The Church-House Jubilee Fund does not progress with any rapidity.
A meeting was held this day week at Grosvenor House, the residence of the Duke of Westminster, in support of it ; but the Duke stated that the sum subscribed is still only 1.:50,000, and that this sum is, of course, quite insufficient to the necessities of the case. He remarked that the Independents and Congregationalists had had no difficulty in raising £100,000 for their Memorial Hall, while the Church finds, apparently, great difficulty in getting beyond one-half of that sum. Probably the reason is that, in order to give due weight to the Independents and Congregationalists in the counsels of the nation, a central place for meeting and speaking is all but essential, since they have no such organised modes of using their influence as the Anglican Church possesses ; and that, especially at the present crisis, good Churchmen see that their aid is far more urgently needed to help the poorer clergy past a very dangerous crisis, than to build a new auditorium for clerical orators. We regard it as rather a healthy sign that, in a year like the present, the Church-House Fund excites no enthusiasm. More conveniences for talking are hardly the Anglican exigencies of the hour.
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