ESSAY IV.

THE PLACE OF THE LAITY IN CHURCH

GOVERNMENT.

BY MONTAGU BURROWS, R.N., M.A.,

CHICHELE PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD.

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CONTENTS OF ESSAY IV.

THE PLACE OF THE LAITY IN CHURCH

GOVERNMENT.

THERE is, it may be hoped, something to be said in favour of a layman dealing with a question affecting laymen. It may be presumed that at least some laymen will think so. If the writer cannot expect to command the confidence of the clergy as well as if he were one of themselves, he may at least be taken to represent in some degree a class of opinions which they may be willing to take into consideration. The object of this Essay is to combine and discuss what has already been advanced in various forms by different persons rather than to propose anything novel, to attempt the removal of certain prejudices, and to further-should such a privilege be grantedeven though in the humblest way, the great cause of Church organization.

It cannot be necessary to dwell at any length on the circumstances of the times which are bringing into the foreground this question of the Place of the Laity in Church Government. Some persons are attracted towards it from one direction, some from another, but the thoughts of very many seem to converge towards the same point. Is it too much to say that it is the great Church question of the day?

The sudden blow which has fallen upon the Irish Church has perhaps aroused a larger number of minds than anything else. The astonishing collapse, at the late elections, of support for a cause which, though removed from our own immediate ken, was still the cause of the whole Church, and roughly divided English constituencies into its friends and foes, has already produced a startling effect. Symptoms of what has taken place had, indeed, previously shown themselves; but the mass of English Churchmen no more believed that a branch of their own body, deriving its property and status from the same or a similar origin, would be suddenly stripped of that status and that property at the first bidding of the party opposed to it, than

the French people foresaw that the Convocation of the States General of France in 1789 was to change the face of Europe, and commence a new era for the world. Such a summons, such a surrender, such a fall, have made men think who never thought before.

Again, the increasing acquaintance of our people with Church affairs in America and the Colonies has had a powerful effect, brought to a focus as that acquaintance has been by the Lambeth Conference and the consequent visit to our shores of so many Bishops of our Communion; and, to speak of special facts, the struggle with heresy in which the African Province has been involved, the appointment of the Bishop of New Zealand to the See of Lichfield, and the interest attaching to the long process which has lately so happily ended in the choice of a Metropolitan for Canada, may also be mentioned. The Church of England is waking up to the discovery that she is the Mother Church of what must soon be half the world; and a prominent landmark in that discovery is the place which the Church Laity have taken in Church Government wherever any efficient organization has taken place.

The keen inspection which Churchmen are beginning to make into the ecclesiastical facts of their own English condition is also influencing a large class of them. The agitation which brought about the revival of Convocation has long spent itself; and, important as that revival has been in every way, it will be admitted that there is a very general belief in its being only one step in the right direction. People cannot but observe the provoking apathy with which the debates in Convocation, and the well-considered, practical Reports of its Committees, are received by the public, and their consequent failure to produce much appreciable effect upon public opinion. Side by side with this failure they observe-and here what they observe is satisfactory enough-that Parliament more and more confesses itself to be unequal to the task of interference in the internal management of ecclesiastical affairs, being now composed of persons holding every variety of religious belief, and therefore only uniting in legislation on the common ground of mutual forbearance. They observe the change which has gradually taken place in the exercise of the Royal Supremacy; they no longer perceive in the leader for the time being of

a heterogeneous House of Commons any sort of substitute for the autocratic Tudor Sovereign whose general governorship of the Church, by and through the Church, they accepted at the Reformation, with all its defects, as a refuge from the tyranny and corruption of the Roman usurpation. In short, the old machinery of the Establishment is perceived to be very much out of gear. Those who are most anxious for the retention of the great blessing of the union of "Church and State" are also those who are looking about most anxiously for some means of readjusting the relations which subsist between the two bodies, now more than ever distinct and separate. It is in the introduction of the Church Laity in some form or other that they are beginning to see a way out of their difficulties.

On the other hand, the more moderate of those who have deliberately relinquished all hope of a healthy condition of the Church, so long as it is connected with the State, naturally inquire how the assistance of the Laity can be safely secured for the new order of things which they wish to bring about; perceiving, as they cannot but perceive, that if the State is to be given up, or if it gives up, of its own accord, the Church,some substitute must be found, some organization on which and in which the clergy may act, so as to prevent the disestablished and disendowed Church from breaking up into a thousand pieces, or at least to secure that it shall make a fair start.

Thus from every quarter arises the same question-What is the Place of the Laity in Church Government? Let us look first abroad, and then work towards home.

The answer to the above question is given, with the greatest confidence and brevity, by the American Church. There, at least, no hesitation will be discovered. Circumstances have made their course clear. Originally planted without bishops of their own, tainted with the unpopularity of a loyal attachment to England, struggling with every possible difficulty, the American Church had no choice but to throw itself on the Laity of its communion. The result has been that, whatever fault may be found with passages in its earlier career, due for the most part to English neglect, no one can deny that it exhibits at present a very efficient, if not perfect, example of organization; that, considering its difficulties, its success, taken