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they should be selected on the condition that they are respectively qualified for undertaking some special branch of Church work.

One Canonry should be assigned to a Scholar. Another Canonry should be given to a Priest great in educational work; a third to one who has had experience in and who can give his time to conducting Missionary work in the diocese; a fourth should be given to a Priest who is a powerful preacher. In fact the Canons ought all to be more or less eloquent in the pulpit, and together they might form a nucleus of a band of preachers to go forth throughout the diocese from time to time to help the overworked clergy in country parishes.

It would be a great boon and productive of much good to the Church if in every Diocese there was a body of Preachers attached to every Cathedral who made it their special mission to carry on the work above referred to, for no matter what may have sufficed in the past, there is no doubt that it is high time now that the outward forms of ease, dignity, respectability, and exclusiveness, attached to the position of a Canon Residentiary in our English Cathedrals, were exchanged for the graces of practical usefulness, real Diocesan work, and self-denying labour.

Perhaps the most important reform which is needed at the present day in the Church of England is that due care and a truly conscientious discharge of duty on the part of ecclesiastical and lay patrons in adminstering preferments be observed.

There appears to be no system whatever in dispensing Church Patronage. If the Church of England was a pocket borough, a close Corporation, or a family estate, then no fault could be found in the friends or partisans of either being promoted to her benefices; but as the Church was instituted by its Founder for the spiritual welfare of those for whom He died, it is clear that the administration of Patronage is one of the highest trust, and any breach of that trust is an act of defiance to the will of Christ, and a complete prostitution of the worthiest aims to the basest and meanest ends.

For what can be more scandalous than the appointment of young Priests to the charge of large and important parishes, or in short to any independent position in the Church when they have had no time, owing to their youth and want of experience, to acquaint themselves with the manifold duties and responsibilities appertaining to the work of a parish in the Church of God. The Bishops themselves should take up this most important matter of reform, and ought to act together on a fixed

principle in the administration of their patronage, and never bestow a benefice or any other ecclesiastical dignity upon a clergyman until he has been at least six years in Priest's orders. Lay patrons would to a great extent be disposed to follow such an excellent example, and the Church would soon cease to bemoan the appointment of young and inexperienced Priests to livings which so frequently takes place in the present day, and is disastrous to the welfare of the Church.

A young clergyman, with no other qualifications than those of a mere worldly kind, is frequently regarded as eligible for preferment. He has private means of his own, he may have married a rich wife, or he may be related to some ecclesiastical dignitary. Either of these qualifications are considered a good and sufficient reason for placing him in a position of the most solemn trust and responsibility when he himself is totally unfitted for it. I say it without any fear of contradiction, at least from parishioners, that no Priest ought to have a benefice conferred upon him before he has had some years' experience in parochial work and possesses a fair share of pulpit ability; but under the present system of patronage these all important qualifications are too frequently considered of inferior moment to those above mentioned, viz., those of an entirely worldly kind.

Throughout the Provinces of Canterbury and York benefices are occupied by men, excellent, doubtless, in moral character, and desirous perhaps of doing their best, but who in reality have not the faintest conception of dealing with souls, men who have no knowledge of human nature, and are therefore incapable of touching the heart, whose parochial visiting is of the scantiest kind, and whose sermons, if not purchased at so much a dozen from the dispensers of such literature, are couched in forced and stilted language partaking of the nature of a theological treatise or moral disquisition, instead of being simple, plain, loving earnest appeals carrying conviction to the souls of the congregations, and irresistibly enabling them to realise they are listening to a message from the Most High.

No wonder that under such a system incompetent Priests from time to time are forced upon parishes: no wonder that the inhabitants thereof forsake the churches of their forefathers for the Bethel or Bethesda hard by, or find themselves drifting away into the open sea of unbelief.

It is under such a system that Church work grows slack, and Church life certainly, slowly yet surely begins to wither and decay.

The question arises what can be done to bring about a necessary measure of reform? Let the Bishops at once begin by setting the example of never promoting a clergyman to a benefice unless he is a good preacher, or has had wide parochial experience, and they will find Lay Patrons very soon follow their lead.

A great and crying abuse in the Church of England is the Sale of Advowsons and next Presentations-at least, so far as it is usually conducted.

This traffic in livings is, without doubt, a very great blot in the organization of the Church in this country, and the subject is one which from time to time has engaged the earnest attention of those who, from their position and influence, might be able to effect some reform.

Something, of course, might be said, in favour of retaining the power to purchase an Advowson in the case of those who are large landed proprietors, and whose estates lie in the immediate neighbourhood to that in which the Benefice is situated. Under such circumstances it would be far more likely that the owners of such property would take an interest in the spiritual welfare of their tenants than others who lived at a distance and were in no way identified with the neighbourhood.

An Advowson not only forms part of an estate, but is a trust to be administered involving a provision for the spiritual welfare of those living within its circle-in short, the secular and religious elements are so closely united as to afford the greatest probability that the religious side of the question will be treated as favourably as possible when the interest in the secular one is of a close personal kind; and therefore, as a rule it is acknowledged that the appointments to benefices ecclesiastical by Patrons who are the owners of estates on which such benefices are situated, are of a more satisfactory character than those made by a Patron who has no other property in the neighbourhood. And the reason for the above is not far to seek.

If the Patron of a living resides in the parish, or even in a neighbouring one to that in which he has the right of Presentation, it is most probable that even for the sake of his own interest, if for no higher motives, he will be more careful in selecting a Priest for a benefice situated close by his own residence, than he would be if the living was in another county and many miles distant from his own property. It would be a matter of regret, therefore, if in the future Advowsons should be separated from estates with which they have been united for generations,

as the influence of the Church in such localities would surely become considerably weakened; and if Landowners were ever to be deprived, either by Disestablishment or otherwise, of the Patronage of their livings, with which they and their ancestors have enjoyed the most intimate association, there would be great danger of their becoming more or less indifferent to the spiritual needs of those parishes over which they and their fathers before them had exercised a beneficial control. It must be confessed that if Advowsons were to be separated from the estates with which they have hitherto been united, and purchased by persons who had no interest in the soil, the cause of the Church's progress in country places would receive a blow which neither time nor hard work on the part of individual clergy would ever be likely to repair.

But as regards the Sale of next Presentations the case is far different, since such a transaction opens the doors to the owner of an Advowson to raise money for merely selfish ends, and enables a Priest to take possession of a benefice who may have no qualification whatever for being placed in a position of such responsibility save and except that he has a wellfilled purse.

In either case a great injury is done to the Church, and gross scandals have been the result of such transactions, perilous alike to the clergyman, the parishioners, and to the owner of the Advowson.

To obviate these spiritual dangers, it is well known that "a Bill," dealing with the sale of livings, was brought before the House of Lords some years ago by the Bishop of Peterborough, but it fell to the ground owing to the jealousy it excited amongst the Peers, who are nearly all largely interested in Church Patronage.

Doubtless, had "the Bill" been allowed to become a law, incalculable good would have been done.

If for the present the sale of next Presentations is to be retained, in order to reduce the evil to a minimum let such sale be transacted openly, and the purchasers thereof, as well as those for whom such purchases are made, will be placed above suspicion. It may be stated, without fear of contradiction, that all Priests, no matter how desirous they may be of obtaining Preferment, are, if truly conscientious, completely barred by the oath against simony from buying a living; whilst the same oath affords no barrier against the admission of unworthy clerics, who interpret it in what they are pleased to call a non-natural sense, and enables them to effect a purchase of a next Presentation through their family lawyer, or

by means of one of those clerical agents whose existence and vocation are a disgrace to a Branch of the Church of Christ.

The Sale of next Presentations has not one redeeming feature as the matter now stands. The oath against simony prevents any honest man from having any part or lot in the matter, while it produces no effect upon him who seeks the Priest's office for a piece of bread.

Abolish therefore once and for all the oath against that which is falsely called simony, but abolish above all the rights to sell "next Presentations," and then the Church will no more be a witness of the terrible scandals which have taken place, viz., of benefices with a cure of souls put up to auction recommended to some clerical purchaser, not on account of the priceless opportunity before him of spiritually benefitting under God those souls committed to the Priest's charge, but recommended and purchased on account of its worldly advantages, good society, nearness to a trout stream and railway station, with premises attached containing lawn tennis ground, good stabling, and the usual accessories of a gentleman's country residence.

Again there is to my mind a grave fault committed in the exercise of ecclesiastical patronage when a benefice is vacant, in the question being on all occasions asked, how about private means? as if the possession of this world's goods was the primary recommendation in behalf of a Presentee to a living. I am not so ignorant as not to be aware of the great advantage it is oftentimes to a parish to be placed in charge of a Priest who has an independent fortune, nor am I forgetful of the difficult position of some parishes, owing to the poverty of their Incumbents, the material portion of Church work therein being seriously crippled through want of means. But it is one thing to exercise judicious rules in the method of appointing Priests to places of Preferment, taking into consideration the monetary question, it is quite another to suffer every good reason for bestowing a living upon an individual Priest to be swamped on the ground he is a poor man! What the Church requires is, that the people should be taught systematically the duty of Almsgiving, being second to that of prayer, and if wealthy clergy undertook the charge of poor parishes, and those whom God has not seen fit to bless with private fortune were placed in charge of town parishes, the laity in the towns would be constrained to come forward in supporting their clergy, and if educated from their earliest years that it was their duty thus to act, I do not think we should find them backward in affording necessary help.

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