CHURCH FINANCE.
[TO THE EDITOR OP TRH " SPROTATOR.1
SIR,—The eagerness and intelligence with which this subject has been taken i p by your correspondents are of the happiest augury for the Church. Church progress has its root in Church finance, but we have no sound system of finance. We try to live, partly on endowments which are quite inadequate, and partly on the charitable benefactions of a comparatively few members,—the majority of Churchmen do not help, and do not know how to help, nor would it be easy to show them at present how they could do so effectively. And yet we can make it easy if we go about it in the right way. Let me commend to you the following considerations :—(l) The Church does not need farther endowments, but she does need a large annual income. The Church of the day must pay for the Church of the day. (2) A Church Board must be created to receive and administer this income. The Representative Church. Council is obviously the body which should call the Board into being. The first practical step, therefore, is to move in the Church Council for a Committee to consider and report upon the constitution of such a Board. (3) With this Central Board must be associated a Board of each diocese, and in the diocese a Council for each parish. That is the whole machinery. Through it the needs of the Church, local and general, can be ascertained, and through it the money can be found. The Central Board will produce its budget, and in concert with the Diocesan Boards will assess the dioceses, and each diocese will assess its parishes. The parishes need never be taxed beyond their power, and they should be allowed to find the money in any way they please. Be it remembered that an average of 25 a parish, would mean. 270,000 a year. The raising of this common fund will release the Church from an "intolerable strain," but it will do much more,—it will give every Churchman a living interest in the Church. The Church will be no longer fourteen thousand parishes or thirty- seven dioceses, but one Church.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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