PRACTICAL CHURCH REFORMS.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR: SIR,—We hope so much from this short respite to the attack on our Church, that I should be most glad if you would allow the views of one of the rank-and-file of the Church to appear in the Spectator as to some necessary reforms, if the poor livings are to be filled up at all. There are follies in manage. ment and organisation which no other body, except the Church, would permit (1.) Queen Anne's Bounty is exactly in the condition in 1895 as when it was founded, only the money is drawn now from livings quite unfit to pay it, while many of the large livings escape.
(2) The expenses which follow the acceptance of a living are so great that I know of men declining in consequence. The law or custom of fixtures is a scandal, rich men putting luxuries into rooms and charging for them, even after forty years' use. The incotner must pay or incur odium in the locality to which he comes as a stranger.
(3) Business men unconnected with either would decide these questions justly if allowed to do so without appeal.
(4.) As to health, a first-class physician's testimony ought to be sufficient ; yet I have known one who had incurred serious illness in the heavy parish work of a large town for many years, insulted when appointed to a small village cure for which he has shown his capability by several years of unin- terrupted work. Why should judgment be so different in the case of a Bishop and in that of an ordinary rector ?
(5.) Then a fund should be provided to meet heavy legs charges incurred through obeying the orders of a Bishop wit r no option whatever on the part of the clergyman to decline.
(6) Again, visitation fees are, I think, irrecoverable, with the result that some pay them, others do not. Archdeacodo might well be paid out of the Bishops' salaries. They seem to be the only clerics who do not suffer loss from agrieul• tarsi depression, while the great majority of country clergy are receiving less than £200 a year.
(7.) If we bad Bishops who knew by experience these prac- tical difficulties and trials, something might be done ; but the career, with ample and growing income, from Fellowship through headmastership to Bishopric, is not productive of the sympathy we need. I wish to condense, or could have explained more in detail.—I am, Sir, &c., REFORMER.
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