TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE NEW VOLUNTARY CHURCH IN IRELAND.
PirlArchbishop of Canterbury has confessed that his hope or the new Voluntary Church in Ireland is founded mainly upon the fact that its reign will be inaugurated and its work begun by men trained under the " nobler, higher, and far better system " of an Established Church ; and secondarily, on the million or so sterling which the efforts of Episcopal and Tory eloquence has saved from the wreck, over and above the life interests. His Grace would have despaired of the Church had it been started by Voluntaryists ; and he would hardly even have despaired of it,—for you cannot despair of that of which you have never entertained a hope, if it had at once been started by Voluntaryists, and started by poor Volun- taryists, Voluntaryists who had no great fund at their back. Evidently Dr. Tait,—whose many great gifts, strong, almost shockingly strong, good sense, and largeness of sympathy we sincerely admire, indeed, we believe that England could hardly have a better Primate for the crisis,—has a little quarrel with St. Paul for stating that God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the mighty, and the base things of the world, and the things which are not, to bring to nought the things which are. His own teaching is quite the other way,—that God has chosen the rich things of the world, and the honourable things, and the things which are in much repute, to bring to nought " the things which are not,"—i. e., the things which, being nought already, do not want much bringing to nought. Such is the Archbishop's view, and we will leave him to settle the matter for himself with St. Paul, having only quoted him on this occasion for the sake of the additional motive which his opinion gives to the new Voluntary Church now started in Ireland, to set a striking and honourable example to all other Voluntary Churches, by the energy, the method, and the disinterestedness of their proceedings. We read, for instance, in the papers of this week, that the Wesleyan Methodists have just raised a jubilee fund of about £180,000 for the further prosecution of their operations. Will the new Voluntary Church be able to do as much when it celebrates its jubilee,--started, as it has been, by those who have been trained on a system of which no one abso- lutely despairs, not even the Voluntaryists themselves, and which the Archbishop thinks so infinitely nobler I We earnestly trust it may be able to do that, and much more than that ; but if so, the disestablished and disendowed clergy and laity must put their shoulder to the wheel at once, and organize a system with a certain amount of vitality and force in it before the 1st January, 1871. The Church body which is to enter into pos- session of all the rescued property, and to regulate the condi- tions, ecclesiastical and theological, of this "Church of the future," must be in working order by that time, and ready to infuse something of enthusiasm into the work. Let us hope that we shall see in that Church body all the energy and popular zeal of Wesleyanism, grafted on the tolerance and breadth of the " nobler, higher, and far better system " of that quarry whence it was chopped. But if this is to happen so,—as we earnestly hope it may,—the first step must be to establish a cordial understanding between the laity and the clergy of the new Church, and we regret to see that there are already certain signs of divergence between the views of the clerical leaders at least, and of the main body of the Church, which, we need hardly say, we hope to see con- stituting in fact, as it does in name, the chief element in the new Church body.' If we are not mistaken, the clerical leaders wish to see the old Church Synods summoned for debate before any more popular body is consulted,—in other words, we suppose that the clergy should consult without the laity, before the laity are admitted into Conference. On the other hand, the popular wish is, very naturally, for the revival of the Conference which sat during the early part of the year, and which declined so bravely to take into consideration the possible success of Mr. Gladstone's Bill. In that Conference, bishops, clergy, laity, all met, we .believe, on equal terms, the clergy and laity being elected as delegates by the various dis- tricts which sent them up. Of course, in such an assembly, the laity, though they were not represented in it at all in proportions their absolute numbers, counted heavily. And naturally enough, they would desire to be taken into counsel again in the same fashion on the first critical discussion as to the organization of the new Church. If they are to wait till the clergy have first satisfied themselves by private Confer- ences what the clergy consider essential to the interests of their order,—for that is practically what synodical, as dis- tinct from general conferences, really mean,—they will feel quite certain that a definite current of clerical prejudice will have been set up, against which they will not find it easy for contend.
Indeed, on the decision now about to be taken will not im- probably hang the whole fate of the new Church ; for assuredly unless the people be taken heartily into counsel, and be made to understand that the Church will live or die by their enthu- siasm or their languor, unless, too, they clearly see that what. they do will be ostensibly their doing, and that they will not be ignored as the doers of it, after they have done it,—we doubt whether there is virtue enough in any popular Church to put forth any substantial strength. For our own parts, though we are not disposed to dispute that there is an abstract truth in the Archbishop's preference of a clergy trained in an Establishment to a clergy trained under the Voluntary system,: we are very much inclined indeed to believe that it is a truth_ which had better be forgotten for awhile and left to demon- strate itself in the practical results, and not to be made the- basis of the new system. Assuredly, if in their loyalty to the principle of the English Establishment, the clerical leaders insist on copying the Constitution, or what they may please to call the Constitution, for it is nearer a no-constitution, of the Church they have left, minus the State influ- ence which is really at the root of it, they will necessarily be doomed to failure from the beginning. It is clearly impossible to follow it in the system of lay-patron- age, which has hitherto been far from common in Ire- land, and must now very soon cease. And as the Church body,—whatever that be,—will now assume the patronage hitherto exercised by the Crown, and probably the patron- age of the Bishops and Chapters also, it will be a matter of. the very first moment to the new Church how that ChurcIr body is to be constituted.
For our own parts, we are disposed to think that the Con- stituent Assembly of the new Church should certainly be,— and should not only certainly, but confessedly, be, should publicly and rather emphatically be declared to be,—an assem- bly like the recent Conference, in which prelates, clergy, and laity all meet on equal terms, with no more authority belong- ing to the higher ecclesiastics than their characters, their position, and their talents win for them. Any other decision will certainly be accepted by the laity as a sort of vote of want of confidence in them by the clergy, and especially by the clerical leaders, and no more fatal mistake at starting- could be made. If in the Constituent Assembly the laity are put upon a level with the clergy, and taken frankly into their- counsels, then it may be or it may not be that they will be willing to consent to set up again the hierarchy in its separate estate, and to take the insignificant part of the laity in our National Church. If they do 814 it will at least be their own fault. But we are quite sure that if they do, the misfortune to the whole Church will be very great, and that it will be virtually passing a sen- tence of ecclesiastical death on the new institution. A Church which is to depend for all its growth and all its energy on somewhere about a hundred thousand heads of families, clearly cannot afford to let those hundred thousand heads of families regard themselves as of little use and no influence in the Church. Yet this must be the case unless the laity are to take a very different position indeed in the new Voluntary Church from what they take in our English National Church.
The true policy for the new Church is to make the laity par- ticipate at once and on equal terms in all the most important deliberations, not merely administrative and financial, but also ritual, and even theological. We believe that a single Chamber, in which the bishops, and clergy, and laity might all sit together, would be found far more really efficient for this purpose, than the conventional constitution which makes the bishops into a separate deliberative assembly, and puts the clergy and laity into a single lower Chamber to consult together, the votes, however, being taken by tribes, as it were, i.e., the laity delivering one vote and the inferior clergy another. What is, above everything, wanted is as complete as possible a sense of unity. Nothing will effect this so much as the presence of the bishop among the laity and clergy, where his leadership—if he is able to lead, and we all know that some, at least, of the Irish Bishops are anyhow able enough to lead,— will be infinitely more felt than in the retirement of that digni- fied seclusion called an Upper House. Moreover, the cen- tralization of the Church into a single visible body cannot but
.add to the spirit and the responsibility, as well as to the gravity of the debates, and make the various speakers feel the momentous character of their words and actions. In starting -a church of this kind everything should be postponed to life. With life, all is possible ; without life, nothing is possible ; and the danger in this case is undoubtedly a want of life. We believe there would be more animation, more dignity, more strength of organization of the popular element in the new Church, if the laity be associated frankly in the highest duties with the clerical leaders, than if it is left to grope its way through questions half novel to it, and, from novelty and want of study, half uninteresting to it, without the help of the abler ecclesiastics, and without the stimulus of seeing .at one glance the effect likely to be produced by any deci- sion on the whole mind of the Church. All experience has shown that two Houses tend to come into collision. Even in the Convocation of the Province of Canterbury we have seen often enough lately how wide has been the divergence between the bishops and the Lower House on matters of the most .theoretical and apparently remote interest. Mix the laity freely with the Lower House, and on many classes of questions .that divergence might be only exaggerated,—though on a few, —questions of heresy, for instance,—it might possibly be lessened. If three Houses were created,—laity--clergy—pre- lates,—the dangers of collision would be vastly multiplied. But in the constitution of a new Church you cannot have a greater danger than this sort of dead-lock. It creates heart- burning, starts parties, diminishes enthusiasm, increases hesi- tation, damps effort. Hence, we should say to the new Church, take care not to begin by showing distrust of the laity, take care to welcome them heartily into all your delibera- tions, and to make them feel their responsibility and their cquality. In the next place, open no unnecessary door to divisions and delays. Delays are death to a young Church that must live by its own efforts. Therefore look to strength, -unity, popular force, above everything. If you do this, the -advantages you have gained in that " higher, nobler, and much better system " of which the Archbishop of Canterbury makes his boast, may all appear in time. If not, they may be trans- formed into disadvantages, and disadvantages so deadly as to falsify his words in the very outset of your great enterprize.'
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