CLERICAL BAZAARS.
IT may be questioned whether a Prime Minister has ever evoked more general, if concealed, hostility in clerical circles than Lord Salisbury caused some weeks ago by his condemnation of certain charitable methods much in favour with those who want to raise money for pious objects. The correspondence columns of the Guardian have borne ample witness to this excitement. Our con- temporary, instead of drawing a veil over Lord Salisbury's indiscretion, as it was obviously the duty of an ecclesi- astical organ to do, has chosen to emphasise it. It has made the soothing and semi-sacred " bazaar " an object of disapproval, if not of invective. It has allowed, indeed, both sides to be heard, but it has summed up against the accused. The bazaar, which to many minds seems almost identical with the Church of England, if not with religion itself, is a thing, we are told, to be discouraged,—tolerated perhaps for a time until some better mode of getting money can be devised, but at most only tolerated. The Guardian does not seem to remember what a whole field of virtuous action will thus be closed to those many excellent persons whose fingers are stronger than their heads. To put down bazaars seems like withholding a means of grace. To make a variety of more or less useless objects, to collect and arrange them in tent or assembly- room, perhaps—a yet higher round in the ladder of sanctity—to hold a stall, these be the ideals of the modern churchwoman. And shall they all be abandoned at the bidding of a cynical statesman and a presuming news- paper ? Assuredly not. The main charge against bazaars we take to be that they profess to be instruments of charity, while they are really instruments of amusement. They share this drawback with charity balls, charity concerts, and charity entertainments of all kinds. Money is wanted for this or that object, but when it is applied for it is found not to come in at all rapidly. The persons asked set forth, by way of reply, the number and severity of existing claims upon their purse, and as no one can decently express doubt whether these alleged obligations are either as many or as punctually discharged as the answer implies, the applicant at once feels beaten. It has been discovered, however, that if people are asked not to give money to a charity, but to spend money in furnishing a bazaar, or time in selling the articles furnished, the request is much better received. For a bazaar the line between necessary and optional claims is far less severely drawn. People do not mind crossing the border of their own parish ; they will even suffer their benevolent enthusiasm to overflow into another diocese, or to take flight to heathen lands. If they are indisposed to find money for the purchase of articles to be sold, they are quite willing that their daughters should besiege their friends with prayers for the useless remainders of the knitting-needle or the em- broidery-frame. No one seems ever to turn an absolutely deaf ear to requests of this kind. Something or other is found or made or bought. Indeed the expenditure is made strictly productive, inasmuch as the purchase of to-day ministers to the sale of to-morrow. It is objected by the moralist that whatever good charity of this kind may do to the object for which money is wanted, it can only do harm to the persons who provide the money in these indirect ways. If they cared for the object they would be equally willing to provide it directly. If they close their ears to an appeal for a 5s. subscription, and open them to a request to collect and sell five shillings- worth of knick-knacks, is it not plain that they find their reward, not in the good done to the charity, but in the amusement derived from doing that good ? We can imagine the chorus of protestations that will come from hard-worked clergymen who have to add to all their other labours the drudgery and annoyance of getting up a bazaar, at the suggestion that there can be any amusement associated with it. Nor do we for a moment suppose that to them there is. But then they can stand the test that we have mentioned. If they had 5s. to spare, they would infinitely rather give them than have anything to do with a bazaar. They, however, are not the persons we have in view. We are quite sure that if the workers for bazaars and the sellers at bazaars got no amusement whatever from their preparation and conduct, very few bazaars would be held. What other motive, indeed, can there be ? It is not disinterested love for the charity. If it were, they would at once give whatever they could afford. Consequently, work done for and at a bazaar must be its own reward. Even then the hand may not go willingly into the pocket, but it goes less unwillingly than it would go otherwise. Obviously this conception of Christian liberality does not in the least resemble St. Paul's. The money he desired from his converts was to be given " not grudgingly, or of neces- sity." The hypothesis on which bazaars and all similar methods are based, is that, as the money will certainly be given grudgingly, the highest triumph of Christian in- genuity is to insure that it shall be given of necessity. People, it is argued, will decline to give money, but they will not decline to take part in, or at least to go to, a bazaar. St. Paul again tells us that "the Lord loveth cheerful giver." Cheerful givers being now hard to find we have improved on this doctrine, and lavish our ingenuity on the unwilling giver,—on the man who must be tempted into being charitable, on the woman who demands in return for her outlay a reasonable prospect of being a little less dull than she would be if she stayed at home.
The defence to this indictment is not without force, but it completely misses the point of the accusation. We can readily believe that there are many to whom what has just been said either does not apply or applies very im- perfectly. There are people who have no money to give, but who will gladly give time and labour in lieu of money. All, however, that this amounts to is, that there is hardly such a thing as unmixed evil in the world. However foolish or selEsa any particular expenditure may be, there will be some one who enters upon it with clean hands and a pure heart. But the defenders of bazaars do not concern themselves with these exceptional characters.. For the most part they allow judgment to go by default.. They admit that bazaars are objectionable, but they plead that they are necessary. Is it better, they ask, that schools should be closed, that churches or mission-rooms should remain unbuilt, that parochial needs of all kinds, should go unsatisfied ; or that the clergy should shut their eyes to the undoubted but after all not very serious draw- backs attendant on bazaars, and use the money they bring in without inquiring too curiously into the motives of those who contribute it? We are not going to give a very positive answer to this question. Indeed, it is one- which hardly admits of a positive answer. In each case the encouragement given to unsatisfactory forms of charity must be weighed against the loss, which, if these. forms are not held to be permissible, must fall upon many excellent undertakings. We will only point out that the contention that bazaars encourage a mischievous delusion as to the nature and object of charity is not met by the contention that money cannot be raised without them. Let us suppose that the profits of the gambling tables at. Monte Carlo were devoted to religious objects ; that instead of being the property of a commercial company,. they belonged to some ecclesiastical body which dis- tributed the proceeds among needy parishes or feeble missions. In that case the argument from necessity might be just as strong as in the case of bazaars. We should be asked to think of the many good works which would inevitably come to an end if Monte Carlo no longer attracted, gamblers from every quarter of the globe. A distinction may, of course, be set up between the evils associated with selling useless articles at extravagant prices, and risking large sums at play. But it is a distinction of degree rather than of kind. No one, so far as we can remember, ever committed suicide at a bazaar, and Monte Carlo is very much maligned if a good many suicides can- not be traced to its influence. But if bazaars degrade charity, if they mislead those who take part in them into thinking that they are serving God and doing good to man when all the time they are only amusing themselves, how can it be right to have recourse to them ? The defence, if defence there be, must take a different form. It must go on the theory—never, perhaps, a very safe one— that de minimis non curd eeclesia, that where money is. very much wanted it does not do to be too particular, that though help from a less questionable source would be more- welcome, help from any source whatever is better than none at all. This is not a line of defence that particularly takes our fancy, but we can imagine none better. If the clergy could rise to the height of their vocation and forego money rather than raise it by doubtful means, it might in the long-run be better for the Church and better for religion. But, for the time being, it might involve the abandonment or curtailment of many good works. If religious people had more faith in Providence, and less in. their own machinery, they might be willing to run this. risk, or rather they might feel well assured that after all it would be only infinitesimal. But faith of this kind is rare, and perhaps easily evoked by the miscellaneous purposes which bazaars so often serve.
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