The Sun.
London, England, 1853-04-18 00:00:00

CHURCH GOVERNMENT 1N NEW ZEALAND.

The Lyttelton Time* (which arrives Very irregularly,
and with great gaps in the dates) of Mateh 20, hist yeat,
contains it Vei'y iinpoilant And Intdtesting mdetitiace At
Christ Church, on the subject Of Chtirdi golieifithdtitits
New Zealand. The most important feature in the meet-
ing was a speech from Mr. J. R. Godley, who, in pro-
posing the first resolution, spoke as follows :
" The resolution which I have to propose is one which may
be said to express a truism, The Church in New Zealand, as
pelis,acewtiheearice)llids Asoocaieectoymhpaiitisili!
llttsibefislisetiatrPrii'inlicipalhed, the very
condition of its existence, its work. To my mind, the notion
of an inactive or passive Church seems almost au absurdity,
Indeed, what I say of a Church, applies more or less to every
associated body. When men form or join a society, ecclesias-
tical or secular, this idea is almost necessarily involved of
their doing something in combination which as individuals
they could not or would not do ; otherwise, why should they
combine ? But a society in order to work must have an or-
ganisation and a government ; it must have forms, laws, qua-
lifications, executive instruments ; it must have a head and
hands. Accordingly, every association of men, for any pur-
pose whatever, begins by constitutigg its government ; on
however small or humble may be its scale and its object, whe-
ther it be a penny club, or a building society, or a political
union, or a religious sect, as a matter of course it appoints its
managing committee, or its president, or its synod, or what-
everelse it may please to call its legislative and executive organ.
Through the medium of this organ it acts and speaks, and does
its business; without this organ it would be an unmeaning and
objectless list of names. Therefore I call it a truism to say that
it is exceedingly desirable for the Church of England in New
Zealand to have a form of government. The wonder is, indeed,
that at this stage of our ecclesiastical existence we should have
to enunciate so self-evident a proposition. Yet so it is; this
truism is not merely ignored ; it is actually disputed. While,
so far as I can recollect, there is not in the world another in-
stance of a society without a government, to many English-
men it appears right and proper that such should be the
normal state of their Church. If you go to the shareholder
in a joint-stock bank, or of a railway company, or to a Wes-
leyan or Presbyterian, and ask him how the society he belongs
to is governed, that is to say, who makes and who executes
its laws, not one of them would be for a moment at a loss for
an answer ; he could inform you with respect to its organisa-
tion as easily as he could with respect to its character and
object. But if you go to a member of the Church of England
and ask him the same simple question, what answer can he
give 7 Is there any one here present who can tell me how
the laws of the English Church are made, who speaks our
collective voice, who does what we have as a corporation to
do—in a word, who manages our affairs ? One may refer me
to certain laws made in the year 1603 for the government of
the Church, and may reply to me by describing the judicial
machinery provided for the execution of them ; another may
tell me that Parliament governs the Church ; another that
the Queen ; another that the Bishops govern it. And in each
of these answers there would be a certain amount of apparent
truth. The canons are nominally the statute-book of the
English Church ; Parliament does occasionally legislate in
matters ecclesiastical ; the Queen is, in theory her executive
head ; the bishops. exercise after a fashion certain govern-
mental functions in their respective dioceses. But still
the question, ' Who governs us?' taken in its ordinary
common-sense :meaning remains unanswerable. The canons
are necessarily and" properly, for the most part obso-
lete and unexecuted, as indeed it is absurd to suppose
that any human authority could devise complicated rules of
action for a society which would answer its purposes and sup-
ply its needs for two hundred and fifty years without addi-
tion and alteration. Parliamentary legislation in Church mat-
ters is a usurpation founded simply upon might ; the Queen's
authority is as purely nominal in ecclesiastical as in civil
affairs, the bishops have no recognised collective authority at
all ; and in their respective dioceses exercise the simply minis-
terial office of carrying out the existing laws. No real govern-
mental power resides in any of these functionaries, because
a right to make laws is an essential attribute of n real govern-
ment; and no existing authority has a right to make laws for
the English Church. In considering this state of things, I
confess it seems to me to resist the conclusion that even the
endurance of it implies, in a degree, paralysis; contentment
under it would imply the absence of life. A society that can-
not make a law for the regulation of its own affairs, or express
a corporate opinion, or do a corporate act, that is unable, in
short, to perform any of the functions of life, can only by a
great stretch of language be said to be a living body. What-
ever may be the numbers and energy of its individual mem-
bers, as a society, I say it is virtually dead. However, such
being the state of the Church of England, she has sent out
numerous bodies of offspring to all parts of the world ; I beg
your pardon ; she cannot send, because, as I have explained
satoidyonu, umaesraouCshbuordchiesshoef
hcaenrnoofftsdporinagnyhthavineg
g:
olneshooulutd
fhraovme
her, bearing with them the principles and traditions of
their spiritual mother, and they have to adapt these as best
they can, to a new set of political and social circum-
stances. Amongst other things they have to see how they
can get on without government in a state of things which
cast
tenotln h
y requireserown re corporate action. acatlitoong.ethTehre; Colonial Church Cgheunrcerahlliys
speaking, neither influence nor funds, nor, consideration be-
queathed to her or provided for her ready made ; she must
obtain them, as she can, by personal efforts, if I may use the
term. But personal efforts require, of course, a personal
agency; in order to collect funds, to build churches, to get
and keep congregations, to exercise order and discipline
among them, and to convert the heathen, a machinery is
wanted ; the old machinery, such as it is, is inapplicable or
inadequate, and there is no one with authority to create new.
The consequence is, that the Anglican communion almost in-
variably falls, at the commencement of a colony, below the
level of other denominations. Ido not recollect a single in-
stance when, under such circumstances, she can be said to
have held her own. Other sects come out accustomed to self-
organisation and self-government; each branch is complete in
itself, prepared at all points ready for its work. Anglicans
alone, when removed from the sphere of their old associa-
tions, stand bewildered and apathetic, and unable to move or
act ; looking for help from Government or fiom the mother
country; from every quarter, in fact, but from themselves.
Though generally richer than other denominations, they can-
not or will not support their own ministers ; at least I
know that in those colonies with which alone I am
personally acquainted it is so. In -British America, the
English people through the Society for the Propagation
of the Gospel and the Additional Bishoprics' Society,
And in New Zealand, the people of England through
the Church Missionary Society and Parliamentary grants,
Almost exclusively support the clerical establishments
of communities ;which are perfectly well able to do it for
themselves, and would be perfectly willing, too, if they were
cot enervated by long disuse of the habit of acting for them-
selves in ecclesiastical affairs. At the same time it would be
mly fair to say that the Chur,th of England in the colonies is
2ar from being on a level with other sects as regards freedom
of action. Deprived as she is of the advantages resulting
or supposed to result) from State connection, it is believed
(for such is the absurdity of the system that no one seems to
know exactly what its principles or practices are), but it is
believed that she still remains fettered by the liabilities which
were the incidents of her establishment in the mother country.
I will illustrate what I mean by an example which occurred
not long ago in this colony. A member of the Anglican
Church wished to marry a Jewess; the clergyman refused to
perform the marriage, and persisted iu his refusal; but the
Bishop told me he had been informed by the judge, that if
the parties applied for a mandamus to compel the clergyman
to marry them, he (the judge) would have felt it his duty to
grant it. I am not going to enlarge on the intolerable
tyranny involved in the existence of such a state of things ; I
allude to it at present as showing the necessity not only for a
complete review of our ecclesiastical affairs, and for the estab-
lishment of new and radically different principles of Church
organisation, but also, perhaps, for parliamentary assistance
in breaking our bonds. I have, now, sir, attempted to show
why in the words of the resolution which I am about to propose
it appears desirable thata form of government for the Church of
England in New Zealand should bo established as soon as
possible. I have attempted to explain that, without it, she can-
not properly fulfil her most ordinary and necessary functions,
and that to the want of it is mainly to be attributed the
apathy and helplessness which are such melancholy character-
istics of our Colonial Churches. I will next endeavour to
corroborate the view I have taken by quoting the example
set to us with respect to this matter by a sister church, which
found itself not very long ago in circumstances analogous to
our own. I mean the Protestant Episcopal Church of America.
It is often said by enemies of the English Reformed Church
that she is the creature of the State, dependent on her estab-
lishment and her endowments for existence, and incapable of
standing like other ecclesiastical bodies, humanly speaking,
by her own strength, and working with her own means ; and
I confess, if I were to look at the present state of our Colonial
Churches alone, I should find it difficult to rebut the sneer.
But I can show another side so the picture. When the United
States declared their independence, it may be said (humanly
speaking again) that the Church fell with the monarchy; epis-
copacy, especially in communion with the Church of England,
was, for obvious reasons, not only unfashionable, but almost in-
famous; the endowments of the church, which had been large in
some of theeSitagituetse,d getwteeretblekr itewnab bwtaye;mheesrt
earnest
ts
members
ebderes-
stroyed ; even her communion plate was sold ; numbers of
her clergyfi m
of their flocks. In short, it is impossible to conceive a more
complete and overwhelming prostration than the American
Episcopal Church then suffered ; one would have said that
within the lifetime of a generation, her existence in the United
States, like that of the British constitution on which she is
said to depend, would be a matter of history. Now let us look
at the sequel. For some little time the depression consequent
on the resolution continued, but tho American Churchmen who
were left were not dismayed ; they had sense to see that new
measures were required to meet the emergency, and faith to
believe that they would be sufficient to meet it. Now, it is
instructive for us to remark that the first step they took,
when forced to shift for themselves, was the formation of a
governing body. The first general convention of the Ameri-
can Church met in 1785, only three years after the peace ;
the first American Bishop was consecrated in 1787. The
andlay
was con-
stituted,yChurch was organised with a rapidity and completeness emi-
nently characteristic of the administrative talents of the peo-
ple, the civil constitution of the Republic serving naturally
toa w
great eantseisnttinaga
representatives from each diocese, and possessing full legisla-
tive powers for the whole Church. Diocesan conventions
exercised similar powers within their respective jurisdictions.
Vestries administered parishes. By degrees the outline thus
sketched was filled up ; canons of discipline were passed ; the
oafmaloldel.
the Bishops, Ageuemi
andconvention
of clerical
liturgy was revised ; provision was made for education, for
foreign missions, for domestic extension. Scattered and
helpless individuals became an animated, active, working
body, far inferior, indeed, to most of the other denominations
in outward circumstances, but at least able for the first time
Before I describe the result of these measures, I must remind
to do justice to itself and make free use of its own resources.
you that the Episcopal Church had another disadvantage to
contend with. It is notorious that of the emigrants to
America, a comparatively small proportion are even nomi-
nally members of the English Church. The causes of this
are too obvious to require enumeration, and the fact is un-
doubted. The American Episcopal Church, therefore, was
famed to rely largely upon proselytism, if it hoped to hold
its own in numbers and influence. But to return to the his-
torieal facts. I cannot find out what the number of Episco-
palia n clergymen was after the revolution. I can only ascertain
such isolated facts as that the State of New York, which, in
1844, bad 304 clergymen, had only five in 1787. lam cone-
pelled, therefore, to begin my general comparison at a
later date. In 1814, I find that the Episcopal Church num-
bered 240 clergymen officiating in organised parishes ; in 1844,
the last year for which I have been able to procure the sta-
Vstics, it had 1,202. Assuming that its congregations multi-
plied in equal proportions, and there seems no reason for
doubting it, we have here the fact that in thirty years the
number of American Churchmen increased fivefold, or about
twice as fast as the whole population of the Union. So that
even if we allow_
them proportioned
d for argument that immigration supplied
to an extent proportioned to their ori-
ginal numbers, they must have more than doubled themselves
so at least seems to be shown by the fact, that in 1839 more
than one-half of their clergy, and nearly one-half of their 1) conversions alone in thirty years. And that they have done
Bi-
shops, had been Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Methodists
or Baptists. I need not say that the proportion of converts is
likely to have been larger among the congregations than
itfllol, those who rose to office and dignity in the Church.
Again, the' 'American ^Church gets plenty of ' money. Her