If the Church of England would escape the dislocation and shock of Disestablishment, we must show greater energy in reforming abuses than at present is the case. We heard loud talk of Church reform about the time of the 1885 election, when Disestablishment was in the air, and largely signed petitions were presented to the Convocations. Nothing, or very little, seems to have come of it all. Churchmen are not agreed as to what is required, and the House of Commons dislikes ecclesiastical legislation exceedingly. Yet without reform, Disestablishment is certain; even with it, Establishment is not secure.

Reform is simply freedom for the Church to work out her own inherent ideas on her own historic lines. The happy phrase "Home Rule for the Church" exactly expresses what in the first instance is needed. For this she must go to Parliament. She would never have to go again; although ecclesiastical legislation would probably lie on the table of the House of Commons for a defined period, and then, if no objection were taken, would become Church law.

The Church may surely claim that the fetters forged by Thomas Cromwell, wherewith to bind her to the footstool of Henry VIII.'s throne, should now in justice be loosed. Till then, the Church had been the one power in England which consistently maintained the people's right, and stood between the poor and their tyrants; which made for education, for justice, for progress. Since then, the bishops and clergy-not the Church-have too often been on the side of privilege and oppression. Yet the basis and constitution of the Church Catholic are essentially Democratic; and in order to enable the Church of England to get in touch with the English people and their new needs, it is only necessary that she should be free to work out her own principles.

1. The right of lay Church-folk to a direct share in the government and administration of Church affairs should be recognised and given definite expression. Diocesan conferences and the House of Laymen are merely consultative bodies, useful in their way, but powerless. Parochial councils, although recommended by Convocation so long ago as 1870, have only been established in a few instances. The principle of Home Rule would be most usefully applied to the existing organization, if a representative Church council were called into being in every parish, with well-defined statutory powers; and a corresponding organization for every diocese, leading up to a reformed Convocation as a central governing body. In all these bodies, of course, the laity would have their part. They are the Church, the clergy are but its officers. According to all experience in other fields, nothing would so effectively show the people that the National Church is their own as such a recognition of their rights and responsibilities. It need not here be asked what should be the test of membership in the Church, though this important problem lies at the threshold.

2. The scandals of traffic in livings and the abuses of patronage must be ended. To mend them is hopeless. A Select Committee of the House

of Commons reported in 1884 in favour of abolishing all sales, except to public bodies, with certain limitations; and recommended that public notice should in all cases be given to the parishioners before the institution of a clergyman presented to a living, in order that if they had any objection to make they might be heard. This is the very least that can be done. For myself, I desire that the clergyman should be elected by the parish, and the bishop by the diocese, as in the early days of the Christian Church; believing that this is really a principle of the Church's constitution, and that the alleged scandals of popular election are infinitely less than those of patronage and sale. For the present, however, a right of veto only might be claimed by the parish; and, as a safeguard, some voice should be given to the Bishop in Council. Non-parochial places should also be provided, perhaps at the cathedrals, for scholars engaged in theological research.

3. The whole question of Church endowments should be thoroughly examined—say, by a Royal Commission; and upon the basis of facts thus provided let power be given to redistribute funds, just as the Ecclesiastical Commissioners are doing to some extent at present. It would not be desirable, in my judgment, to equalize clerical incomes: and there is greater security for freedom of mind, and more protection against fear of the man with the long purse, if clerical stipends are not paid directly, or entirely, by the congregation. The position and payment of assistant

curates also demand readjustment.

4. The revision of the Church's formularies must be left to theological and liturgical experts, if undertaken at all. But there remain the questions. of clerical subscription and of the Act of Uniformity. As regards subscription, the Thirty-nine Articles are admitted no longer to serve the purpose for which they were imposed on the clergy. It is scarcely too much to say that they are chiefly retained from a wholesome fear of the disturbances and controversies which would be raised by a proposal to abolish subscription altogether, or to substitute acceptance of the ancient creeds. But the question must be faced, and an answer found. The Act of Uniformity was originally a measure of relief, intended to secure to the people certain rights which the Puritans denied them. The time has clearly come for its relaxation at least to such an extent as to allow of greater variety and elasticity in the services, and perhaps to admit qualified laymen to preach under the bishop's licence.

My private belief is that if private patronage were abolished, and the clergy elected by the people, as in Switzerland, all other details of reform would soon follow, and nothing more would be heard of Disestablishment. So great a change would have to be accomplished gradually, and the practical difficulties are almost as great as those of disendowment. I have small hope of seeing it fulfilled in my lifetime. But I am convinced that an advance in this direction is the only alternative to Disestablishment.

The risks of the latter policy have never been fully faced by either side. That the Church would become stronger, richer, more numerous, more powerful, after a few years of confusion and resettlement, I am sure; so sure, that were I a mere ecclesiastical tactician, bent on getting the best terms for my own religious body, I would vote for Disestablishment toThe doubtful "privileges" of the clergy would be cheaply got rid of along with the vexatious disabilities which hamper us; as, för example, the rule which prevents us from sitting in the House of Commons.

morrow.

But over and above the immediate crippling of energy, and loss of means, and difficulty of keeping up Church Organization in poor districts, I shrink from such a breach with the past as the disappearance of the Established Church would involve. And I fear that a body, such as the Disestablished Church would become, might only too easily develop into a formidable danger to the State-a political parti prêtre.

But whatever may be the future of the Church of England as an Establishment, she has to-day the promise and potency of full and vigorous life. Disendowment may in some degree cripple her for a time, but it cannot touch the inner sources of her call, her devotion, and her strength. They who believe in her commission, and know her history, are they who have the firmest faith in her future.

520

NONCONFORMITY.

BY J. ALLANSON PICTON, M.A., M.P.

THE title of this paper was not of my choosing; and when I came to think of it, it appeared to me to present some preliminary difficulties to which perhaps I had better allude. Nonconformity, properly so called, exists only on a very narrow portion of the earth's surface. It is confined almost entirely to England and Wales. To a certain extent it may be said to exist in Scotland, but on Scottish Nonconformity I shall have another word to say presently. It is entirely unknown in Ireland, it is also unknown in the United States of America, and likewise in the British Colonies. It is unknown in Ireland, in the United States, and in the Colonies, for the simple reason that there exists in those happy lands no established and authoritative Church, from which it is a crime, or at least a social misdemeanour, to dissent. Where there is no legal standard of Conformity, obviously there can be no such thing as Nonconformity; and I could not but admire the sound common-sense of Lord Salisbury a few months ago, who, when he was presented with an address from certain alleged Irish Nonconformists, immediately remarked that no such people could possibly exist in Ireland, since the Church was disestablished.

Not only is it the case that Nonconformity, properly so called, exists over a very limited extent of the earth's surface, but the word has an entirely different meaning on opposite sides of the Scottish Border. I heard an amusing illustration of this one day when I was standing upon the Calton Hill in Edinburgh, and surveying the noble prospect afforded there of the modern Athens. I was told that a good Presbyterian citizen had recently been showing the lions of his native city to an Anglican clergyman on a visit there. They ascended the Calton Hill together, and the Presbyterian citizen pointed out with pride the large number of ecclesiastical buildings to be seen. Said the Anglican clergyman, "Certainly it is a glorious sight." "Well, yes," replied the Presbyterian citizen, “but it is a little marred by the steeples of those interloping Nonconformists.” "What!" asked the clergyman in surprise; "surely there are very few Methodists or Independents in this country." "Oh, no," said the Presbyterian citizen, "it is the Episcopalian Dissenting Churches that I allude to." The good Anglican clergyman had not thought at all of the fact that what was Nonconformity in England was Conformity in Scotland, and what was established in England would be Dissent in Scotland. The word has, as I have said, entirely different meanings on opposite sides of the Border. This is obviously a difficulty in the way of any compre

hensive treatment of the subject of Nonconformity. For all the forms of Christianity are Nonconformist somewhere or other, and it can scarcely have been the wish of the committee who manage this series of lectures that I should attempt to deal with the opposition between all historical Church establishments on the one hand, and all Dissenting sects in every part of the world on the other. Nevertheless this idea of opposition gives the key, in my view, to the meaning of the managers of these lectures, in asking me to undertake the subject of Nonconformity. They wish me, I presume, to deal with those English forms of Christianity the evolution of which has been marked by the clash of conflict against the traditional Catholic hierarchy, and, consequentially, against the secular despotisms that have raged in this country in times gone by.

Now, the various denominations whose history has this mark of conflict in common present endless varieties of belief and of ecclesiastical organization; but all these varieties sprang originally from one central conviction, on which I desire to dwell. That central conviction was this, that a living inspiration is always to be preferred to a dead tradition. Observe I use the word inspiration in no magic or miraculous sense. As nearly as I can put it into the form of a definition, what I mean thereby is an impulse that comes to emotional souls from a glimpse through the veil of illusion into the deeper realities behind it. And such glimpses into the deeper realities of life, when they are experienced, seem like and I verily believe are--the inflow of a universal life upon the sensitive heart. From Isaiah to Shakespeare and onwards to Burns or Browning, where, apart trom the poetic beauty of expression in their utterances, you are moved to deep and noble emotions, it is only by words that take you behind the veil of conventional ideas, and surround you with the verities of moral truth.

I do not know that ever a landscape looks more charming than when it is suddenly revealed to you through a rent in a cloud. I remember in the often misty, but always grand and beautiful, land of Norway, I was wandering once down a mountain-side towards the seaward end of a valley, and I found myself entirely encompassed by an impenetrable mist. But after some few minutes of patience, suddenly a rift was cleared, and down below I saw the solid luminous rocky feet of the adjoining mountains, and amidst them an exquisite little village, with deep red roofs relieved against a background of verdant meadow. Never did the solid luminous earth appear so real or so beautiful to me, as by contrast with the bewildering, uncertain mist in which I had been lost. So it is with the soul that gets a glimpse of solid, luminous reality through the uncertain mists of conventionalism and dead tradition.

Those who have been sometimes wearied out with the dull monotony of many Nonconformist services, or perhaps disgusted with the mercenary vulgarity of others, may wonder that I should attribute to Nonconformity any share of such inspiration as I have spoken of. How can there be in