THE SHREWSBURY CHURCH CONGRESS. T HERE was a time when the
Anglican clergy were too much isolated in their parishes. There each man was king, and provided that he could go his own way without criticism or hindrance he was content to leave others the same liberty. That this system fostered an exaggerated individualism is highly probable. The parson's freehold, like the Englishman's castle, became the symbol of a disposition which resented interference from any quarter and for any purpose. This state of things, however, has very nearly passed away. The clergy have learnt to combine for talk if not for action, and the results of the change are visible in all directions. The clergy bad an advantage over the laity in that they were already accustomed to public reading if not to public speaking, and certainly they have not hidden this superiority under a bushel. Debates in Convocation— the Convocation of both Provinces—Diocesan Synods, Diocesan Conferences, Ruri-Decanal Chapters, and all the machinery of public meetings and private committees have made them ready in debate and fluent if sometimes long in exposition. Take the year through the volume of ecclesiastical talk is enormous, though the contributions may be individually small. The most conspicuous in- stance of this, of course, is the annual Church Congress. This year it is to be held at Shrewsbury, and the pro- gramme of it has just appeared. It is difficult perhaps to judge it quite fairly by reason of a certain initial dislike to the recurrence every October of four days of continuous speech-making about pretty well every subject under the sun. It is ordinarily thought well that there should be some relation between speech and action, but the very forms of a Church Congress ruthlessly dissociate them. Even in a debating society the speeches lead up to a motion and a vote, but at a Church Congress this process is forbidden. The stream of talk must not be interrupted even by the formalities of a division. Probably a real improvement might be effected by making these Congresses triennial instead of annual. But we are pretty sure that the suggestion would be unwelcome. People have grown accustomed to their recurrence as October comes round, or perhaps they feel that, if two years were allowed to pass without one, the inquiry, Why should one be held in the third year ? might receive the wrong answer.
The true justification of Church Congresses is their educating effect in the districts in which they are held. It would be well, indeed, if the scene of action were always chosen from this point of view. London, for example, is obviously unfitted for the purpose, for London gives, rather than receives, examples. The area is so immense, the circumstances of the several parts of the whole are so different, that every form of Church life is already active somewhere or other within the vast circumference. But there are districts not a few in which things go on in a not markedly changed way from that in which they went on a quarter of a century ago,—districts to which the word " movement " seems wholly inapplicable. Curiously enough this is true to some extent of the whole North of England. The clergy who go there from the South say that it is like stepping back twenty years. Things that have become habitual and commonplace are there almost unknown. The lump has hardly been leavened by the various influences which have been so busily at work in the South, and even in the South itself the same comparison may sometimes be made between one county and another. Where parishes are small, and benefices poor, and large towns few, the wheels of the ecclesiastical chariot drive heavily. These are the districts in which Church Congresses have their most natural and most useful work. They bring to them the life and action and freshness of the greater centres. They make the clergy who attend them familiar with the faces and the voices of men who have hitherto been only names to them. Henceforward the sense of reality will remain with them. They will read of them as preaching or speaking elsewhere, they will read what they say elsewhere with a sense of intimacy that nothing but seeing and hearing can give. That is a real and appreciable gain, and one which ought not to be foregone for the sake of accepting a pleasant or an importunate invitation.
The programme of the Shrewsbury Congress does not differ greatly from those that have gone before. Simul- taneous meetings are still too frequent, though the attention of the visitor will be distracted by two in- stead of by three subjects at once. Too little time is still left for discussion, and too few new names appear in the list of speakers. There are some subjects in which the appointed readers or speakers are all men who have been heard at former Congresses on the same or some closely allied subject. There are others which might profitably have been left to lie fallow for at least a year. Can we expect, for example, that in two hours and a, half the Congress will be able to throw any fresh light upon elementary education ? Nothing remains to be said about it that we know of ; what is wanting, and likely to remain wanting, is some agreement among the disputing doctors, some evidence that each of them has considered the wants and the difficulties of other schools as well as those of his own. Again, a morning spent in discussing " the appoint- ment, tenure, and retirement of the beneficed clergy " is likely to produce nothing beyond a repetition of the endless arguments which have been used for and against the Benefices Bill. If this subject was ripe for legislation in the present Session, and the Bill that is to dispose of it has only been accidentally blocked, what can be the good of talking it out again ? One new experiment we notice is to be tried, the result of which will be watched with some curiosity. That very burning question, " The different aspects of the office for Holy Communion," is to be dis- cussed with the stipulation that it is to be " without manifestation of feeling." If this proviso is adhered to, it will mark a real advance in mutual toleration.
There is one afternoon which is pretty sure to be wasted, however competent may be the speakers to whom it is intrusted. This is the afternoon devoted to "Tenden- cies in modern society considered in the light of Christian teaching." The subject is arranged under three heads,— "Social Extravagance," " Current Literature, Society Papers, Novels, &c.," and " Amusements and Recreations." The reasons why we expect so little good to come of the dis- cussion, are, first, that those who take part in it will know so little about it. If it were possible for the Committee to set up a Chair of Truth in the Congress Hall, and to place in it an extravagant millionaire, the writer of an indecent novel, the editor of a society paper, a bicyclist, a golf-player, and a skirt-dancer, the evidence given by them would at least be interesting. As it is, we are more likely to hear the complaints of the clergy than the defences of the laity. We shall be told of the thousands spent on a single entertainment when churches need to be built and schools to be kept open. We shall have criticisms of novels from people who boast that they never read a line of them in their lives. We shall have news- papers excused for what they could easily avoid doing, and blamed for something which is indispensable to their circulation. We shall have the bicyclist or the golf- player attacked for not going to church, while nothing is said of the man who goes to church—in the country— because he wishes to set an example to his tenants. We shall have, in short, all the superficial aspects of the question enlarged upon once more, and its real difficulties again left out of sight. This, at least, is what we fear. Let us hope that when we come to read the proceedings of Friday, October 9th, we shall discover that we have been mistaken all along the line.
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