The leading thought raised in the minds of any Churchman
by these discussions will, we believe, be that reform and revival of Convocation is, next to Establishment, the question that most concerns the Church. Clergy and laity are adopting of their own will a kind of Parliamentary constitution, with open debate, free opposition, and decisions which are practically resolutions ; but nothing comes of it all. The Church is the only religious organisation in the world condemned to debate, as if debate were an end, and utterly unable to give effect even to unanimous opinion. It can do nothing even with an abuse like heredi- tary livings, or with the enormous disproportions between work and pay in the ministry, or with that greatest of all, its inability to unfrock admittedly immoral clerics. Yet if there were but a legal centre for action, it could remedy most of the objections raised to its own organisation without in the slightest degree impairing State control, which could be maintained as fully if all new laws were treated as bye-laws, as it is main- tained over the Education Department or the Board of Trade. The usual argument is that the constituencies would refuse such an organisation ; but has the experiment of asking them ever been fairly tried
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