THE CHURCH.
TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE Times has announced that certain Church reforms are contem- plated, as sweeping in principle as any reformer could wish. It is proposed to take from the immense incomes of the Bishops and dignified clergy, and to give to the scantily-remunerated underlings, the poor vicars, and poorer than the poorest, the curates. This will be done, of course, without injmy to existing interests. At the demise of a bishop, the inccme of his successor will be regulated according to a fixed standard, and the residue set apart for his smaller brethren.
Whatever opinion may be entertained of trenching on the property of the Church, it would he difficult for the most zealous of her devotees to show, that while its integrity is unassailed, the division of it into smaller or larger portions is not a proper object of legislative inter- ference. Weconfess that, without some such reform, we consider the prospects of future secireity to the Church of England as by no means so promising as its friends would wish. The wealth of the greater part of its ministers, as we some time ago showed, incapacitates them for communicating with their parishioners ; who are of necessity aban- ' cloned to Catholics or Dissenters, and thus become the ignorant
enemies of an establishment of which they would otherwise be the firm supporters. The Bishop of LONDON is said to be an advocate for the reform announced by the Times; and we can easily believe it. Dr. BLOMFIELD is not a bishop merely—he is a scholar, a gentleman, and, what in this case is most important, a man of the world. He can- not but be sensible, that the Establishment, if it do not move onward with the rest of the machinery of society, will inevitably be injured by its own tardiness.
As to alterations in the Liturgy, they require much and deliberate consideration. We think it would not be very difficult to show that concessions of this kind never gained a friend, though they have lost many.
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