Sin —Perhaps you will allow tne to reply, very briefly,
to the letters in The Spectator which my own, headed A-Living in the Church, in your issue of 'July 19th, has elicited. The Rector of Warrington takes me to task for giving no facts or figures .pf incumbents' stipends Of course I did not. I was not writing a statistical article; the "sweeping state- ments" made by me are cried from the housetops, and, though this is neither here nor there, I have a docta ignorantia, an instructed ignorance, in Church finance. If Mr. Longbottom wants figures here are some, taken from the first 225 livings listed in the Norwich Diocesan Calendar of 1946. Of these, 89 are of the net statutable value of less than L40o a year and 34 of them of under L300 a year.
The letter Holy Orders and Reward in your issue of August and deals adequately with the "confusion of thought" exemplified in Bishop H. Gresford Jones' letter. My object in writing to you was, to draw attentidn to a fact insufficiently recognised, namely, that not a few lay churchmen look askance at the recent appeal for a very large sum of money which, apparently, is not to be devoted to rectifying the inhumane and scandalous financial conditions in which so many of our clergy, rural and urban, exist, but to the enlistment and training of tam+ ordinands who will have nothing better than those conditions to look forward to for an indefinite length of time.—! am, Sir, yours faithfully,
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