SHOCKING LOW CHURCH!
It is proposed by certain well-meaning persons, to erect ragged churches on purpose only for the poor, the wretched, and the ragged. Probably a church of this sort will be built in the district of St. Giles; to be dedicated, however, in honour of St. James, the patron saint, whatever his square may think, of ill-dressed church-goers. We are getting on in matters of this kind. We are making a sort of railway progress. By and by we shall have churches for different sets of people; first, second, and third class churches. They will be churches of different orders, not only architectural but social. Perhaps the third class won't be covered in, and in that case it might be constructed on the simplest model of a Greek Temple; the rather, as the whole arrangement would certainly look somewhat pagan.
Matters being thus in train—rather on the broad gauge line, with an inferior terminus, some may say—the adoption of steam-organs might be suggested, together with the substitution of locomotives for clergymen, as soon as scientific improvement shall enable us to construct such engines, capable of performing their duties mechanically.
The Ragged Churches, we suppose, will be built of ragstone; the pulpit-cushion, the altar-cloth, will be all rags. The clergy will officiate in tatters; so as to preclude the possibility of any surplice controversy, by rendering it impossible to tell what kind of vestments they have on. The church will be ragged, the parson ragged, the congregation ragged—all ragged together. Perhaps, also, the doctrine ought, in a manner, to be ragged too; for, suppose the Church Triumphant to correspond to the Church Militant, and it would be requisite to preach a Ragged Heaven. And though there is one place for the poor and another for the rich in this world, it will be well for the rich if there is not one place for themselves and another for the poor in the next.