(1876.)

The Archbishop of Canterbury is making his second quadrennial visitation to his diocese, and delivering an elaborate Charge to the clergy, in seven instalments. Of these the first two are reported at considerable length in the Times of the 27th and 28th inst., a couple of columns of small print being given to each. The Times has moreover generously vouchsafed a leading article of encouragement and approval on each; and surely the State Church ought to be proud of such lofty patronage, and Lambeth Palace ought to be very grateful to Printing House Square. The Daily News could only spare half a column for the first; and the Daily Telegraph, whose exuberant Christianity, hot and strong as boiling rancid oil, amazes the world on every great festival of the Church, showed its estimate of the importance of our Primate’s manifesto by allotting to it eight or nine lines of small print at the foot of a column—a pickpocket in a police-court gets as much notice.

Let us glance down the Times’ reports, pausing at anything worth a note if not by its intrinsic value yet on account of the position of the speaker:—

“I wish to set before you some thoughts as to the particular duties, which at this time devolve upon the Established Church as the National Church of this country. In the days in which we live some even hesitate to assign to us the position of a National Church. A National Church is a national protest for God and for Christ, for goodness and for truth; and if we of this National Church are not making this national protest, no one else certainly makes one. No other body in this country can claim that commanding influence over the thought of the age, which by God’s blessing is assigned to us. No other religious body in the country has either that connection with the State, or if that be thought a small matter, that power of influencing the whole nation which, thank God, is still reserved to us.”

It will be noticed that the Archbishop in his definition of a National Church has humbly copied the unorthodox Matthew Arnold, who in his address to London clergymen at Sion College, (reviewed in the Secularist of April 8) declared with an exquisitely humorous gravity that he regarded the Church of England as a great national society for the promotion of goodness! But the Archbishop is really too loose in his imitation of this charitable definition bestowed by a man of letters. He says: “A National Church is a national protest for God and for Christ;” according to which, Mohammedanism, Brahmanism, and Buddhism, as the national churches of several countries, are so many national protests for God and Christ. We do not expect a mere Primate in these days to write with the precision of an accomplished literary man, but we do think that he ought to be somewhat less inaccurate than this. However, it is to the last two sentences quoted that I would particularly call attention. The Church of England has a commanding influence over the thought of the age! It has the power of influencing the whole nation! Here be truly astonishing announcements. The thought of the age in our country is embodied in such persons as Spencer and Darwin, Huxley and Tyndall, Carlyle and Browning, George Eliot and George Meredith; and what a commanding influence the State Church has over these! As for its influence over the whole nation, is it not the fact that a large portion of the educated classes, and the great bulk 01 the artisans, are either sceptical or indifferent, and that more than a half of the shopkeepers are Nonconformists bent on Disestablishment and Disendowment? The Archbishop has made a most unlucky start.

Passing over some commonplace and common-sense remarks on the duties of the clergy, we come to the following:—

“This is an age in which there is a great deal of uneasy thought seething throughout the nation. It is a time when, more than any other, serious and earnest learning is required to meet the wants of those among whom we live. Let us be thankful that the arrangements of cathedral bodies do provide quiet places where men may follow a studious course, and cause their light to be seen throughout the land, guiding the thought of those who are in need of guidance in this anxious age.”

Admitting the truth of the opening sentences we may add that in every age since the supremacy of the Church was first shaken by the invention of printing, the recovery of the Greek and Latin classics, and the revival of science, there has been a great deal of uneasy thought seething throughout this nation and every other nation in Christendom, and that age by age this seething has scalded more and more pitilessly the dogmas, the Scriptures, and the authority of the Church, whose Hebrew old clothes, as Carlyle fitly calls them, must soon be literally boiled to rags. We may also freely admit that the arrangements of Cathedral bodies do provide quiet places where men may follow a studious course; but we ask, how many of them really pursue it? How many of them cause their light to shine throughout the land? How many guide the thought of those who need guidance in this anxious age? Is it not as notorious as it is disgraceful to the Church, that, with few exceptions, the canons and other dignitaries make scarcely any contribution to the thought, or scholarship, or science of the age, in return for the large leisure and ample stipends with which they are endowed? These stalled canons may ruminate much, even like stalled oxen, but what nourishment do we get from the rumination of the former? Look through lists of standard works, of really important works, published during the last quarter of a century, and see how few of them, even in theology and kindred departments, have come from the “learned leasure” of our rich cathedrals.

If there is one thing more closely connected than any other with true religion, that thing is money. Always the most spiritual exhortations and speculations end in very practical appeals to the pockets—of course the pockets of the laity. We are reminded what Paul Louis Courier said of the clergy in his day: “They have need of good examples and will find them amongst us. But if we are stronger than they as to the commandments of God, they in their turn have the advantage of us in respect to the commandments of the Church, which they remember better than we, and of which the principal is, I believe, to give all we have for heaven. ‘You ask me,’ said that worthy preacher Barlette, ‘how to get to Paradise? The bells of the convent tell you: Giving, giving, giving,’ The Latin of the monk is charming: “Vos quoeritis a me, fratres carissimi, quomodo itur ad paradisupi? Hoc dicunt vobis campance monasterii, dando, dando, dando” Very early in his discourse does our Primate ring this favorite chime of all church bells, but with a noble disinterestedness, a magnanimous depreciation:—

“We may think lightly of the vast sums of money which of late years have been poured into the treasury of the Established Church for the re-edification of our buildings; we may think lightly even of the vast sums which have been contributed by the members of our Church for the instruction of our poorer brethren, thinking that, after all, it is not the silver and the gold, but the precious doctrine of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the purity and holiness which attend the true profession of that doctrine on which we have to rest our claims. But still even the outward signs of the influence which God has given us are not to be despised.”

“We may think lightly of the vast sums of money!” we, the archbishop with £15,000 a year and a palace rent-free, and the members of the Cathedral body of Canterbury each with our several hundreds a year and our snug residences! Very lightly, no doubt! But “still even the outward signs of the influence which God has given us are not to be despised.” How unworldly, how humble, is our right reverend father in God; it is a pity that his voice here has such a twang of Pecksniff and Uriah Heap. I really believe that he is too much of a gentleman to speak in this tone with his natural voice; it is that fatal falsetto of the pulpit. Well, in sober truth, these Churchmen had better not despise the outward signs of their influence, for there is an abundant lack of inward ones. And discreetly do they boast of the re-edification of their buildings, for edification or re-edification of their congregations, alas, there is little or none whereof to boast. Having rang this preliminary diffident chime of Dando dando, dando, the Archbishop revels in riotous peals to the same words before concluding:—

“Depend upon it a country that produces in a short time £30,000,000 [sic in Times; Daily News, ‘three millions’] to restore the outward fabric of our churches, will not fail to respond to any appeal when made for the funds which may be wanted to assist those who otherwise cannot provide themselves with a due education that they may be fitted for the ministry. Another matter which I think presses upon us is this. Is it not desirable something should be done to provide the means of passing their last days in comfort, for those worn out in the service of Christ? Here again I feel confident that an appeal to the wealthy of this country would be answered at once if those who have the leisure—none more fit than the dignitaries of our cathedral churches—were to take up this question, and to our existing charities might well be added some means of supplementing the resources and meeting the wants of the poorer clergy. I visited yesterday the Clergy Orphan School. I was informed that that school was perfectly full—more full than it had ever been before—and still there were twice as many applicants for admission as there were places to admit them to. Does not this show it is very desirable we should all of us direct our efforts to see that the charity of our fellow-Churchmen should be appealed to, to assist in the education of the orphan children of our clergy, and not only the orphan children?”

Our fellow Christians, the laymen, having laid for us three million golden eggs in a short time (the lavish geese!) will not fail to give us more to educate young men for the ministry; and more yet to pension our worn-out clergy; and more yet again to educate the children, orphan and not orphan, of our clergy. We archbishop and bishops, dean and chapter, are so poor, so poor, so very very poor, that we can do nothing at all for any of these miserable clerical critters; the whole revenues of our State Church are so insignificant that they are quite inadequate to provide decently for its ministers! But we know well that our dear, good, stupid, unedified lay brethren and sisters will give all the out-door relief we have the impudence to ask; will educate our young and pension our old; marching ever briskly heavenwards to that cheerfulest church chime: Giving, giving, giving; Dando, dando, dando! Does not our Archbishop rival or outrival that worthy preaching monk, Barlette? Here I must pause, but shall have to return again to the Charge, which threatens to be a heavy charge indeed to the purses of the richer and more foolish members of our impoverished State Church.