MOBBING A BISHOP.

Evening Post, Volume XXI, Issue 14, 18 January 1881, Page 3

MOBBING A BISHOP.

? There ia a worso scandal than a clergyman in prison, and that ia a bishop in peril of bodily assault from a mob whom he has just tried to disperse with tho Apostolic Benediction. This (says the Pall Mall Gazette) is what is reported to have happened to the Bishop of flochester last night. The living of St. Paul's, Lorrimore Square, Walworth, is vacant, and the bishop is filling it^ up by an Evangelical clergyman. This he announced to the congregation at the end of his sermon. "I tell you face to face," he said, " with my own lips, what will not surprise you, that whatever is illegal in the services here will have to be discontinued." A great commotion instantly followed— loud hisßes on one side and shouts of applause on the other,' with the screams of women sounding shrilly over both. "On his way to the vicarage to disrobe," the report proceeds, " the bishop was the subject of a hostile demonstration, a great mob followed him, hooting and yelling, and greeting Tii™ with many uncomplimentary remarks. At one point a rush was made, and but for the interposition of the police his lordship would have been assaulted. As he the -^cafage and drove away the ill-feeling of the congregation was again manifested, and his carriage was followed to the- confines of the par&h by a large crowd, who kept up a continuation of groans and 1 hisses." This pretty scene is the practical comment on the bishops aphorism that " congregational independeijee is fatal to the liberties of the Church/*^ Assault and battery on the person of a bishop is not a good way of asserting congregational independence, "but we may depend on it that means will still have to be found of reconciling the liberties of the Church with its independence before these distracting scandals come to an end. What the plain means are is now becoming very evident, even outside the members of the Liberation Society.