Three Paces Forward

[This is the second of two articles in which the Rev. P. B. Clayton, the popular Vicar of All Hallows, Barking-by-the-Tower, develops his appeal for bringing the Church back to its proper place in men's hearts.]

THE Church of England is now destined to face an age in which the race whose name it takes has to play a profoundly different part from its historic role. No longer as almost indisputable masters of overseas and foreign situations ; no longer as the final court of reference ; no longer with monopolies in commerce, or riches inexhaustible, the English go forward to their duty gravely disheartened. How can the Church most prudently expend its Own reduced resources ? What are its wisest ways of incidence upon their common life and daily occupations ? How can it prove itself unalterably attached to the manhood of the race, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer ?

First, it must have more servants. The present diminution in the numbers of the clergy is, as all students know, the chief cause of our weakness. For, with a home population increased by nearly a million since the War, the Church of England is some four thousand short in its commissioned ranks of pre-War strength ; and the annual number now attaining Orders is little more than half the pre-War figure. The average age among the English clergy is said to be fifty-seven ; and in ten years from now, if this went on, the Church would be withdrawn from any wide activities. Churches on all sides would be closing down, or opening once a month when some old parish priest, itinerating over four or five parishes, came there to minister. Even to-day, as the Bishops know well, the shortage is so severe that the next hundred deaths or resignations prophesy sheer paralysis for the church life under them.

Yet students of the situation are also aware that we have not to deal with a profound distaste for religious work. God has not ceased to send the men. The clerical career is sought by many, of whom it may be said that in the bulk sincerity of purpose stands very high indeed. Finance impedes their progress : not only the sheer cost of preparation, but the problem of their maintenance throughout their ministry. Until this shortage can be overtaken, we must economize like other folk, and reduce home claims to let our frontier work be saved from practical starvation.

I.—TIIE PERMANENT VOLUNTARY DIACONATE.

Meanwhile we have a form of capital, which we can realize with benefit, We have so long secreted it that

we are scarcely certain whether it is indeed ours to possess and to employ. But the New Testament itself is warrant almost upon every page of the Acts and the Epistles for the re-establishment of the unpaid, perpetual diaconate ; and were we now to found our first reform upon this vigorous, primitive basis, we could within a year summon to the maintenance of church worship, teaching and influence a thousand senior men picked from a willing roll of many thousand candidates. These men would understand, assist, and supplement without a single penny of new stipends ; they would be quietly glad to serve as a strong spearhead for the revival of the real diaconate. Thus we should bridge the gulf, profeSsional rather than spiritual, which separates the clergy from the layman ; thus we should find a way of ready reinforcement, the loss of which has been a bitter blunder in the past. Church buildings, all too scarce in post-War populations, and all too plentiful in old suburban areas, would thus be staffed more evenly, and new ideas would flow into the common pool.

We can scarcely be overbold in such experiments since we quite clearly stand upon the threshold of develop- ments which will render the use of churches as preaching places almost obsolete. The B.B.C. is only in its infancy ; and folk will never again foregather in large numbers merely to be preached to Sunday after Sunday, morning and evening, by clergymen. It is some consolation that masses of the people who seldom came to church are now within the unseen congregation of St. Martin-in- the-Fields. We do ill to deprecate this development as disastrous. We should rather assess the good in it, and employ every gift to make it better. No other wireless in Europe is thus steadily at the service of the Christian religion.

We of the older world may be indeed reluctant to see this substitution ; we must not, cannot, quench it. The wireless at one blow has rendered the old rigidity of denominational worship a dull Victorian thing. Quakers and Plymouth Brethren listen-in to Roman Catholic preachers, and are amazed to find so many points of union. The regimental spirit may survive this great enlarging process, but the old severe hostilities within the Christian creed are steadily collapsing. Love laughs at locksmiths ; and wireless diminishes the danmatory convictions of rigid sectarians.

Our Churches must therefore stand rather to provide the deeper gifts of religion, those which must be fetched

to be enjoyed. No doubt for years to come, morning and evening prayer will gather those accustomed ; but the distribution of the Sacraments will increasingly become the paramount purpose of the Churches.

II. WEEKDAY WORSHIP.

Again, we must invade the weekdays with our worship, and teach week-ending England that sacraments may lie faithfully received on any day whatever. After all, Sunday, while an ancient institution, is not in the New Testament the solitary day for public worship. For the first three hundred years Christians made no endeavour thus to divide the calendar ; the first day of the week was notable beyond the days which followed as being that on which the stone was rolled away and Christ came forth from death. They gathered early to their tryst with Him ; they seemed to watch Him rise, as round His table they beheld the linen laid aside, and that which there was shrouded become the food of immortality in answer to the " Amen " of the faithful. Having performed their homage they passed out, fortified, into the working day.

On Mondays, the first Church people met with no less regularity to discuss ways and means of doing good to all men, and their. hopes of gaining some. Each week was marked by some well-prayed-for plan of winning new objectives ; each day had its allotment, each member his, or her, responsibility. The breaking of the bread went on from house to house, regardless of the day. With every dawn Christ came, with every night He tarried in the midst of them.

Are we then well advised to let the people think that Sunday is His one and only day ? Do they not need to learn a braver attitude ? The Sabbath stronghold crumbles, to force us to a sortie into the open field of weekday worship. " Jesus is truth, not . custom " ; and the forces which are overthrowing Victorian methods of Church life are not the foes of Christianity. Stephenson did not dream that steam traction would break up the parish system. The unknown author of the petrol engine did not intend to empty churches ; or to create an inland fleet inhabited by 300,000 men; untouched by any Church whatsoever. Lilienthal, watching sheets swinging on a drying line, and noticing the vacuum created on their surface, did not foresee the day when Mill Hill worshippers would unite with Afridis and Arabs in deprecating the Royal Air Force. Marconi did not think of Christian propaganda!

To shrug our shoulders at these modern ways will simply lead us nowhere. They are amoral, not immoral, forces, needing wise Christian use, not condemnation. They fascinate men's minds and are the harbingers of unexplored horizons. Any Church which thinks to hold the man of the new age must share his new enthusiasms. We must seek common ground, and meet the men, if not within the Church buildings, wherever they will honestly assemble. We must have faith in their machinery, if we would turn their faith in their machines to faith in Him who is for ever faithful.

III. CHAPLAINCIES TO COMMERCE.

We must get down to commerce, and not demand sub- scriptions. The Church is compromised when on the great Exchanges men can no longer trust to spoken bargains but have to introduce signed contracts. Christ's kingdom is set forward, where men feel that they have honest neighbours, and that competition is something less than cut-throat. Men are men, and love to find that reasonable honour is faithfully observed in business dealings. A city's credit is its character for settling its transactions and disappointing none, though to its own hindrance. We of the_ Church must feel that

these mundane things arc not beneath our notice, nor beyond the Gospel's influence. We most recall the strange

words of the Master tort rpardirat and teach their literal meaning.

Lastly, it may be noted with thanksgiving that a new friendliness towards the Church is already mani- festing itself. Here is one concrete instance. In 1929 the Anglo-Persian Oil Company created and filled a chaplaincy, paid on a generous scale and working well. The chaplain thus appointed finds himself a servant of the company indeed, but no less a servant of the Chards of Christ. He is beside, among, and wholly with, the men to whom he ministers. The company is building him a church ; and the directors, acting in the truest interests of all concerned, arc commending the step to other corporations. Two others, employing half a million men between them, arc contemplating similar appointments ; and it may be that the new business world will re-establish chaplaincies to commerce, by which the corporate life of the employed replaces the parochial dispensation. These are signs of the times, which we arc pledged to watch and then to welcome.

1'. 13. Ct.Avros.