[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SescrATos.."]
Sin,—Sorrow and anxiety is often expressed by members of the Church of England at the scarcity of well-educated candidates for ordination. The reasons most commonly alleged for this scarcity are (1) the worldliness of modern society, (2) the increase of speculative doubts. These may be the two most important causes, but I have often thought that there was a third, and the opinion was most miserably con- firmed in the Convocation at Oxford on Tuesday week. With the merits of the question, whether the Examiners in the Honour School of Theology should be necessarily members of the Church of England, in priest's Orders, I am not at the moment concerned : with the exhibition of " Christian " spirit displayed by the audience in Convocation, the enormous majority of which consisted of clergymen, I and all who would fain find in our Church the nearest adumbration of the Master are deeply concerned. The two speakers who defended the new proposal, both men well known in Oxford, against the purity of whose motives no sane man would dare to bring an accusation before a Bench of Bishops, were greeted with howls and hisses, with cries of "Traitor!" and other despicable insinuations. When Dr. Bigge, using a very ordinary expres- sion, began to say : "I do not believe that such-and-such a thing will happen," as soon as he reached the word "believe" a howl of derision went up. I do not think Dr. Bigge saw the point of the interruption at the moment: the depths of meanness which it revealed are scarcely credible. At any rate, be began his remark again—with the same result. These interruptions did not come only or mainly from the undergraduates in the gallery, though many of these were ready, no doubt, to follow the lead of their spiritual pastors. They came from an excited mob of clergy- men, whose interest in a question, which many of them probably did not understand, had obliterated from their hearts that fundamental gift of Christianity "without which whosoever liveth is counted dead" before the God whom they serve—thus ! One could not help wondering whether the distinguished prelate, and the others who engineered that ," splendid majority," felt assurance doubly sure in the justice of their cause, if they looked at the faces and beard the voices of many of their rank-and-file. One thing is, humanly speaking, certain : that more reflective and religiously minded men have been, and will be, alienated from the ministry of the Church of England by those proceedings than will be induced by any restrictions or safeguards to enter that ministry.— I am, Sir, &c., LAYMAN.
Previous page
