PATRONS AND CONGREGATIONS.
WE print to-day a letter from Sir Henry Taylor which
1r puts in a very striking way the inconvenience, if not oppression, to which congregations are occasionally subjected by the present system of Ecclesiastical Patronage. The church and congregation of St. Peter's, Bournemouth, have been called into existence by the consistent zeal of the first Incum- bent. Indeed, by a somewhat bold figure of speech, it may be said that he created Bournemouth. So long as Mr. Bennett lived, the patron, of course, counted for nothing. But the moment Mr. Bennett died, the patron became all-important. His object, as described by Sir Henry Taylor, was " to pre- sent a Low-Church clergyman to minister in a church which is filled almost exclusively by a High-Church congregation." His first step in this direction was unsuccessful. The gentleman who was appointed contrived before institution so entirely to misun- derstand and misrepresent the Bishop of Winchester's directions about the services at St. Peter's, that he naturally discovered that it would be better for him to remain in his old living, and not come to a parish where, as he very candidly confessed, nobody wanted him. If the patron could at this point have yielded to the wishes of the congregation, Mr. Harland's brief connection with St. Peter's would have been an unmixed good. Unfortunately, however, he has thought it right to appoint another clergyman, who will equally find himself unable to carry on the service and work of the church in the way to which the congregation have been accustomed. It is hardly probable that Dr. Ryan will retire as Mr. Harland has retired, and there is consequently no prospect before the congregation of St. Peter's except that of a self-imposed exile from the church which has been theirs since its foundation, and which many of them probably have helped to build and adorn. There will be a large number of foolish, well-intentioned people who will hold up their hands in horror at the importance which the congregation of St. Peter's assign to trifles. It may be noticed that those who take this line are seldom willing to admit that to object to a particular ritual is to attach just as much importance to " trifles " as to cling by it. The truth of the matter is, however, that distinctions of Ritual have long ceased to be trifles. They symbolise dis- tinctions inside the Church of England far wider than those which divide either Ritualists from Roman Catholics, or non-Ritualists from Protestant Dissenters. The habitual worshipper at St. Alban's, Holborn, for example, would find far less change if he were transplanted to Ely Chapel, than if he suddenly found himself in an ordinary Evan- gelical church ; while the frequenter of the latter would be infinitely more at home in Mr. Spurgeon's Tabernacle than in a Ritualist church. It is not the least use trying to conceal or minimise these facts. In fact, there is no course so likely to bring down upon the Church of England those supposed consequences of dissension which common- place peacemakers are anxious to avert. The Established Church in England contains two religions, differing from one another very nearly as much as Roman Catholicism differs from Protestantism. It is perfectly idle to imagine that con- gregations accustomed to one extreme will put up with the other, because those who practise it happen to be called by a common name with themselves. So long as the name is the chief thing they have in common, the only way in which they can get on peaceably together is to agree to live side by side without interfering with one another. The difficulty is that, in the present state of the law, this is sometimes impossible. The patron of St. Peter's, Bournemouth, is a layman who pre- sumably thinks it his duty to propagate certain religious views. Thinking this, he naturally sees in the vacancy of his church an opportunity for doing his duty, and a call to do it. The law gives to him the absolute power of appointing any clergyman he likes. No one has a veto, no one can claim, except as a matter of courtesy, to have his remonstrances even listened to. It is impossible to blame the patron in a case like this. He must be supposed to think Mr. Bennett wrong and Dr. Ryan right, and Mr. Bennett's death naturally appeared to him as an indication that the time had come to put the congregation of St. Peter's in the way of sound doctrine and legal ritual. Sir George Meyrick only uses the powers the law gives him for doing what he thinks the interests of true religion demand. It is the law itself that is in fault,—the law which thus invests a patron with authority to consult his own wishes, to the entire exclusion of the wishes of the congregation upon which the clergyman is imposed.
Sir Henry Taylor identifies this state of things with the existence of lay patronage, and lay patronage in private hands. Unfortunately, facts do not bear him out in thus limiting it. " Patronage," he says, belonging to a Lord Chancellor or a Prime Minister, " would be almost sure to be administered with a large appreciation of results." The case of St. Mary- le-Strand is an example of how a Lord Chancellor can administer patronage. When Dr. Evans died the living was given to a gentleman of the most opposite opinions ; the fabric was stripped of its decorations, the whole character of the services was changed, and the then existing congregation sent about their business, with that ostentatious indifference to lay opinion which is never perhaps displayed in such perfection as by a professed anti-Sacerdotalist. It cannot be said that Lord Cairns's practice suggests the consoling inference which Sir Henry Taylor draws as to the superiority of private over public patronage. Nor when the patron is himself a parson need things be any better. We ourselves know an instance—the parish of Egham—in which the patron is a clergyman, and has shown his desire to do the best he can for the parishioners by presenting himself to the living at the last vacancy. In this case also the services have been changed, the choir and organist dismissed, the staff of clergy lessened—by way of meeting the wants of a rapidly- increasing population—and a large part of the congregation
driven to find refuge in the chapel of a neighbouring institu-
tion. Patrons are pretty much the same, whatever be the character in which they present. If they are conscientious, they mostly consult their own convictions. If they are without
a conscience, they mostly consult their own pleasure or their own interest. Either way, the congregation goes to the wall. It is easier to describe the evil, than to say what the remedy that evil calls for is to be. As regards changes in the
actual services, the difficulty would be met by the legislation we have several times suggested. In the case of St. Peter's, Bournemouth, for example, the new incumbent would have been unable to make any change whatever in the services to which the congregation had been accustomed. All that he could have done would have been to set up additional services, either in St. Peter's Church or in a new chapel. To any further change than this, the consent of the congregation would have been an indispensable preliminary. Still, this provision would
only meet the case of a sudden change from a Ritualist to a non-Ritualist service, or from a non-Ritualist to a Ritualist service. It would not touch the presentation of an incumbent who, while willing to make no alteration in the form of the service, is unable to avoid an alteration in the spirit underlying the form. It is very difficult to frame a
reform of the law of patronage which should give the neces- sary veto and no more, and should give this necessary veto to the right persons. That no solution of the problem is to be looked for from the Bishop of Winchester is clear from the professions he makes in his letter to the curate in charge of St. Peter's of his inability " to substitute congregation for parishioners." Until this substitution has been made, the law will be dealing with fictions, instead of facts. The possession of a veto by a Council, representing not the mem- bers of a congregation, but the ratepayers of a parish, might often prove simply an expedient for overruling the people who go to the church by and in the interest of those who stay away.
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