The Official rear-Book of the Church of England. (S.P.C.K. 3s.
not.)—This volume, now published for the thirtieth time, is under the control of a committee—an arrangement whioh may be said, without any disparagement of the work done in the earlier issues, to be better than the editorship of a single person. As may be supposed, it is difficult to make a choice where there are so many interesting and significant facts. Here, however, is a, set of correlated figures. The number of baptisms in the year was 589,886 (infants) and 17,113 (persons of riper years). The births in England and Wales may be taken at about 920,000. Hero, then, we have, speaking roughly, about two-thirds of the children born receiving baptism. The confirmations numbered 259,543 (three-fifths being females). If we make an allowance for deaths, about half are not accounted for. Then as to mar- riages. In 1850, 857 in 1,000 were celebrated according to the rites of the Established Church. This proportion had fallen in 1910 to 616. In the same period civil marriages increased from 41 to 205 ; those celebrated in the chapels of other denominations increased from 63 to 130, Roman Catholic from 37 to 42, while Quaker marriages slightly diminished from one in two thousand to one in two thousand five hundred. The largest increase was, among the Jews, whore the number rose from not quite two to almost seven in the thousand. Of Church marriages those by licence were one in sir in 1850, one in twenty-three in 1910. Here
we certainly have a change for the better, though it must make a serious difference to the income of surrogates. The revenues of the Church amounted to nearly four millions, the voluntary offerings to more than doubly that sum. It seems a distinct hard- ship that when an incumbent is compelled to have a curate, as where ho has two churches to serve, ho is not allowed to deduct the stipend paid from his gross income.
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