THE CHURCH HOUSE PROPOSAL.
IT was impossible, of course, that an event of so much public interest as the Queen's Jubilee should have been allowed to happen without the accompaniment of a subscription-list.
We could wish, indeed, that it had been otherwise ; that some room had been left for display of spontaneous feeling ; that
the hat had not been sent round quite so long before-hand. Nor do we quite understand why it was thought necessary to have not one memorial, but two. Englishmen have a common interest in the Queen's Jubilee ; but as the interest of English Churchmen in it is not greater than that of English Dissenters, or of English Roman Catholics, or of English freethinkers, we do not see why it should have demanded a separate expression. Very possibly the example will be followed, and we shall see as many varieties of memorial as there are varieties of religious belief. In that case it is hardly possible that they should not injure the national memorial. Everybody, it will be thought, will give to that ; consequently, each individual donor may, if he likes, give a more specific direction to his liberality. Given, too, that the Church was to have a memorial to herself, and that Anglican loyalty is so overflowing that it cannot be content to merge itself in the general current of English loyalty, we should have liked to see it take some other form than that of a Church House. No doubt the Bishop of Carlisle is right when he says that the ordinary idea of a memorial is an architectural idea ; that it should be something which appeals to the eye, and can be pointed to by the hand. But we have a right to expect the Church to rise a little above the ordinary idea, and to set an example in spending money as well as in other things. Viewed in this light, the scheme of a Church House is open to a great deal of criticism. No one would have proposed to build it just now had it not been for the Jubilee ; and this is pretty strong evidence that it is not among the most pressing wants that the Church has to meet. Won'& it not hate been better to single out one of these, and to let it come in for the accidental benefit of the Jubilee year I We are constantly being told, for instance, that more Bishops are the thing of all others that the Church of England needs. If this is so, why was not the occurrence of the Jubilee taken advantage of to raise a fund for the endowment of new Bishoprics? Supposing that Churchmen had shown their gratitude for the great advance which the Church has made during the last half-century by raising the £300,000 which would be required to found six additional Sees, would not this have been a more appropriate thank-offering than any mere addition to the list of ecclesiastical buildings? Again, the Jubilee coincides, we are sorry to say, with a very urgent call of another kind. The agricultural
depression has fallen with extraordinary severity upon the rural clergy. In so far as their income is derived from glebe, it is in many cases reduced to a mere fraction of its nominal amount. The parson has had to lower his rent like everybody else, and even then he is often unable to find tenants for his farms. The economies that can be practised by lay landlords are not always within reach of the clerical landlord. He cannot shut up his house, and go and live abroad. He can, indeed, farm the land himself ; but here, again, he is at a special disadvantage by the side of a layman. A small landlord is naturally a bit of a farmer. He will ordinarily have some land which he looks after himself, so that when a farm is thrown upon his hands, and no tenant offers to take it, he knows how to work it. But a clerical landlord is commonly quite without this knowledge. He has to learn to be a farmer, and though men who take to a new pursuit late in life may derive a great deal of pleasure from it, they seldom make it pay. Moreover, even if this rule did not apply to clergymen who are driven to farm their glebes, its suspension would do as much harm to the Church as it did good to the clergy. A farming parson is just as bad as a hunting parson ; indeed, since he farms for a livelihood, he will be likely to find the trade more absorbing than the amusement. The management of land is not a pursuit that can be profitably carried on in the intervals of pastoral work ; consequently, when the subsistence of a family depends on its being carried on profitably, the time it demands will probably be deducted from pastoral work. Thus, the decrease in clerical incomes which has been brought about by the agricultural depres- sion has a double operation. It causes great suffering to the worker, and it injures the quality of his work. If Churchmen are to make a separate offering from the rest of their countrymen in commemoration of the Queen's Jubilee, would not the relief of those of the clergy who, by no fault of their own, are reduced almost to want, have been a better form for that offering to take than the building of a Church House ? The Bishop of Carlisle has argued, we think, that the distress arising from this cause is too great to be remedied by any fund that is likely to be raised on the occasion of the Jubilee. The magnitude of a need is surely an odd plea to urge for spending money on something else. If the distress among the clergy is as great as we fear it is, it is rather a reason against the diversion of any sums that might have been employed in its relief.
Even if there had been no exceptional calls upon the liberality of Churchmen at this juncture, we should have been inclined to doubt the wisdom of spending either time, energy, or money on the erection of a Church House. There are two benefits that are promised to the Church in connection with it. One is that Convocation will have a proper place to meet in ; the other is that Church Societies will be no longer homeless. As to the first, the building of a house for Convo- cation might fairly be postponed until the Convocation that is to live in it has been reformed and strengthened. The need of this process is denied by no one. Opinions may differ as to the extent to which the reform should be carried, but there is a general consent as to the inadequacy of the present machinery for representing even the beneficed clergy,—to say nothing of the laity who will certainly have a separate repre-
sentation in a reformed Convocation. Even as regards the clergy, the ex-officio element is present in far too large a proportion ;
the election of proctors seldom excites the interest it ought to excite in the electorate ; and when the body thus chosen meets for business, its work is measured by its sittings, in- stead of its sittings by its work. Let Convocation be properly housed by all means, when there is a proper Convocation ready for housing. The gathering of the Church Societies in one building may be a convenient arrangement, though we suspect that whatever time is saved to the visitors will be lost to the officials. Secretaries are the natural victims of callers who have a few minutes to dispose of ; and when a man has only to go from one room to another to find his prey, the safe- guards now supplied by distance and the impossibility of visiting many offices in a single morning will be lost. If the Queen's Jubilee is to be made memorable to Church Societies, the end might have been better attained by adding to their funds than by bringing them all together under a common roof. We read, indeed, of the wonderful unanimity with which the project has been welcomed. If the clergy are as eager in their support of it as we are continually assured, they seem to have a remarkable knack of disguising their feelings. What enthusiasm there is, seems to us to be confined to those whose business it is to make speeches in favour of the project.
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