A VISITATION CHARGE.• Tag Bishop of Birmingham describes himself, not

inaptly, as " one who has considerable experience and who is fairly free from prejudice." This is, perhaps, to say that he is not very like a Bishop. This impression is confirmed by the outspokenness of his Charge, a document worthy of the critical period at which it was delivered. The pulpit note is absent ; the Bishop speaks as a man addressing men. He is under no illusions : " The condition of religious life to-day is not so satisfactory, from the point of view of the orthodox believer, as it was in 1916."

" It is quite pitiful to find such things as in a parish of 7,000, where the church accommodation is nearly 800, the attendance on Sunday morning is 18. This is not an isolated case."

" In some great town parishes only one per 1,000, and even one per 2,000, are presented for Confirmation."

• Vitus-ton Charge, 1919. By the Bishop of Birmingham. London: Longmans. 11s.1

What is the remedy ?

" If we are to get hold upon the now indifferent people, we shall have, I believe, to change radically the character of our services. I do not think that the suggestions contained in the Report of the Archbishops' Committee on the Worship of the Church give us strong enough meat for our digestion. I feel that, for such persons as one has in mind, the Prayer Book is too closely associated with a firm and settled belief. Consequently, I should like, not only in the evening of Sunday, but in the morning, some service which could be attended by people still on the threshold of religious conviction."

And there is a class more difficult to deal with even than the indifferent :— " It is when I turn to the consideration of the Sunday loafer that I am most disheartened. . . . An enormous crowd of people, very many of them adolescents, is gathered together, with absolutely nothing to do, except to while away the time in a manner which is not merely unintellectual, but, I should say, utterly unrecreative. These people will not, in their present state of mind, go to church ; nor would they greatly benefit if they did."

With regard to the Sacraments, " Increased attempts appear to have been made to make the Holy Communion the central service of the day ; but only with comparative success. Clergy are certainly unwise to make hasty alterations. . . . Are they bearing sufficiently in mind that they are the people who minister, and that ministry means service ?"

" I cannot come to any other conclusion than that, sooner or later, we shall have Evening Communion, with the proper safeguards which all schools of thought will recognize as necessary."

In the matter of such unlawful developments as " Exposition " and " Benediction," he is opposed to prosecution. In a recent case, in which a Bishop's Court, the Bishop himself being the judge, had decided that the clergyman prosecuted should be deprived of his living, " the Bishop himself went down to take possession, and had to spend his time in the Vestry, whilst the clergyman, who had not appeared before his Bishop, took the service ; and so acted that only by force, in other words, by the police, could he be removed." Action of this kind is " futile," and calculated to place the Church as a whole " in what would he a ridiculous position if it were not so painful and undignified." But the lawlessness of the extreme school is a real danger. Its representatives " are often private judgmentarians, and, what some of them would dislike more to be called, Protestants. They wish to retain a bowing acquaintance with Episcopacy, but they define the word authority in such a way as to allow for its exercise upon everybody except themselves."

With regard to Church Reform, the difficulty is that " the great inert mass of ordinary Church folk do not to-day take very great interest even in the most sweeping proposals which are laid upon the table. They do not know, many of them, anything about such matters as the Enabling Bill, or Archbishops' Committees." The result of this apathy is that the many are overridden by the few. " You tempt an active minority belonging to a particular class to over-step its boundaries and to demand more than its rights, if you of the majority show that your hands are weak and your hearts faint."

Of the Enabling Bill—which when he wrote was before the House of Lords—the Bishop is of opinion that," with due safeguards, it should pass the Second Reading." But "without these safeguards, he could. not vote for it." He points out, in particular, the advantages of the present system of Patronage : " were the Bishop to dispose of all the Patronage, you would get, sooner or later, a narrow Church."

" It is a good thing for the Church of England that it should have private patrons, college patrons, and trustee patrons ; we thereby at any rate ensure comparative comprehensiveness. For the great offices, lam inclined on the whole to think that the Crown, acting through the Prime Minister, is the least objectionable method of procedure."

As to the Court of Appeal, " It passes the wit of man to discover what authority will be regarded by some of our people, and especially of our clergy, as final. Every kind of court appears to be tainted ; and, here again, I confess to some doubt as to whether anything can be found more likely to get at the truth, and to deal fairly, than bench which is composed of laymen who are experts upon legal questions."

Of Establishment : " The one thing which makes me sometimes wonder as to our being the National Church, is the question whether we still hold a sufficiently strong position to be called National."

But " there is evidence," he believes, " that on the whole the people desire our Church to be the Christian expression of the land. Even those who are the most irregular attendants -do, on great occasions, recognize the National Church. They are baptized into the fold ; they come to be married at its altars ; they ask that our service should be read over them when they have passed away."

So that

" on the Baptismal Franchise stands or falls the National character of the Church of England. There would be no interest taken by the country at large in what might be done by the small but devout number who are regular communicants, should the stricter franchise be Adopted. Every attempt at reform of the Church must make for the union of the whole body, and should not divide the component parts, or satisfy only one school of thought."

When the Bishop says that, as between the Church and Nonconformists, " there is certainly no bitterness on the Church side," he seems to have forgotten the really shocking memorial presented to Convocation on May 6th by Bishop Gore, and received without protest by that venerable body. Nonconformists would be more than human if these thunders, stagethunders as we know them to be, had left no bitterness behind them. Of Religion the poet well reminds us that : " Most she fears the controversial pen, The holy strife of disputatious men ; Who the blest Gospel's peaceful page explore, Only to fight against its precepts more."

The Charge ends upon a high note of citizenship : " The more one reads of the differences in English industrial life, the fuller becomes one's belief that there is no solution to be found except upon a Christian basis. You may settle wages -to-day, but without finality ; you may nationalize certain industries ; you may interfere with the privileges of capital, you may tinker here and there at the relations between employer and employed ; but the beginning and the end of the whole matter, if you are to build up something permanent, must be the carrying on of the industrial, and indeed of the whole national, life upon the simple but all-satisfying principle that we should do to others as we would they should do unto us."