The Duke of Connaught laid the first stone of the
Church House on Wednesday, on a site close to Westminster Abbey. The Church House is to be one of the many monu- ments of the completion by the Queen of the Jubilee of her accession, and is to be a building for general meetings of the Anglican clergy, and for the transaction of the great mission business and other collective concerns of the Anglican Church. The fund has not, on the whole, been popular, and that is why the inauguration of this new building has hung fire for four years. Even now, after buying the site and the buildings at present erected on the site, which have cost about 260,000, there is not as yet enough to complete the great hall, which is calculated to cost 236,000, of which only 224,000 is in hand. When that is built, a great deal more will be wanted for the 'erection of the various offices and committee-rooms which will be necessary to make the Church House what it is intended to be, the centre of all Anglican business and work. The truth is, that in a time when the clergy have suffered so much, there has been a very natural disinclination to devote so much as is needed for an almost purely mechanical reform.
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