ru,E LACK OF CANDIDATES rot HOLY ORDERS. go THE EDITOR
OF TRY ‘spairr.cion...] Sut,—One of the reasons for the unwillingness of many of the ablest men to become clergymen has not yet been men- tioned. I can most easily indicate its tiature by a comparison. Suppose that when the Boers invaded Natal the troops eent out from this country had distributed themselves through the country, and had set to work to teach the colonists that it is a clear duty to attack the enemfes of the Queen, had uriged all the colonists to attend dip and shooting lessons regu- larly, and to give great 9ittention to having all their children taught that it ii "%heir duty to resist the Queen's enemies, but that while vdoing this they bad abstained from attacking the Boki, and if the Boers came near them, had run away. If the English Army had acted in this way, would the officerS.Oommanding it have had any righe to expect that the brave" men in Natal or England would offer to serve under their, orders ? There is a .close analdgy between the conduct which I have suggested on the part of soldiers and the ,conduct towards the enemies of God and man in this country, of the leaders of the Church of Englana, and I believe t1t. this conduct prevents a considerablp number of men who would make good, courageous members of the Church,Militant from offering to serve under their orders. Let ' mention some of the most prominent of the enemies of E .and refer for a moment to the way in which the leaders of Ithe Church of England behave in relation to them. It isiell known that the conditions existing in all our large ttwns—slums and semi-slums, smoke and foul air, absence of playgrounds and parks, ignorance on the part of the people Of all kinds of wholesome recreation for body and mind—now make religious life impossible for hundreds of thousands Of English people. It is the clear duty of the educated and well-to-do ,classes to see that no conditions which make health of body and mind impossible for their. fellow-citizens shall beallowed to exist. If a class leaves the work which is its peculiar duty undone, it can find no good substitute for that work, and is sure to fall into bad habits; and, in fact, the moral condition of a great part of the well- to-do classes in England has been made by luxury, by gambling, by indifference to the proximity of all kinds of impurity and corruption, not much less unsatisfactory than that of the inhabitants of slum districts. As a very large number of the members of these classes are members also of the Churl* of England, if the leaders of that Church loved God mul man with heart and mind, would they not, for the sake of, both rich and poor, in season and out of season, teach the rich that they must make decent life possible. in every part of the land ? That the problem is not insoluble is proved by the fact that the Town Council of Berlin have found _it possible simply by good government to lower the death-rate since 1871 from thirty per thousand- to, about twenty, to get rid of all slums, and to so improve the condi- tone affecting the people, that there is now no street in the citY in which it would not be possible to live a full and healthy life. Are the leaders of the Church of England leading the Church to attack our slums and the causes of slums ? One of the most prominent and terrible of the enemies of God and man in England is the habit of drinking to excess._ This habit is one of the causes of the worst horrors of slums and of many other evils. Drunkenness. is terribly common amongst men, but a far worse evil is that it is increasingly common amongse women, and women who are in many yrap good women. The experience of our own and of all other countries is that, although some good may be done by lessen: ing the number of drinking plates and in other ways reducing the temptation to drink, no one can be safe who is not strengthened by good physical, mental, and -moral training to resist temptation. No attack on drunkenness in this country has any chance of success in which a very great improvement in education given in elementary schools is. not one of the principal measures used. Are the leaders of. the Church of England now doing their utmost to improve education for this purpose ? Here and. there one is, but the great majority of its leaders are careless respecting the ill. efficiency of our Elementary Schools, and their want of con- nection with secondary and technical schools. These are examples of the failure of the leaders of the Church to attack the enemies of God. I must now call attention to conduct on their part which is as bad as running away from the enemy would be on the part of generals. In thousands of villages the only elementary school to which Nonconformist parents can send their children is a Church school, and in some- of these villages the clergymen, who have sole control of the reli- gious instruction, are extreme men, who have doctrine respect- ing the Sacraments taught to all children who are not withdrawn from all religious instruction under the conscience clause, which is known to be as distasteful to most Nonconformists as any Roman Catholic doctrine to Protestant members of the Church of England. Every man who really believes.tbat it is hie duty to do unto others as he would be done by must feel that so far as he has pi:river he must make such condiet impossible. Have the leaders of the Church of England jointly urged the clergy to adopt measures for making every Nonconformist parent who has to send his children to a Church school know that the children will be taught no doctrine to which the parents object ? I venture to say-that if the Archbishops and Bishops would attack the most fruitful causes of sin and degrading misery in the spirit in which Lord Roberts is attacking the Queen's enemies in South Africa, the Church of England would have no more reason to complain of lack of fit candidates for Holy Orders than the British Army has at this moment to complain of lack of fit candidates for commissions. Better men are now going into University Settlements than into Holy Orders, and the reason is, I tbiy \lc.; not that Settlements are without Articles, but because the are fighting sin in a more Christlike spirit than is shownby the leaders of any branch of the Christian Church,—I am, Sir, &c., T. B. HORSFALL.,-..
Stsanscoe Park, near -Macclesfield. -:•
Previous page
