LAY HELP IN THE CHURCH. T HE Bishop of London said
some interesting and use- ful things at his Diocesan Conference on Tuesday about Lay Help. There are, as we think, some other things to be said on the subject which are needed by way of corrective to the Bishop's remarks. In the first place, however, we can express our complete agreement with what he actually said. There is another side to the ques- tion, on which he did not touch ; but the side on which he dwelt is a perfectly true one. It is a good sign that the laity arc throwing themselves more actively into Church work. As things are, if they were not doing so, it would argue dis- tinct weakness on the part of the Church. The great interest which is now taken in philanthropic effort of every kind must find expression either in the Church or outside it. If the Church gave it no encouragement and no opportunity, those whom it actuates would naturally carry their energy and devotion elsewhere, and in many cases the Church would lose not only the work but the workers. The Roman Church has long had organisations which afford a field for lay work,—notably the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. In the Church of England, it has been too much the custom for laymen to confine their activity to finding money for the clergy to distribute. Women have given personal service in abundance, and the rise and progress of the great Anglican Sisterhoods is one of the most striking incidents in the ecclesiastical history of the last forty years. But men have been shy to follow their example. All Archdeacon Farrar's eloquence has up to this time, we believe, pro- duced only one Lay Brotherhood, and even this has only reached the experimental stage. Still, it is something that it should have gone as far as this, and no one who knows the difficulty of getting any new movement really started will feel any inclination to belittle what has been done. In an age which is by turns msthetic and scientific, but in both phases critical and agnostic, it is a fact which merits attention that a man so cautious and so practical as the Bishop of London should have seen his way to sanc- tioning—or, rather, that there should exist for him to sanction—" a brotherhood of men who are to give them- selves entirely and absolutely to a religious life,—a life of prayer and devotion and worship, and a life especially devoted to the service of their fellows." This Brotherhood is absolutely self-supporting. It makes no appeal to the public. It asks for no help but such as is given by the men who compose it. The members maintain themselves from their own resources, and they do nothing to provide these resources. They give themselves wholly to such work as they may be called on to do. Of course such an enterprise as this is experimental; but, we repeat, it is something that it should be so much as experimental. Few people, except those who, like ourselves, believe in the permanence of reactions, would have ventured fifteen or twenty years ago to predict that men who have youth, means, and leisure —the three chief factors of physical and mental enjoy- ment—would be found to make this use of them. Perhaps they will not be found in any numbers. Perhaps, if they are found, they will only put their hand to the plough and take it back again. These are questions for the future ; what we have to note in the present is that some have been found, and that the experiment is actually in progress.
This is one side—necessarily a limited side—of lay work. There is another side with which the Bishop of London has also identified himself, that makes smaller demands on the individual. The Bishop has lately been appointing in a formal way, and by a special service, certain" lay-readers," —men who, while pursuing their ordinary callings and earning their own living as they have been wont to do, will yet do "certain definite kinds of work in churches with the consent and in aid of the incum- bents." We are not quite sure what these kinds of work are, but we believe they include the conduct of religious services other than the regular services ordered by the Prayer-Book, and preaching in school-chapels and mission-rooms. Here, again, the Bishop has been ex- ceedingly cautious. He has watched facts and tendencies for some years, be has taken the opinions of those who have the best right to have opinions, he has had the whole question sifted by a carefully chosen committee, and at last he has acted. He is evidently more sanguine about these lay-readers than about the Brotherhood, and it is quite reasonable that he should be so. To give leisure is much, but it is a different thing from giving up your whole time. To give money is much, but it is k different thing from giving up all opportunities of making money. The class from which Brotherhoods can be recruited must always be a limited one ; the class from which lay-readers can be recruited is, in a community such as ours, an immensely large one. There is room among lay-readers for men who can give only a few hours a week, and these perhaps only on Sundays, and for men who can give some hours every day in the seven. There is room for men who can bring money of their own to the aid of the works in which they are engaged, and for men who can only be the almoners of other men's contributions. There is scope, also, for a variety of talent, and for various degrees of devotion. One class of lay- readers will take the more secular side of the parish com- pletely off the parson's hands ; another class will give him real help in his more directly spiritual work. Each separate class will have its own function and its own value ; and all together, they will absorb and find a use for a great deal of energy which the Church of England, as compared with other religious bodies, has been rather apt to let run to waste. If Wesley could have found employment as lay. readers for the enthusiasts he gathered round him, Wes- leyan Methodism might never have broken away from the Church.
It is not to the first of these forms of lay help that the cautions we have in view chiefly apply. Brotherhoods, like religious orders generally, have their special dangers and their special abuses. Whether it is possible, as the Bishop of London thinks, completely to guard against these, we do not know, nor, to say the truth, do we greatly care. If we begin nothing which is not absolutely safe, we shall begin remarkably little. Every undertaking that has any promise of good in it has also possibilities of evil. If it does nothing worse, it fails; and by its mere failure discourages other and perhaps more really hopeful efforts, We are quite content to leave the formation, or, if need be, the suppression, of Brotherhoods to take care of itself. The present will have done quite enough if it succeeds in founding them. It is the less conspicuous, but not necessarily less serious, risks of lay help generally that more concern us. We shall only mention two,—one relating to the management of lay help, the other to the estimate in which it is held. The Spectator will hardly be suspected of underrating the value of comprehensive- ness, or of wishing to narrow the Church of England. But the absence of anything approaching to intellectual restraint or discipline among the clergy, which is the less attractive side of this comprehensiveness, has its drawbacks, and there is some danger lest these draw- backs should present themselves in still greater force among lay-readers. Though the authority of a Bishop over his clergy is ill-defined, it is commonly his own fault if it is altogether disregarded. But what authority will a Bishop have over a lay-reader ? Or, more accurately, how often will be inclined to exert such authority as he has ? However carefully lay-readers are chosen, there will always be some who will think they are conferring a favour on the Church by working for it, and will re- sent the slightest hint that they are not working in quite the right way. For example, a lay-reader may get on well enough with one incumbent and very ill with another. The remedy is to withdraw him. But what if he refuses to be withdrawn ? Possibly the mission-chapel in which he has preached may be his own property, and if he chooses to go on preaching in it, who shall say him nay ? The Bishop, of course, can cancel his licence ; but by the time things have come to this point, the reader may have persuaded himself that he is the possessor of an authority which a Bishop can neither give nor take away. As regards the estimate in which lay-readers are held, there are those who speak of them as though it were really a better thing to have lay-readers than to have mere clergy. They seem to think that a service must somehow be better suited to poor or ignorant people when it is conducted by a layman than when it is conducted by a clergyman. The true view of the matter is, that though Volunteers are an excellent auxiliary to regular troops, they can never be a substitute for them. 'Useful as an amateur parson may be, his value will grow less in proportion as he thinks himself, or is thought by others, as useful as the professional parson.
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