THE INCREASE OF THE EPISCOPATE.
LORD LYTTELTON has so strenuously exerted himself to lighten his ship,—that is, to cast out of the Bill for the in- crease of the Episcopate all the elements which most endangered it,—that there seems at last a tolerably certain prospect for it of a safe and fair haven. There may, indeed, as the Bishop of Exeter very well pointed out, be not a little doubt if he has not accomplished his work somewhat too successfully as regards prohibiting the endowment of new Bishoprics out of exist- ing revenues. It is one of the most powerful argu- ments for an Established Church that the districts which are the poorest and the least able to help themselves are, under the Voluntary system, much the least likely to get any kind of help from others. Now, on the division of an old diocese, it is not very likely and hardly 'possible that the part cut off from it and created into a new diocese should be the richest and most cultivated part of the diocese. On the contrary, it is pretty certain to be the part most distant from the centre and the most in need of spiritual help and additional supervision. If that be the case, to provide that the whole endowment of the new diocese shall be raised out of the voluntary efforts of the Church, is to provide that the bishop shall be too poor and crippled in resources to do his work efficiently, even after he is appointed. We quite agree indeed with Lord Shaftesbury that it is exceedingly important that the funds of the Eccle- siastical Commission now available for increasing the wretched stipends of the lower clergy, and of providing fresh help in regions where more clergymen are urgently wanted, should not be indented upon for this, we will not call it and do not think it, ornamental, but still secondary purpose, as regards the efficiency of the Church of England. It is quite clear that it is no use having a bishop without a sufficient number of clergymen to receive his influence and be impressed by his earnestness, sobriety, and wisdom. On the other hand, it is equally clear that it may be of the greatest possible use, having more clergymen without having a bishop to whom they are very well known, and by whom they can be much influ-
enced. If, then, Dr. Temple's generous offer to give up of his own episcopal income the whole margin by which it exceeds the minimum income of a bishop, could be accepted as regards the diocese of Exeter, and if a pro- vision admitting that, with the consent of the bishop whose See is to be divided, such margin, might always be appropriated to the endowment of the new bishopric, could be embodied in the Bill, we should have at least a good nucleus of revenue to begin upon in the case of those larger dioceses which most urgently need division,—a nucleus to which all sums raised by voluntary efforts might be added, without the depressing effect produced on the mind by setting out on a slow journey towards a very distant goal. And if Dr. Temple's wise hint that even a good canonry in the existing diocese might fairly be added to the revenues so provided for the new bishopric be acted on, a start more than sufficient to stimulate voluntary energy would have been made. But Dr. Temple's suggestion seems to us at least as necessary for the practical success of Lord Lyttelt on's Bill as the willingness of Parliament to accept it. There is in the present day not only no scruple about working bishops events the Republic has in some way visibly failed. Add to hard, but there is a growing contempt for all bishops who do not work hard. But in the case of a bishop, "working hard" means going through duties in general much more expensive than those of a Cabinet Minister of any but the .first rank. It means, for instance, constant travelling, and travelling which must necessarily be more than usually costly, because wherever the bishop goes he ought to have the means of receiving and entertaining clergy who are far too poor to receive and entertain him. It means, generally, at least in the case of the senior bishops, several visits during the season to London, some of them of some length,—especially during the sitting of the Houses of Convocation, where, whatever their views, their influence on the lower clergy is brought to bear with most effect,—and it means, wherever it can mean, a generous habit of giving for the purpose of starting new efforts for the advantage of the people and the spread of religious influences, a habit which is of the very essence of a bishop's work. Now, all these are elements of cost, and cannot be properly done, and done so as to economise time, which is force, without considerable cost ; and a bishop who was so straitened in his means as to be able to do none of them well, would be, so far at least, an inefficient bishop.
For consider what the Episcopal system really means in the English Church. It certainly does not imply a belief in the Apostolical unction transmitted by Episcopal hands. There are, no doubt, not a few bishops who believe in this, but they are probably in the minority, and certainly the genius of the English Church is more and more drifting away from the notion that the secret of the Church's gifts lies in any cere- monial form whatever. The ablest and by far the most charac- teristic and energetic members of the Episcopal Bench reject this theory. No one supposes for a moment that the most distinguished men added to the Episcopal Bench by either the recent Tory or the recent Liberal Government belong to this class. The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Peter- borough, both of them Mr. Disraeli's appointments, certainly do not hold the theory. The Bishop of Exeter and the Bishop of Manchester, both of them Mr. Gladstone's appointments, certainly do not hold it. The belief in the transmission of grace in a physical channel by laying-on of hands from the time of the Apostles, certainly still lingers vaguely throughout our Church, and is persistently defended by the extreme or Ritualist section ; but it is incompatible with the vagueness and the increasingly blurred character of our dogmatic definitions, and indeed with the historical genius of the English Church, which, were it only through its close alliance with the State, is necessarily hostile to the more pronounced forms of sacer- dotal pretensions. What, then, with us, does the genius of Episcopacy mean ? It means, we take it, that in our Church it is intended that the initiative impulse of Church undertakings shall come from above,—from men who have shown themselves more able, more competent to understand and discriminate between the conflicting ideas of the day, more capable to urge on and guide others, without leading their followers into a cut de sac from which there is no retreat, than their fellows. It means that while the clergy are to have a certain independence and freedom of their own, no great movement is possible with- out the concurrence of men who have shown both culture and practical power superior to those of the great proportion of the clergy,—men of more power, more reading, more statesman- ship, more knowledge of the world, and often, though not always, more earnestness. As regards this last quality, it cannot be denied that till lately, our bishops may be said to have been selected rather for a deficiency than an excess of it ; and that, no doubt, is the true cause of the prejudice so many of us have at times felt against them. In men like the late Bishop Wilberforce, to whose memory the Archbishop of Canterbury appealed as the very model of a prelate no less than a bishop, there was undoubtedly, with a wonderful versatility, great knowledge of character, no little tenderness, and the most striking tact, a plausibility, a power to turn him- self about from one intellectual and moral position to another without apparently any distress to himself, which made him seem to laymen by no means an ideal of the character which Christianity ought to produce in a leader. But what- ever harm the theological movements of recent years may have done in breaking up men's beliefs, and sending their minds drifting in all directions without finding for them any new
certainty, it has undoubtedly produced one very great good, in making the professions of belief by the leaders of thought in
the Church much more moderate and conscientious. Plausi- bility and " unction " are no longer the great qualifications for an English Bishop. Rather of late years, simplicity, intellectual lumaility, a strong grasp of practical truths, and a profound -earnestness in pressing all that is clear and leaving all that is ambiguous as much as possible in the shade, have taken their place. Plain living, and strong thinking, where strong thinking is possible, and the resolve to think as little as possible of what is not to be fathomed by such mortals as we are,' in such a world as the present,' may be said to characterise the leaders of the present day on the Episcopal Bench. Men of great -self-devotion, of great charity, of considerable sagacity, and very much more earnestness than had been known for a cen- tury back on the Bench of Bishops, may fairly be said now to be the rulers there.
Now it seems to us most desirable that a Church with such rulers as these should exist, and that the influence exercised by such rulers as these should not dwindle. Lord Lyttelton's Bill is a very simple and will be a very useful Bill to multiply such influences, if only Dr. Temple's suggestion can be en- grafted on it. It stands to reason that a bishop who is separ- ated by a journey of nine hours or more from the most distant parts of his diocese cannot by any possibility exercise the sort -of influence over his clergy, in stimulating, restraining, har- monising, that we have described. If such dioceses are not to be divided, the Church must more and more act without the guidance of its bishops in the places where the new popula- tions are chiefly growing up. Now we maintain that if we are to have, as we may fairly hope in future, bishops of the 'class from whom by far the best selections have been lately made, this would be a great misfortune. Nor would we be understood in any way to say that the value of the influence of the bishops depends on their belonging to -what is called the Broad School. We suspect that more and more of the ablest men in the Church will naturally belong to that school, but what we want is not men of one school or another, but men of high powers, high tone of mind, and large moral influence. We have often wondered and regretted, for instance, that Canon Liddon, a man of a very different theo- logy from that of those bishops who seem to us the best types of the Church, has not been raised to the Episcopal Bench. He is not of our school, but no one can deny that his genius is a rare one, nor that his mind is of the kind which diffuses faith and humility as a lamp diffuses light. It is the influence of high character, high ability, and Christian self-devotedness, to whatever theological school it belongs, which it is the function of the Episcopate to diffuse through the Church. And clearly this cannot come to pass without increasing the number of centres, and diminishing the radius of the sphere through which it is necessary to diffuse it. Lord Lyttelton's Bill is to be sup- ported by the Government. Let us hope that they may admit the amendment which Dr. Temple has suggested, so as to make it a hopeful, and probably at least a successful Bill.
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