POVERTY AMONG THE ANGLICAN CLERGY. T HE only cheerful feature in
the correspondence which has been running in the Times during the past three weeks on the subject of Clerical Poverty, has been the smart castigation administered by acertain " Decanus " to Lord Grimthorpe, who had characteristically attributed the evil complained of in a large measure to the growing unwillingness of the clergy to teach, in the pulpit or out of it, the "Gospel according to Lord Grimthorpe." Otherwise nothing could well be drearier than this fresh exposure of the indigence of a large section of the clergy of the highly endowed National Church of the richest people in the world. It is difficult to exaggerate the misery which that indigence must involve to those who suffer from it. In the great majority of cases the clergy and their wives have been gently bred, and for such persons life in those benefices, of which, according to the Dean of Norwich's figures at the last Church Congress, there are 7,000 with a stipend of less than £130 (including 3,500 with less than £100, and actually 400 with less than £50), must be too often a burden heavy and grievous to be borne. Not to educate their children with a view to their being qualified to live in the same social grade as that of their parents, is a trial of the keenest order to people of sensitive minds. To give them such an education, on the other hand, must involve an amount of steady sacrifice on the part of the poor clergy of the necessaries of health and, comfort in the way of food, fuel, and clothing which it is painful in the extreme to contemplate. In any case it is certain that the clergy who exist on these wretched pittances must, in a very large number of in- stances, be crippled in the discharge of their duties by the excessive domestic cares and the actual hardships of their lot. It is equally certain that the fact that so large a number of benefices have sunk under the combined influence of agricultural depression and excessive and unjustly levied rates to a level in stipend which makes it impossible for the incumbent to have enough food, to dress respectably, and to bring up his family for a mercantile or professional life, must operate powerfully to discourage men from taking Holy Orders who would be very useful parish priests.
All these things are only too clear, but unhappily the correspondence in the Times is not fruitful in practical suggestions for the remedying of the evil which it sets forth. A celibate clergy might, no doubt, conceivably exist and discharge their duties with efficiency on some- thing like the existing resources of English benefices. But the English people do not want a celibate clergy, and would certainly raise and maintain indignant protests if any general movement were organised in that direction. There is no popular conviction more deeply seated here than that both the morality of the community and the practical value of the clergy as spiritual guides are best promoted under a system in which marriage is regarded as honourable and natural for them. A good deal is said, and with justice, about the burden of rates on the clergy, and it would appear that in an appreciable number of cases an amendment of the iniquitous arrangement under which beneficed clergy are rated on their whole incomes instead of on the rateable value of their houses and grounds only, might make, if not all, yet a good deal of the difference between constant discomfort and reasonable ease. That amendment unquestionably ought to be made. But in a multitude of cases it would be the merest palliative, for what is needed is a doubling or trebling of the net income of a considerable proportion of the beneficed clergy. The suggestion that only men with a certain minimum private income of, say, £200 a year should be ordained, would no doubt strike, if adopted, at the root of the evil under consideration. But it would also strike, in our opinion, at the root of the -spiritual efficiency of the Anglican clergy. It would tend to materialise the whole conception of the Christian ministry within that communion. It would shut out large numbers of zealous and able men whose parents can afford to give them a good education, but not to give them a permanent income—men of exactly the stamp needed in the Anglican ministry—and introduce large numbers who have no special qualifications for its work, or sense of call to it, but who would be tempted to take it up as a profession, the membership of which carried the assurance of membership of a well-to-do family. The dangers of plutocracy are already quite sufficiently with us in secular life.They can hardly be said to exist at the present day in connection with the Church of England, but the exclusion from the Anglican ministry of all who :would not be practically independent of their official income would involve the opening of doors to those dangers in a very grave form. So also, as we hold, would a reversion to the widely discredited system of pew-rents. The abolition of those charges in many old churches, and the opening of many new ones with per- fectly free seats, have done much to popularise the Church, and to bring home to the masses the belief that she belongs to them. It would be a retrogressive policy to take any step that would imperil the ground thus gained.. Not by such means should we seek to secure that the Anglican ministry shall be free from a paralysing anxiety as to the things of this world. What, then, remains ? Redistribution of endowments within the Church is much talked of from time to time, but in our opinion its attractions are superficial and its drawbacks fundamental. We doubt much whether it would even provide an adequate sum for general division. But if it did, it would do it at the cost of a heavy blow at the sanctity of endowments, seeing that the local limita- tion of the aims of pious founders is absolutely beyond dispute. And further, it would either inflict a fatal wound upon the parochial idea, which is, by common consent, one of the main sources of the strength of the Church of England as an organisation, or—which is also quite pos- sible—it would cause so much local resentment that the collective activities of the Church would seriously suffer. What we want is not anything compulsory, but a stimu- lation of the sense of the duty of giving for Church objects, both local and general. The machinery required for that end appears to be a General Church Sustentation Fund, aiding diocesan sustentation funds, according- partly to their needs and partly to their deserts ; which diocesan funds again will be administered for the augmen- tation of poor benefices, with reference both to their needs and to the evidence of local effort made to meet them. The General Sustentation Fund exists. It has been started within the present year with the Primates and all the Bishops as patrons, and an influential committee of laymen, including the Duke of Westminster and Lord Egerton of Tatton. In many, perhaps most, dioceses there are sus- tentation funds already in operation, that in Liverpool being specially successful, and having already, it is said, raised the lowest incomes of the benefices within its area to above £270. Can we hope for any such success over the country at large ? There ought to be no doubt of it. Liverpool, indeed, is an exceptional diocese in respect of the number of wealthy Churchmen it contains in proportion to the number of its poor parishes. But with the aid of the General Fund now started, no diocese ougLt to be unable to do all that is necessary to supple- ment the efforts of poorly endowed parishes. There ought, we say, to be no doubt of it. But, unfortunately, there is one grave and, indeed, fundamental difficulty, and that is the absence among English Churchmen of the habit of giving on a large scale to religious objects. It is impossible to attribute this fact to anything but the existence of the endowments of the Church. English Nonconformists and Roman Catholics, we believe, give much more liberally and steadily. They, of course, have to support their ministers as well as to erect and maintain their chapels, and they do it cheerfully. English Church- men, on the other hand, appear, in very many cases, to act as if they thought they had very slight duties to discharge to their Church, and that everything substantial of that kind had been done for them by their remote forefathers or predecessors in title. It is true, no doubt, that great sums have been raised among Churchmen for the building of new churches and for the building, extension, and maintenance of schools, and this last should be specially borne in mind when comparing their givings with those of non-Church-. men. Still, when all due allowance is made under that head, it will remain, we believe, true that the endowments of the Church have induced a habit of mind unfavourable to large and steady giving among her sons. It is high time that that habit of mind were amended. The hard- ships endured, for the most part with wonderful fortitude, by the incumbents of poor livings are a grave reproach to the Church of England. It is profoundly unreasonable for her members to expect their clergy to be educated and domesticated, and to withhold the means required for the fulfilment of those conditions. A Church cannot bear such a reproach for long without incurring serious danger.
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