THE UNPOPULARITY OF THE CLERGY.
rE correspondents of the Westminster Gazette and other journals who account so carefully for the unpopularity of the Established clergy might, we think, begin their ex- planations by first proving their case. We should be inclined to deny the accuracy of their postulate. With whom are the clergy unpopular ? Certainly it is not with the better class, for the first charge made against them is always that they are too much liked by it, share too closely in its senti- ments, and are altogether too completely reckoned among its component parts. The Established clergy, it is always said, belong to the gentry and not to the common people, sympathise with the employers and not the employed, and are divided from those to whom they are supposed to minister at once by education and by habit of mind. Even setting aside the " squarsons," who grow fewer as the revenues of the Church diminish, the clergy are too refined for their con- gregations, and are classed by their critics as among the friends of the oppressors. Is it, then, the poor among whom they are unpopular ? The English poor are not slow to manifest their feelings, and they certainly do not protest against the existence of the clergy, do not boycott them, do not, except upon sectarian grounds, decline their ministrations. On the contrary, the clergyman who is disliked is the man who declines to "visit," who holds himself too much aloof, who seeks the kind of sheltered seclusion to which the unpopular would naturally betake themselves. The people, so far from disliking their services, think they have a natural right to them, seek their conned in all times of trouble, and, with a curious forgetfulness of facts with which they yet are fully acquainted, rely on them for forms of assistance which, at least in the present condition of their stipends, it is prac-
tically impossible for them to afford. There is no doubt a certain cleavage between the clergy and the small tradesmen, because, while there is a deep gulf between the manners of the two classes, there is a certain hesita- tion on both sides in approaching each other, lest they should be thought in any way to encroach, a hesitation often deepened by sectarian differences, that class tending more than any other towards Nonconformity. With the majority, however gentle or simple, the clergy are popular to a degree which, considering how poor they usually are, that their first business is to be a restraint and to preach restraint, and that in this country there is no source of division like a radical difference of culture, is often wonder- ful. Individuals, of course, are disliked as in all other pro- fessions, but let any one who reads these words run over in his mind the six nearest parishes, and he will, unless his lot has fallen in a most unlucky district, find that five of the in- cumbents might fairly claim to be in their parishes the best liked men, the men most trusted, and the men to whom, in the event of parochial misfortune, the parishioners would turn first of all for sympathy and counsel. In the district we know best one Established clergyman—we admit he is rich— is so liked that Dissent has died away, and if he could be elected to Parliament his parish would give him a unanimous vote; another, an exceedingly poor man, is worshipped like a favourite priest in Ireland; a third, an over-learned and over- well-born man, is the universal referee, especially in any dif- ferences between employer and employed; a fourth, a very weak man, is a kind of pet, resembling rather the Mr. Lyon of "Felix Holt" than any nobler type; the fifth occupies precisely the position of a well-liked Dissenting minister, that is, he is popular, and in a way trodden upon ; and only about the sixth could there be a doubt. Certainly the poor cannot abide him, and the gentry will not invite him, but in neither case is it as parson that he has lost favour; he is simply a man in whom considerable capacity and many virtues are overlain with intellectual superciliousness, carried to the point at which friendship, not to say toleration, becomes practically impossible. Even pious Christians cannot put up with Mr.
, but then they would not put up with him if he were squire, banker, lawyer, or—we were going to say Noncon- formist minister, only a Nonconformist congregation would in a month give him his letters of demission. That, it must not be forgotten, is one of the causes which create the fancy about unpopularity. The Established clergyman is the only man in the parish who is always under the fire of criticism, who has official enemies, who has to offer himself at least twice a week as a target for ill-natured remarks, and who is all the while expected to be much " nicer " than anybody else,—an expectation which he so often fulfils that there is not a rural parish in England where an interregnum does not leave an impression as if the life of the parish were at least partially suspended. The clergy unpopular! we only wish a plebiscite could be taken as to their retention or extinction as a class.
But, say many of those who denounce them, you miss the point. We do not deny the private virtues of the clergy, or even their utility. What we contend, or wish to contend, is that they arrogate to themselves an ecclesiastical position which the laity do not concede, and which whenever it is strongly put forward rouses popular dislike.' A bit of that indictment is true, and is, we should say, the strongest proof possible of the general popularity of the clergy. It is perfectly tree that the majority of the English people, even within the fold, are in a way anti-clerical ; that is, are entirely without the smallest confidence in, or indeed comprehension of, the intel- lectual system known as sacerdotalism. On the other hand, a great, perhaps an increasing, number of the clergy do hold a kind of sacerdotalism, never quite complete, seldom so complete as to make them think of themselves as a caste apart, but still strong enough to give a distinct flavour to their opinions and, on occasion, to their preaching, while it always affects their political action on questions like educa- tion and some smaller subjects of dispute. And how popular the class must be when a fissure so deep as that, and one the breadth of which is so wide, has so astonishingly small an effect. The average laity of an English parish no more mind the parish priest's idea of his own function than they mind the nearest poet's or the neighbouring artist's. The rector, if he is a good rector, and does his duty, and preaches in- telligibly, and counsels with kindness, and shows in different ways that he understands his flock, may think himself a Cardinal if he likes without exciting the smallest animosity. His people will not agree with him, will at heart disagree with him in a most decided way, but they will do it silently, will never contradict him, and will hear him on the subject in the pulpit with no feeling except that he is a little presumingly professional. In the district spoken of above the much-loved rector held very much the same opinion of his sacerdotal quality as a Roman Catholic priest does, and not unfrequently allowed his internal conviction to be seen. His parishioners for the most part held opinions on the subject which 'he would have denounced—for that matter, did denounce—as " Presbyterian," and hopelessly at variance with those of the Church Visible; but that fact made no manner of difference to their bearing towards each other. The rector was the friend of all his flock, and the flock knew he was their friend, and did not care a straw whether he held himself when in ecclesiastical mood to be a "priest" or not. No doubt that state of mind proceeds in part from the English ignorance of theology, and their incurable disregard for ecclesiastical ideas of any kind ; but how long would the indifference have lasted if the fissure in opinion had been widened by personal dislike for the minister, or in fact had not been bridged over by personal liking ? To our mind the existence of eacerdotalism in the clergy of this country, while it has spread so little among the people, without any quarrel between them, is of itself the strongest conceivable evidence of the general popularity of the profession. Indeed, but for that popularity we do not believe that the existing system of patronage, in which the people neither appoint nor remove the pastor, and can, if he is fairly obstinate, hardly restrict his action, could endure for a year. The Church is under Parliament ; the parishioners are the voters ; and they would very soon insist that another system more resembling that of the Colonies should be introduced. As it is, they will scarcely trouble themselves even to favour Discipline Bills, feeling perfectly secure in their own minds that as regards their own particular man no Discipline Bill will ever be required. The English Episcopalians are singularly sensitive as to the conduct of their clergy, much more sensitive, we believe, than any laity in the world, unless it be the Scotch, and we should like those who talk of the unpopularity of the clergy to explain how it happens that, if such unpopularity exists, the laity are so pro- foundly indifferent to all schemes proposed for remedying or preventing grave scandals. If the parishioners belong to the Church they let such Bills succeed or fail without even reading them, and if they are Nonconformists they usually refuse to let them pass,—out of pure "cussedness," it is often said, but in reality because they never expect evil conduct in an Established clergyman to be either serious of frequent.
There is, no doubt, one peculiarity in the demeanour of English parishioners towards their clergy which does not suggest the popularity of the order. The parishioners very rarely try to make their vicar personally comfortable. They will find money to restore the fabric of the church, repew the church, or maintain the church ; they will keep up the church schools ; they will even sometimes give a well-loved pastor considerable sums of money when he is going away; but they will not secure him a decent stipend for his life, or keep up a Sastentation Fund, or in any serious way help to sustain him in the position which, nevertheless, they had much rather that he occupied. The Episcopalians could pay a modest sum for their seats much more easily than the Nonconformists, and, in fact, do so in the cities, but in the country they will not do it, be the necessity never so pressing. This objection to our claim for the clergy is quite true, and a very odd truth it is, one which a volume might be written to explain, the causes are so many and are so mixed up with the whole history of the country. One difficulty in the way of a Snstentation Fund undoubtedly is that a -considerable proportion of the clergy possess some private -means, and another is the belief, quite universal, though so in- consistent with the parochial system, that the evil could be radically cured by reasonable redistribution ; but the main reason is that the parishioners never quite realise the need. They never have paid, and the clergy have always "got along," and the parishioners do not believe fully that the -" getting along" will ever come to an end. The popularity of the clergy has nothing to do with the matter. The
parishioners no more think it their business to pay their clergyman's stipend than they think it their business to pay any other official who lives, or ought to live, out of the taxes. They would as soon think of paying the squire. A County- court Judge may be, often is, the most popular man in his district, but the district would be quite shocked at the notion of paying him by subscription, and their feeling about the clergyman is of precisely the same kind. They will pay him in the cities, often very liberally, because that is usual, but they will not pay him in the rural districts because that is not usual, and until they are forced, as they will be if land con- tinues to sink in annual value, they see no "call" to depart from use and wont. It is a quite exceptional instance of English parsimony, and we entirely admit its singularity, but it has no more relation to the popularity of the clergy than has the method of their appointment. The people are accustomed to an unpaid clergy, and to a clergy appointed from above, and neither like them nor dislike them one whit the more or the less because of those two quite accidental conditions of their office.
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