30th June 1870 BDG

PARISHIONERS IN COUNCIL

There is, perhaps, no question which demands more careful and studied consideration at the present time than that of the relations existing, or which ought to exist, between pastor and people—the clerical and the lay element—in the working of our church system. We are always glad to find the importance of this subject properly appreciated; and we deem it a hopeful sign of the times that bishops in their charges and on other occasions, the clergy generally at ruridiaconal meetings, and, lastly, our legislators in Parliament, are respectively turning their attention to this particular matter in an earnest and honest spirit, which cannot be too highly commended. But while we appreciate the important nature of the subject, and the necessity for its arrangement upon a more satisfactory footing than appears to exist at present, we must own to a conviction that thorough ventilation has not yet been fully accorded to it, and that each thorough ventilation—ecclesiastical, parliamentary, and social—must of necessity take precedence of any positive legislation in the matter. The whole question is a very delicate one, and its proper settlement is most essential; but the importance which it bears must never betray us into precipitancy, or we shall inevitably defeat our own ends in striving to establish for all futurity the Church’s fabric on a firm and truly national foundation.

We believe that Lord SANDON was animated by the purest zeal for the welfare of the Church, when he rose in the House of Commons on Tuesday night to propose the engrafting of “Church Councils” by Act of Parliament upon the parochial system of the country. In every parish or district, Lord SANDON would establish a small ecclesiastical parliament, consisting of incumbent, churchwardens, and a certain number of sidesmen, members of the Church of England, elected in the proportion of rather more than one to every thousand of the population—the body so constituted to have the exclusive right of inaugurating, subject to the Bishop’s approval, changes in the services and ministrations of the church—in its ornaments and decoration, as well as those of the minister, and in the church’s furniture and fittings; all such changes to be, of course, within the limits of the existing law. Such is the proposition which, in Lord SANDON’s opinion, is likely to meet the case in point—to afford to the laity of a congregation their proper influence in those minutiae of church management which, although trivial in themselves, are often found the cause of grievous offence—and to bridge over the gulf which, as things at present stand, is found in certain cases to separate the sympathies of the pastor from those of his flock.

If, indeed, we could persuade ourselves that such a happy consummation as this was likely to result from the working out of Lord SANDON’s proposal in its present form, we would go heart in hand with the plan, and deem no shock to existing susceptibilities sufficient obstacle to speedy legislation in a matter of so much moment. But we are not altogether convinced of the full adaptability of Lord SANDON’s proposal to the case in point. And, until we are so convinced, we shall, as we before remarked, deprecate most strongly any hasty legislation in the matter. We must do the Churchmen of England the justice to say that parochial disputes and disagreements upon matters such as those wherewith Lord SANDON’s Church Councils are to deal, are generally based upon something beyond the bare facts involved in the origin of the unpleasantness. We never heard of a parish being convulsed, or a host of church-goers alienated, because their minister desired a fire in the vestry in May, or altered the position of the pulpit for his own convenience sake or from acoustic considerations. Factious as some Churchmen may appear, they seldom can base any sustained factiousness upon such trivialities as these; and, more than this, they never attempt it. Yet it appears to us that it is to this class of ailments—if we may so call them—alone that Lord SANDON’s “Church Council” would afford a complete and satisfactory remedy; and, by consequence, we deem his lordship’s “game scarcely worth the candle” of Parliamentary legislation. The real causes of serious dispute, dangerous to the Church and disgraceful to a congregation, will always, we fancy, be found to lurk in something wholly beyond the ken of churchwardens and sidesmen, and therefore beyond the power of a “Church Council” to remedy. It is not the base fact of white appearing over the pulpit top in lien of black, or of colour supplying the place of dinginess, that makes a congregation revolt against preaching in the surplice, or look with suspicion upon an elaborate altar-cloth. “A lack of perfect confidence in their minister lies at the root of their disaffection, and until this confidence be earned by him and yielded by them, there will be constant jarring and disruption, whether the minister be forced into his Geneva gown again, and the Communion-table resume its wonted appearance, or not. They suspect him of “High-Church” tendencies, and see in every change “one more step” towards Rome; and so on. If he be a man of sense and judgment, he will do spontaneously and with the best effect, what at most the Church Council could only do by a stretch of authority, reached, possibly, after much vestry squabbling and party unpleasantness—he will quietly yield to the feeling of his flock, lest he “make them to offend” by uncalled-for pertinacity. But if, on the other hand, the clergyman be an obstinate man, the “Church Council” will have no more power to check the manoeuvres of his obstinacy, and to restore peace and good feeling to the parish, than to change the reverend gentleman’s nature altogether. Checked in his desire to place lights on the altar, and to indulge a sacrificial symbolism in externals he will throw into his manner and attitude all and more than an obnoxious external symbol could convey; while, as a dernier ressort, the pulpit will be always freely open to him—for it is not suggested, we believe, that the Church Council should decide beforehand upon the text and subject matter of sermons—and there, at least, he can set his foes at open defiance, and force into their ears with tenfold vigour that of which the outward and visible sign is all that they are qualified to resist.

So much for the case wherein the people have a grievance; but what shall we say for the proposed Church Council in a case where the grievance rests with the pastor? Here his reverence would get sadly the worst of it. However small the parish, he would, under Lord SANDON’s scheme, be invariably in a minority; for, supposing his own churchwarden to support him, he would at the very least have three individuals—another warden and the two sidesmen—in the opposition. We do not know what grievous crime our clergy have as a body committed which should condemn them to such a perpetual state of weakness. Conceive a parish of advanced Ritualists—such communities may, we believe, be found—bedecking an aged Evangelical pastor with vestments, and exposing him, adorned in all the rainbow’s hues, to the gaze of his admiring and exultant flock! For all we can see such a contingency might actually arise under Lord SANDON’s proposal in a diocese of “advance” church views: and a pretty sight it would be for the nation. But, placing such remote and ludicrous risks aside, we really scarcely think that the Churchmen of our land would for themselves demand the possession of so much power as they might obtain under this suggested measure. We do not believe that they hanker after numerical superiority in Church Councils at all. They are content to be led where they can repose confidence in their leader; where they cannot, triumph in a “Church Council” will not make them happy, or promote the “peace, unity, and concord” which must really reign between pastor and people in a true Church of the nation, such as we desire our own to be.

Such is an outline of the reasons for not regarding with much positive favour the proposals of the noble member for Liverpool. Our own view of the matter is, that while clergy and laity must unite and must work together, their union must be a matter of that mutual goodwill and good feeling which we believe to exist in the hearts of both, and which we hope to see more heartily cultivated than ever in these days of unsettlement and danger. We would fain find the pastor often in consultation with his people, and full of charity for those errors in their appreciation, and that lack of health in their judgment, which an imperfect education too often entails. And as for the people, we have still too much confidence left in their old honest love for the Church which their forefathers established upon the blood of many an English martyr, to believe that they will not warmly appreciate their pastor’s confidence, if yielded to them, and respect his convictions, if properly submitted to their judgments, without the interference of Acts of Parliament.

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