THE BISHOP OF LONDON ON HIS CLERGY.
AWEEK or two back we drew some conclusions about episcopal work from a chance remark of the Bishop of London on the occupations of his ordinary day. In the February number of Good Will (which, we may say in passing, is an excellent penny magazine,—very earnest, very High Church, and just a little Socialist) there appears a very original form of interview, in which the Bishop delivers himself of a good many other remarks in something like the same strain as that on which we com- mented, but characterised by even greater frankness. Probably Bishop Creighton is not the first Bishop who has had the matter of this interview in his mind. For one worm that turns there are many that lie motionless beneath the harrow. But he is quite the first that has allowed them to be given to the world, and there is room for some not uninteresting speculation as to what his reason for allowing it has been. We believe the explana- tion to be that the things he here says—unusual as they are in form and in the apparent absence of reserve—are things which he thinks it expedient for the clergy to know. They are things, moreover, that can be said with less, or less abiding, offence when they are conveyed in a stream of seemingly uncalculating talk than if they were wrapped up in official phrases and embodied in a pastoral, with the formal beginning, "Mandell, by Divine Per- mission, Lord Bishop of London." It is this conviction that gives the interview its serious interest. Amusing it would be even if the Bishop said simply the first thing that came into his head. But it is more than amusing if we can recognise certain general principles which underlie his administration of the great diocese which he rules.
In one point, we are sorry to say, the interview bears out our worst anticipations. The "History of the Papacy" is never to be finished. "It is absolutely impossible to do the work of this stupendous diocese, leaving out the question of writing any book." We have no doubt that this is true, and no doubt that it ought not to be true. How the work of the diocese of London could best be rearranged—whether by a large process of subdivision, or by the further multiplication of suffragans, or by the devolution of such parts of the work as are not specially or exclusively episcopal—we do not pretend to say. The only point on which we feel competent to have an opinion is that it ought to be rearranged somehow. On this aspect of the subject, however, we have already delivered ourselves, and we pass on to the particulars in which a Bishop's work is made harder than it need be. The first and chiefest is the clergy. They do on the average an immense amount of work, but, beyond all other men, they are "self-centred, undisciplined, and difficult." It is the result, we suppose, of the singular independence and the singular isolation conferred by the Anglican parochial organisation. The one feature in the position of a beneficed clergyman which the law has set itself to foster and cherish has been its freehold character. Once seated in his benefice, the parson has been for all practical purposes his own master. So long as he conforms to a very few legal obligations, neither his Bishop, nor his church. wardens, nor his parishioners can say anything to him. Or, to put it quite accurately, they may say what they please, provided that it is not libellous, but having said it, they must leave it to work its own effect. If the parson does not wish to listen he is under no compulsion to do so. The Bishop of London thus fillms up the effect of three centuries of being let alone. Each man "thinks that his own particular trouble or grievance must be settled by the Bishop, so as to put him to as little inconvenience as possible ; that his particular line of ceremonial is the only one the Catholic Church has ever used ; that he knows something about Canon Law, whereas hardly any one knows what Canon Ltw is ; and that the Bishop exists solely for the purpose of preaching in his church." Plainly, it is time for Bishops to make some stand against this reading of their episcopal duty. The clergy cannot have it both ways. They cannot be absolutely independent of their Bishop whenever that suits them, and yet feel that they have a right to enlist his services on their behalf whenever that suits them. There is something to be said for either line taken by itself. With the wide differences of opinion and practice at present existing in the Church of England, there is an obvious convenience in leaving them to exist side by side until the fact of survival has proved the superior fitness of the survivors. On the other hand, considering the unedifying spectacle that an trchy commonly presents to outsiders, there would be an equ illy obvious advantage in submitting these differences to the mediating and harmonising control of the Bisnops. But what the clergy seem to desire is a combination of the right of constant appeal with the privilege of entire dis- regard of the authority to which the appeal lies. Their constant prayer to the Bishop is,—' Help me whenever I am in a difficulty ; preach for me whenever I ask you ; and for the rest leave me alone.' There is a onetodedness about this arrangement that naturally endears it to a clergy which thinks a great deal of Episcopacy and not much of the Episcopate.
But the Bishop of London has more to complain of than the giving of trouble to himself. That is all in the episcopal day's work. A further and more serious annoy- ance is that the clergy will not leave each other alone. The peace has to be kept between them somehow, but it becomes very hard to keep it when they will not refrain from "forcing party badges on to each other's unwilling shoulders." And then the Bishop gives an example of how this policy works. One of the matters most fiercely disputed between the two parties is the propriety of "evening communions." The Bishop of London's own mind is fully made up on this point. He thinks evening communions "deplorable." But he also thinks that "in the ordinary run of things" they would die a natural death. They got on because they have been erected into a shibboleth, because the announcement of them on the notice-board of a church is tantamount to a certificate of Evangelical orthodoxy. But who is responsible for giving them this position ? "The so-called High Church party." It is they who, "with the greatest inconsideration for them- selves, their Bishop, and every one else, will keep bring- ing up evening communions' again and again, so that the Protestants, having had the practice labelled as ex- clusively theirs, say It is practised by our party, and we mean to stick to it.'" This is an excellent ex po-ition of the wrong, and by implication, of the right, way of carry-. ing this logical controversy into actual life. Here is a custom very much disliked by High Churchmen of all shades, regarded with at most indifference by the majority of Low Churchmen, and very much liked by a few of the same party. How in these circumstances can the custom be most easily and surely multiplied ? The necessary preliminary to such multiplication is the reinforcement of the extreme Low Churchmen who love "evening com- munions" for their own sake by recruits from the moderate Low Churchmen who, left to themselves, have no affection for it, and it is this preliminary that High Churchmen so often set themselves to furnish. "Evening communions" are denounced in a way that makes it by degrees a point of honour among Low Churchmen to stand by those who have introduced them, and in this way the work is done.
The real test of party confidence is willingness to leave events to work out the party victory. And yet how seldom is this confidence displayed. Men will go on affirming that the future is with them, without being one bit the more ready to leave the future to do its work. It is seldom by direct conversion from opponents that parties grow, whether they be political or ecclesiastical parties. Far oftener it is by annexation from the indifferent mass that stand outside, and the worst of all methods of bringing about this annexation is abuse of opponents. In religious matters especially abuse is apt to either create amusement or sympathy with the side abused, and, much as it may delight those who agree with it to begin with, they are not the people who need to be won over. This is the moral of the Bishop of London's observations, and a very sound moral it is. The wisest party is the party which goes on quietly on its own lines, accepts in silence the abuse which, when it is undeserved, is the most effectual form of advertisement, and takes care never to give its adversary the benefit of a similar advertisement. Whether these simple truths will gain a larger audience now that they come from episcopal lips we do not know, but the Bishop of London's plainness of speech is at least an indication that he does not quite despair of being listened to.
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