THE IRISH CLERGY.
TH2"Protestant Episcopal Church in Ireland" seems to be face to face with a problem which no Protestant community, except the Free Church of Scotland, and in a less degree, the Huguenot Church in France, has as yet seemed able to solve,—How is a Church without endowments, or with insufficient endow- ments, to obtain a thoroughly educated Ministry? It is said, apparently on good authority, that ever since disestablishment became a fact, the supply of competent Curates in the old Irish Church has been falling off. The divinity students of Trinity College are betaking themselves to England, where, as they justly think, the Church still offers them good professional chances. The best of them are the equals of any English clergymen, and the worst of them are better educated than the "literates," and more acceptable to Bishops ; they have a hearty hatred of Rome, which Evangelicals often consider evidence of every other kind of capacity; and they have, when the brogue has died away, an inherent faculty for oratory, a determination of fine words to the mouth, which makes them very acceptable as popular preachers to average congregations. It is quite natural that both classes should prefer England, and they do prefer it, in such numbers that the Irish Rectors are appalled by the prospect of having to do their own duty ; that there are parishes in which there is no -clerical maid-of-all-work procurable, and that the regular wage for a curate has risen from £75 to £150 a year. The Curates have not struck, but there are not enough of them, and for the first time in the history of the Church they are actually in request. Of course they do not pretend to the income of puddlers, mine-captains, or first-class coal-hewers, but still they ask means to live on, and we need scarcely say what a demand like that on the part of curates may be understood to mean. It is Communism in the Sanctuary, Socialism in a Christian Church, greed visible in the Temple ; and Rectors and Deans doubt whether Mr. Gladstone is merely a wicked man, whether he is not entitled to dispute -with the Pope and Lord -Stanley the right to the horrid number 666. Amusing as some of the jeremiads are, however—for one did not expect a quarrel between capital and labour within the Church, where labour hitherto has studied the Parable of the Penny, and gone to bed -contented even when supperless—there is a serious side to the complaint. It is evident, if the statistics given are correct,
that the old methods of recruiting the Clerical Order in Pro- testant Ireland will in a few years break down, and it is very difficult to see where an efficient substitute for those methods is to be found. The Bishops, it is said, are beginning to relax
their rules, and accept-candidates not up to the standard fixed in their own minds; but the only end of that policy, as matters now stand, is clearly a peasant clergy, and it is by no means certain that a peasant clergy will retain Episcopalian con- gregations already influenced by an unconfessed, but neverthe- less deep leaven of Presbyterian and democratic feeling. The Church of Rome can tolerate such a clergy, partly because in her system their first duty is to perform offices for which much education is not necessary, partly because her congregations are poor, and partly because she is sure of finding among a celibate priesthood agents of all cultivations to whom income has little or no meaning ; but a Protestant Episcopalian Church, addressing, as-it does, the middle and upper classes ; preferring, as it does, a married clergy ; relying, as it does, greatly upon preaching ; and cultivating, as it does, a moderate and self-restrained style of ministration, will lose muchin losing the existing presumption that a clergyman of its communion is an educated man. It will lose not only in prestige, which is of some importance, but in real influence, for culture is of all the attributes of man the most intolerant, and a terribly large section of Irish as well as English Churchmen would be unimpressed by St. Paul, if St Paul dropped his h's. Nothing can seem more illogical or indefensible, but still it is the fat that the distinctive dogmas of the English Dissenting Charches do not get half the consideration from educated men that they won/c1 receive, but for the traditional contempt of English Puritanism for "earthly cultivation" in its usual memento. The most complete and best remedy for this evil would be, of course, the entrance -of large numbers of refined men into the Clerical Order resolved to work without pay, to devote their means as well as themselves to the Ministry, and to be independent and yet obedient teachers of all who would listen, and we notice that one or two enthusiasts hope that dieestablishment may actually produce this result. We fear they are too sanguine. That it ought to produce it, jest as the claim of the heathen ought to summon hundreds of self-supporting Missionaries, is certain, but neither the Ministry nor the Missionary work has yet succeeded in attracting more than a select few. The number of well-to-do Missionaries, Dissenting Ministers, and even Presbyterian clergy- men can be counted almost on the fingers ; and a disestablished Church shares, in this respect, the fate of a Diasenting sect It ought not to be so. That it is so is the worst sign of Protestant- ism, and indeed of modern society, with which we are acquainted; but it is so, and the point is to discover a remedy, a method of utilising the men who do come forward, without wholly sacrificing either the real advantage or -the apparent advantage of a cultivated Ministry. We confess we can think of no scheme to this end so workable as that adopted by the Presbyterian Churches of Scot- land, the insistance—so strange when their theories are con- sidered—that a candidate for the Ministry shall pass through a long university career. This rule — utterly indefen- sible in theory in the Churches of Scotland, which insist, with amusing defiance of logic, on a call frola ,the Holy Spirit and a knowledge of Hebrew as alike, though not equally, indispensable qualifications for ordination —has kept those Churches supplied with Ministers of an exceptionally good type, —men full of popular sympathies and completely en rapport with the masses, and at the same time able, so far as Calvinism will permit, to hold their own in cultivated discussion. After the long course of instruction—eight years—enforced in Scotland, neither birth nor breeding matters much,—it is, of course, an accidental advantage of Scotland that large numbers of Ministers' sons follow their fathers' profession,—and the country is enabled- to obtain from the lower grades of society precisely the men she desires to fill her pulpits. There is no reason except the expense of education why the Episcopal Church in Ireland should not follow this precedent, and Trinity College can, if she likes, make a thorough education for her Divinity students as cheap as the Edinburgh University does. Some of these students, no doubt, will go to England still, but enough will stay to fill all the gaps which; it is stated, are now appearing in the ranks of candidates for Orders and applicants for cures.
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