dependence is fatal fo the liberties of the Cburcji.' Assault and battery on the person of a bishop is not a good way of asserting congregational in« dependence, bnt we may depend on it that means will still hare to be found of reconciling the liberties of tbe Church with its independence before these distracting scandals come to an end. Wbat the plain means are is now becoming very evident, even outside the members of the Liberation Society.