THE REFORM OF CONVOCATION.
TilERE is one difficulty abcut the Reform of Convocation which every one who studies the subject must feel to be formidable, and that is that the only body which can really set about obtaining that reform with any effect,—the existing Convocation,—becomes conscious of its own most pressing needs about a dozen or a adore of years too late for effectual action. To read a debate in Convocation about the reform of Convocation, is like hearing an absent man slowly bethink himself that he must be at the railway about a couple of hours after the last train has started which can possibly take him to his destination. Convocation is a very learned body, but it debates as if it had as much time before it for every desirable change as Nature is supposed, on the Darwinian theory, to devote to the modification of a species,—say, a few thousand years to the development of a toe into a. hoof, and a few thousand more to the perfecting of the apparatus for swift motion. In the Convocation of Canterbury there were two debates,—one in the Upper, and one (or perhaps we should say two) in the Lower House, on such a reform of Convocation as might fit it really to represent the Church of England. The Upper House devoted themselves to the changes, nei*herfew nor small, needed
to render the existing Houses a respectable representative of the existing Clergy ; the Lower House devoted themselves to the still more urgent need of securing in some manner the co- operation of the Laity. But in neither debate was there any real sense of the urgency of the position, of the need of getting soon a Church body which represents the Church, if any- thing is to be done to stave off the chaos and confusion of the ecclesiastical present, and avert the judgment which falls on unready institutions when a great crisis comes and finds them wanting. Everywhere we hear of strife and dissatisfaction, of Ritualists who repudiate the only living voice there is, the living voice of the Judge of Arches and the Privy Council, and of Clergy who invoke the living voice of the Church to super- sede the historic lore of the Judges. But no living voice is audible, for the Convocation, as it is, represents or misrepresents only the higher ranks of the Clergy, containing, as it does, an almost fortuitous concourse of Proctors and Deans, while the Laity are not heard at all. And yet every proposal to amend this state of things is discussed with all that air of learning and abstract frigidity with which you would discuss the proper ecclesiastical policy of the twentieth or twenty-first century, or the best course of action for the generation which may first find itself without a supply of coal.
Then, again, consider the cautious and tentative prudence of those clergy who think—justly, but with almost the lotus-eater's dim and far-off sense of the significance of what they are urging,—that the aid of the Laity is essential to them, if they want to get any effective control over the management of ecclesiastical affairs in Parliament. First, Canon Miller moved a very safe general resolution, ultimately carried, and carried unanimously,—" That it is most desirable that this Convocation, without any disturbance of its ancient Constitu- tion, should provide for consultation with some representative body of the laity." The unanimity with which that resolu- tion was carried was obtained by the clause repudiating the notion of any constitutional change. In other words, the con- sulting body of laity suggested in it would have no rights at all, would not, in point of fact, be a constitutional power at all, but would simply be requested to advise, without having the least security that its advice would be taken. At the sitting following that at which this very safe resolution was adopted, Lord Alwyn° Compton ventured to try a step in advance, and moved, "That in the opinion of this House, it would be for the advantage of the Church that a provincial House of laymen should be formed, to be convened from time to time by the Archbishop, and to be in close communication with the Synod, who shall always be consulted before application is made to the Crown or to Parliament, to give legal effect to any act of the Synod ; the laymen to be elected by the lay members of each diocese in diocesan conference ; and the House of the laymen to bring before the provincial Synod any matters eccle- siastical in their judgment requiring consideration, by means of petition to his Grace the President." The advance made in this resolution on the previous one is only in this,—that it affirms the wisdom of always consulting the new lay body before recommending any change to the legislative power. It does not propose to give the new lay body any sort of consti- tutional position, and it is evident, from the speech of the mover, Lord Alwyne Compton, that nothing could well be more restricted than his ideas as to the suffrage upon which his Grace the Archbishop should be advised to build up,—at his own discretion, apparently,—this new consultative assembly :— " The first difficulty is, where are their constituencies to be found ? We cannot take all baptised persons, or even tho whole body of com- municants, for the task of merely making a list of the communicants is too great to contemplate, and practically impossible. Bat a former Committee of this House did recommend a constituent body, which exists in almost every diocese,—the parochial councils of communicants, from which bodies the lay members of ruridecanal conferences were selected. Now, ruridecanal conferences exist inmost dioceses. I wish they existed in all, and possibly, if the House accepts my proposal, they will be found in every diocese. After the ruridecanal conferences there is a diocesan conference, in which Members of Parliament, the mayors of towns, and other influential laymen, being Churchmen, are to be found. These diocesan conferences would be the constituents who would elect the members of the House of laymen. The persons who would come up to Westminster would for obvious and very good reasons be to a large extent Peers and M.P.'s, and I anticipate that this new House will be a body of Churchmen consisting almost entirely of Members of both Houses of Parliament. It may be asked, If you are going to have such a House, why not propose a Committee of both Houses of Parliament at once ; but who are we to ask ? Are we going to ask for a Committee of the House of Commons? It has been done in times gone by, but it would be very awkward to do so now. But an elected body will be very strong, and have greater influence on the general opinion of the country ; and as this House has agreed to the
principle of some form of lay House, I hope no one will oppose my motion without showing some of the means of carrying out the idea."
Remember that this is the language of an active reformer, and the grotesqueness of the situation strikes one at once. The mover is in search of a lay body which should give a great representative weight to any resolves Convocation may adopt. And he suggests a body selected by the weeding process of a double election out of "the parochial councils of communicants," and which he expects to consist chiefly, if not altogether, "of M.P.'s and Peers." Now, can Lord Alwyne Compton realise for a moment what is needed to give influence in Parlia- ment to the vote of slay House of this kind as a constituent element of a Church body? Could any practical politician exaggerate the scorn with which the House of Commons would accept the suggestion that such a House as this could be re- garded as the true representative of the laity of the Church ? In the first place, the limitation of the ultimate electors to Communicants is utterly indefensible, and even absurd. Does the Church exist for the sake of communicants, or for the sake of all her people? Is it not the very people who, for some inward reason of their own are not communicants, whose representations as to the defects and needs of their Church most need attention? Say that Con- vocation is debating the Rubrics, and suppose that it is the Rubrics in relation to the Communion Service which prevent no small number of the people from becoming communicants. Can anything be more monstrous than that these should be the very persons not represented in any way in the consultative Lay body Or say that the discussion turns on the need of a new Order of preachers, and the inefficiency of preaching as it is at present practised in the Church. Can anything be more ridiculous than the exclusion of all representatives of those who, ex hypothesi, must be assumed to have found the preaching most defective, since it has never yet persuaded them to avail themselves of the most characteristic of Christian rites? We take it that if the suggestion of Lord Alwyne Compton's speech were carried out, we should get a Lay body consisting of that hybrid class which may be described as ecclesiastically-minded laymen,—in other words, laymen who are neither suffi- ciently theologians to take a deep interest in the ultimate religious meaning of the Church's rites, nor sufficiently in sympathy with the people to represent truly popular feelings and popular wishes ;—the sort of laymen who would enter at once into Dr. Fraser's [not Bishop Fraser's] profound objec- tion, that in Convocation there is a Domus Superior and a Domus Inferior, but if this new House were created, there would be no name ready for it.
We fear that Convocation is only beginning to conceive what lies before it, if the Church's "living voice" is ever really to be heard again,—is only beginning to conceive it in the way in which a sleeper sometimes dwells in his dreams on the shadow of a coming burden of responsibility. Let us assure Convocation that to give its lay advisers any authority which Parliament will really respect,—respect, that is, not because the advice seems intrinsically reasonable, but because it comes from a body really representing the laity,—it will never do to pro- vide machinery carefully adapted beforehand to get together a few ecclesiastical Peers and M.P.'s, selected after a rather com- plex method from a body of communicants. If Parliament is to give any weight at all to the recommendations of a Church body, it must be, like the bodies constituted in some of our colonies under Acts of the Colonial Legislatures, a body really representing the people who attend the Church and the people who support the Church by their contributions,—not one re- presenting a select spiritual few who, though they are doubtless the most deeply attached to the Church, yet for that very reason are less likely than others to see what is amiss in her policy and her administration. Convocation is beginning to be haunted in its dreams by the right sort of fancies, but it has not yet begun to attack the problem with which it has to deal.
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