The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1844-09-10 00:00:00

CLERICAL NEWS,

In the late population reports, the number of clergymen
(we presume of the Church of England) is returned for
England at 13,574.
The vicar of Sheffield has proposed a plan for the divi-
sion of the entire parish into twenty-four or twenty-five
ecclesiastical districts.

A stone pulpit elaborately and beautifully worked by
Mr. Rowe, will be placed in the parish church of Lang-
ford Budville, being the gift of Captain Perceval, Bindon
House, Milverton ; and another is also in preparation for
Oldridge chapel, near Crediton.
Archdeacon Thorp,of Durham,in his Visitation Charge,
admonished the clergy to be " scrupulously attentive to
the parish registers. The general registration (he said)
will probably fail. In case of death it gives a rumour, not
a fact within the knowledge of the officer; and the griev-
ous frauds incident to this, some of which have been re-
cently detected, destroy its authority as a book of evi-
dence. Witness a case in this Archdeaconry, where, out
of 829 registers of death, 115 are shown to be deceptions,
names of persons who never lived, and therefore never
died; or, living and dying. were alike unknown, and
never buried. The church register is the record of a pub-
lic act, done in the sight of day, and before many wit-
nesses ; admitting no doubt of imposition ; and its guar-
dianship, committed to you, is of lasting importance to
the public interests."
CHURCH PASTORAL AID SOCIETY.—The grants of this
society at the present date are, to 224 incumbents, having
under their ministerial charge an aggregate population of
1,822,466 souls, or 8,448 on an average to each. They
provide stipends for 226 Clergymen, and 29 Lay-Assis-
tants, at a cost, when all the appointments are made by
the Incumbents, of £20,108 per annum. And as from
local resources a further amount of £3,165 is raised to
meet some of the grants, the society is made ins:rumen-
tal in bringing to the aid of the National Church the sum
of £23,273 per annum. They also provide for 368 addi-
tional full services on each Lord's-day; 149 on week-
days ; 278 cottage lectures, and the increased pastoral
care and oversight of nearly two millions of souls, one-
eighth part the entire population of England and Wales.
The grants of the society since its commencement in 1836
have led to the erection of 120 school-rooms, which are
now used, under the Bishop's sanction, as placts of
worship, and to the building, opening, or keeping open.
87 .churches and chapels among the crowded popula-
tions of the manufacturing towns, or the - distant ham-
lets of widely-extended parishes. In this town, (Li-
verpool) the society provides for thirteen additional full
services on the Lord's-day, and eleven cottage lectures,
and increased oversight of upwards of one hundred and
twenty thousand souls, nearly one-half of the population
of the town. The districts to which these grants have
been made, are All Saints, St. Barnabas, St. Bartholo-
mew's, Christ Church, St. James, Toxteth-park, St.
Mark's, St. Marv's, Edge-hill, St. Michael's, St. Paul's,
St Simon's, St. Thomas, Toxteth-park.