The Sun.
London, England, 1870-10-13 00:00:00

rIIIIE LATEST EDITION of " THE SUN "
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•
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ing no others. The Patentees,
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btained.

At the Church Congress to-day, papers were read on
the question of education. The Rev. A. R. Ashwell, of
Dnrham. College, said that at present new duties were
laid upon the Church by the State, her head, and if the
Church did her duty the present difficulties would re-
dound to her greater good. New forms of permanent
exertions were required, under the altered state of educa-
tional details, from the Church corporate as a whole, and
not merely individual members of it, to prevent her own
schools being swept down in the secular -dream
of the age. A great central unity was /laces-
sary to counteract the disc 3uragements !iich
were acting in every point of the Church YUF.
In small parishes there was no fear that religious win-
ing would not go on effectually, but in larger parishe the
danger was great. There were two ways of meeting he
difficulties, first, by taking care that the teachers in
Church schools themselves were well taught in religion ;
secondly, by holding local examination by diocesan
boards, backed by the action of the Central Church
authority. The Rev. Morgan Cowie read a similar
paper, which was followed by Mr. Beresford
Hope, M.P., who read one in which he argued that
the first result of the new condition of things,
so far as the masters and the mistresses are concerned,
will be that a code of class feeling will be developed,
and that the clergy will not be able to rely on them
in virtue of their office of Church teachers. The
clergy must teach religion themselves. By this means
they will best fabricate the missing link between themselves
and the minds and hearts of the Englsh people, the loss of
which is so often lamented. But the clergy would always
find efficient lay help. After exhausting all the expe-
dients of local co-operation, the powerful aid of diocesan
inspection must be invitedto encourage, to strengthen, and
to harmonise religious teaching from parish to parish. I
have already referred to the abolition of the compulsory
inspection of religious teaching by the Government
inspectors. The Church is bound to supply the lack in the
most formal and complete manner. Such inspection ought,
as far as possible, to be made compulsory on Church
schools, and—as was laid down at the recent diocesan
meeting at Canterbury—the inspectors ought to be paid,
a special fund being raised for the purpose. The annual
education meeting of the diocese must be cast in a more
synodical and deliberative form than that of the familiar
platform with its pre-arranged resolutions. Rather, I
should say, the educational crisis is another strong argu-
ment for the revival in the Church of that synodical
action for which we are craving, to guide and moderate
our counsels. Churchmen were naturally startled at
the wholesale and drill-sergeant-like interference
with the special arrangements of each particular
school involved in the Time-table Conscience Clause.
and they overlooked possible considerations looming in
the uncertain hereafter, which maynot unfrequently make
the time-table system conservative of Church influence
and Church teaching in the schools of the future. I have
presented to you the professional school teacher as he or
she will be moulded by events. Let us, then, take one of
these teachers—an average person ; one of a thousand,
honest and steady, but neither a hero nor a missionary—and
let us suppose that he or she contracts an engagements
at a distinctive Church school with no particular intention
of continuing there in case a more remunerative
engagement should present itself elsewhere— probably
at a rate-aided school ; supposing, • further, that
the clergymen is apt to devolve the religious
instruction on his teachers, and only puts in an
occasional appearance at school ! It will be obvious that
all the teacher's worldly interests will be in the direction
of making the religious lesson as colourless if not as
short as possible, and thereby earning a character with
future employers for Churchmansbip of the most undog-
matic description. But, with a time-table, which com-
pels the teacher to devote a give la time at a given hour to
relizious teaching and nothing else, the length of the lesson
is secured and its importance, compared with other work,
guaranteed ; while the clergyman will always know
when to come down and exercise a wholesome
supervision. Besides, as every well-regulated school
must at all times have had a time-table for its
own use, the injury is, after all, not so great of making
that compulsory by law which was already compulsory by
common sense. The more difficult question remains behind,
of their duty in regard to rate-aided schools through which
the chimera of religious teaching, apart from distinctive
formularies, is to range unchecked, and from some of
which religion, even in name, may be banished. There the
master and mistress will hold their positions on condition of
not teaching as the clergyman ought to wish them to teach ;
while the clergyman will be himself forbidden to supple-
ment within the school building, the defects of the system
by his own explanations. Here and there the school-
Master, hired by the board, itself elected on the
principle of minority representation, may, in spits
of the exclusion of distinctive formularies, teach
the faith which those formularies were framed
to embody. But in too many cases,, however virtuous
and personally pious the master and mistress may be, the
religion which stress of circumstances will drive them to
expound will be a creedless system of vague philanthropy,
illustrated by detathed tales, garbled rather than drawn
from Gospel history. No clergyman who believes in his
mission could stand by and not endeavour to find some
remedy for this condition of things.

LAY REPRESENTATION IN CHURCH SYNODS AND
CONFERENCES.

The first address on this subject was delivered by the
Rev. Berdmore Compton, of St. Paul's, Covent-garden,
London, who said—The true question before the Church
is—Does our Divine Head intend the privilege of taking
active part in Church Councils to be conceded to the laity.
Clearly our first duty is to look in Holy Scripture
for express direction on the point. But we look
in vain—Scripture gives us no express direction.
N4xt e turn to the practice of Apostles and
Apostolic men. As soon as the distinction of clergy
and laity was established, is there any trace of the
admissionof the laity to council, or of their expulsion from
council ? Here we have a gleam of doubtful light, and
that rather adverse to the admission of the laity. In the
proceedings of the first of Church Councils, that recorded
in the Acts xv., admitting the doubtful reading of the
23rd verse, which seems to give "the brethren " an inde-
pendent status in the formal preamble of the decree, and
having regard to the mention of the Church in the 22nd
verse, not as a part of the tribunal by whom the deter-
mination was made, but as associated with it, is it
not the simple view of the matter that the reference of
the'points in dispute being distinctly made to the apostles
and elders, these persons assembled in council and in the
presence of the rest of the church discussed and adjudi-
cated the reference and finally announced their judgment
-in the name of the whole church. Here then are
the representations of the laity recognised even
in their presence, but not represented by
the laity in person. And when we look fur-
ther down in the history of the Church, still less trace
is there of lay representation in any sense resembling our
modern idea of it. In the chief inspired accounts of later
churches which have been vouchsafed to us in the epistles
of St. Paul, it appears simply that St. Paul ruled the
churches under his guidance with absolute authority.
There is not a hint of any power of legislation being re-
posed in any one, either clergy or laity. In the pastoral
epistles we look in vain for any direction to Timothy and
Titus as to the organisation of synods. And later still in
postapostolic times, in mediaeval times, even- down to the
Hampton Court conference, though, emperors, kings, and
lay dignitaries often sat in Church councils, it is nearer
the truth to say that they did so like " the brethren " in
the council of Jerusalem, rather for the sake of publicity
and dignity than as co-ordinate members specially repre-
senting the laity. Certainly we may say that they were
present rather in a civil than in an ecclesiastical capacity.
In these days it is futile to talk of admitting laymen as
representatives of our laity for the purposes of concur-
rence only, for the ratification and promulgation of the
determinations of the clerical members of Councils. In
these days it is of little use to profess like St. Cyprian to
do nothing without the concurrence of the people if their
co-operation is to be thus limited and confined. Under
such conditions they will probably prefer to continue
represented by the clergy, as they have been from .the
days of the apostles. My lord, I dread the evil conse-
quence of drawing .a hard line through a council between
the learned clergy and the unlearned laity ; and we need
no further illustration of • the deficiency of our laity in
this respect than the list given by the Bishop of Salisbury
of laymen who by their writinoocts have contributed to
the illustration anti defence of christian truth. One is
almost constitution.-mongering on this subject. But
my lord, I desire rather to see our mixed synods and
their practice given up gradually, though not so slowly
as our houses of Parliament and their practice have done.
It is a fearful thing to have to make a sudden jump into a new
constitution, as our brethren in Ireland have been obliged
to do. It is perilous to lean heavily on a system of veto
—perilous personally to exclude any part of a council
from any part of its business, perilous to shut out lay
members from doctrinal questions instead of trusting to
their modesty and good sense to hold aloof from them, as
the lay members of the House of Lords leave the legal
business to the law lords. In conclusion, the rev. gentle-
man said : Let us begin at once to prepare for our
mixed synods-. Let us have mixed conferences,
organised by local authorities. lam astounded at the
poverty of theological learning in a list so general as to
include Isaac Walton, Addison, Southey, and Coleridge,
which really contains but a single name worthy to he
called a divine, of the last and present generations—that
of Principal Macbride. And worse still than the want of
theological learning is the want of personal insight into
( the Church's system. The laity have so lately aroused
themselves to an active share in the work of the church
that very few of them can have arrived at that ripeness of
experience which alone can qualify a man for Useful deli-
beration on any subject. There are indeed many propo-
sals for the structure of mixed church counsels which
profess to meet these difficulties. We have plenty of what are
expi essly called conferences, in which both clergy and laity