as those represented by the late Bishop Westcott, by the Bishop of Birmingham, the Bishop of Liverpool, the Bishop of Hereford, the Dean of Norwich, Canon Aitken, Father Rackham, Chancellor VernonSmith, Sir John Kennaway. Leaders of the Churches in America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Cape Town have furnished information on the position and powers of the laity in their several communities. We have listened to their reports with respect, blind to the humour of the situation that the mother of all these vigorous local communities should continue contented to be the only disfranchised Protestant Church in Christendom.

Disfranchised-for she was vocal once.

Parliament ceased, with the releasing of Nonconformists from their disabilities, to represent the National Church. Quite inadequate the representation; but such as it was it possessed constitutional recognition. Since 1828 no shadow of representation has remained. The revival, of Convocation in 1852 attested the awakening of a slumbering Church. But it gave the Church no adequate clerical representation. Bishop Samuel Wilberforce's appeal to the Government for a licence to sit for the transaction of business was warmly seconded by Mr. Gladstone. It is noticeable that this statesman was amongst the first to see the insufficiency of a purely clerical assembly, however completely it should represent the clergy, to voice the Church. He urged that in any future convocational action the laity should have opportunities of being heard. 'No form of government,' he says, ' that does not distinctly and fully provide for the expression of the voice of the laity would satisfy the needs of the Church of England.' '

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Conscious of its own inadequacy as the mouthpiece of an organic body, Convocation on its revival took the first step towards securing the necessary powers for undertaking its own internal reform. That of the Province of Canterbury approached the Queen with an address, praying Her Majesty's royal licence to amend the representation of the clergy in the Lower House. Her Majesty was not advised to comply with its prayer.

As at present constituted, Convocation cannot be regarded as an exponent of the mind of the clergy of the Church. To make it a true exponent of that mind should be the Church's first endeavour. It is nothing short of a gross anomaly that while an incumbent who has been only three years in holy orders is in virtue of his benefice an elector, an unbeneficed clergyman with twenty years' experience behind him does not enjoy the franchise; and, of course, no unbeneficed clergyman can take his seat amongst the proctors as a member.

If the reform of the Clerical Convocation be, as we are persuaded it must be, the question that first presses, it appears to us as illadvised to divert general attention from this to the subject of layrepresentation, as it is to divert that attention from either of these Life of Gladstone, John Morley, ii. 163.

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constitutional questions to ethical reformanda. This observation is commended to the Church Reform League. That useful educational agency-educational, for it commits itself to no detailed policy— in its original draft Declaratory or Enabling Bill merely indicated the lines along which legislation should, in its estimation, travel. A start had to be made, and there was no other agency-and there is still no other to our knowledge-in the field to do it.

A Bill, entitled 'The Convocations of the Clergy Bill'—to be distinguished from Sir Richard Jebb's Convocations Bill,' introduced and dropped in 1900—was moved in the Lords by Archbishop Temple and read a first time on the 17th of May 1901, passed its second reading on the 13th of June, and its third on the 1st of July. In the Commons it was read a first time four days later, and has not been heard of since. A similar Bill has been introduced into the House of Lords by the present Archbishop of Canterbury, and has apparently met with a similar fate.

3

Three years ago a new departure in consultative organisation was taken in the formation of the so-called Representative Church Council.' This consists of the Convocations of the two Provinces together with the two Houses of Laymen conferring at Westminster in joint session, and is the outcome of careful deliberations in the separate Convocations the year before; and we may be sanguine of its ultimate usefulness. In the present stage of its business it appears too probable that its advances towards internal qualification for future legislative powers (for which in their wisdom the Archbishops have not yet asked) will be obstructed by the thorny question of the Church-franchise. In July 1906 it was decided by a fairly substantial majority 3 that the qualification be parochial-residence in the parish with a declaration giving the vote. Not a little, however, was urged by several prominent speakers, including the Bishop of London, the Bishop of Birmingham, and Lord Halifax in favour of the habitual worshipper from over the parish border. The congregational principle was indeed recognised, but the Council was urged to secure for the two bases concurrent recognition. This was negatived, and the ancient parochial principle reaffirmed. It has to be noticed with regret that the will of the Council, thus unequivocally expressed, has not been loyally accepted in all quarters, and some of the foremost leaders in Reform have declined to consider themselves bound by the vote of the Council. This independence of action is hardly likely to impress the outside public with the ripeness of Churchmen for the exercise of legislative powers, if ever they are applied for. Divergence of view is to be

* For no Council can properly be called 'representative' before the principle of representation has been decided on, and exercised.

* The voting on the question of giving the franchise to non-parishioners was as follows: Bishops, 10 ayes, 19 noes; clergy, 53 ayes, 81 noes; laity, 80 ayes, 76 noes; 143 ayes, 176 noes.

looked for in all assemblies of thinking men, and, as long as the particular question remains sub judice, is fully entitled to free expression. But for Reformers to call into existence a deliberative body and then to include in the rights of a minority that of individually overruling its decisions is a singular method of promoting Reform. We say nothing as to the expediency or inexpediency of superinducing the congregational upon the parochial theory. We contend that the question has for consistent Church Reformers been closed by the vote of the Council, and if individual Bishops issue independent instructions to their clergy, the Church's organic action ceases to be a reality. The cause of Reform is hopelessly blocked.

It is not easy to account for the timid attitude towards the general question of creating a constitution for the Church of England taken by many members of that Church. Is there anything to be said in justification of the absence of self-government? And if theoretically there be nothing to be said, are all other Anglican communities possessed of facilities which have been denied to the Church of England? Does her internal administration or the character of her members present peculiar difficulties, which are conspicuously absent from all sister Churches?

Until two hundred years ago she was autonomous; constitutionally represented by Parliament. All members were Churchmen. None will be hardy enough to say that Parliament represents her to-day. With the abolition of all Parliamentary religious tests the last vestiges of self-government vanished. Happily for the Church, there is not the slightest likelihood that such a method of representation will ever be revived.

But its disappearance has placed the Church in a singular position. No longer representing her, the Parliaments of recent times have betrayed a judicious disinclination to legislate for her; and on the rare occasions when they have done so, the scant gratitude of Churchmen has been won.

Deprived then of autonomous powers, she has remained from that day to this without them; and there is no instrumentality by which the results of her successive efforts to improve her multiform agencies and institutions can be invested with the force of law. The passage through Parliament of a simple enabling Bill which should recognise her right to put her own house in order appears to meet insuperable obstacles. And yet it is impossible to accept these obstacles as inherent in the nature of the case.

On the other hand, it is equally difficult to believe that the character of Church people presents a special ethical obstruction. Are a laity trained and moulded by our free institutions, nurtured in the most comprehensive of all the Churches, less likely than all others to wield for the general good whatever limited powers, administrative or judiciary, might hereafter be conceded to them? We think not. For earnest

ness, for devotion to a high ideal, for practical wisdom, the laymen of the English Church have often little to learn from the clergy, and, in the last, have not seldom something to teach.

Their confidence, moreover, in the clergy expresses itself without break in ungrudging financial support of the Church's work. Some are disposed to think that their trust is withered, or is withering. Nine million pounds given in voluntary offerings yearly-the bulk of this out of the pockets of the laity-is singularly abundant fruit to be plucked from the boughs of a withering tree. And if the laity, as a whole, thus trust the clergy, as a whole, this trust ought to be, and in most cases is, heartily reciprocated. That any considerable number of the laity will be capable of prostituting power for partisan purposes we decline to believe.

In the fuller recognition of the momentous problems to be faced in the calmer light of the broadening morrows, in the nobler crusades that lie beyond our rubrical polemics, lie the hopes of the future solidarity of the English Church. The administrative side of this solidarity will be provided, when the clergy and laity of the Church sit, side by side, in council in virtue of their baptism, and take common synodical action in all causes appertaining to the welfare of their common Church.

ALFRED BURNLEY.

THE LAMBETH CONFERENCE AND

THE ATHANASIAN CREED.

THIS month the bishops of what may be conveniently called the Anglican branch of the Catholic Church meet in conference at Lambeth. The bishops come from all parts of the world; they represent bodies independent one of another, and governed by different ecclesiastical laws. These bodies are 'Anglican ' in the sense that they are spiritually descended from the Church of England, or at least (as in the case of the disestablished Church of Ireland) were once in organic union with her; in fact, the Lambeth Conference will be a meeting of the representatives of sister bodies, not of one organisation. The two great links between bishop and bishop who meet there are the English tongue and the Book of Common Prayer.

To the Lambeth Conference, therefore, those men look who desire to see the Prayer Book strengthen its hold on the affections of all who use the English tongue. The Prayer Book as it stands is the result of successive revisions. First compiled in 1549 from ancient materials, it was revised in 1552, 1559, 1604, and 1661. But the process of revision has been arrested ever since the beginning of the reign of Charles the Second. An outsider might think that it was generally agreed in the Church of England that the revisers of 1661 foresaw the needs of all future generations and provided for them.

And yet there is hardly a single English Churchman who holds any such opinion. Indeed, even in the generation which accepted the last revision of the Prayer Book the weighty voice of a great English Churchman, Bishop Jeremy Taylor, called attention to a grave defect. The Christian faith, the Bishop shows, is sufficiently set forth for salvation in the Apostles' Creed, yet in 'Athanasius's Creed' there is nothing but damnation and perishing everlastingly, unless the article of the Trinity be believed, as it is there with curiosity and minute particularities explained.'

The Damnatory Clauses to which Bishop Jeremy Taylor refers have been with the Church of England as a stumbling-block ever since his day. They gave rise to prolonged discussion in 1689, when a revision of the Prayer Book was considered but not carried out. The proposal then adopted was to add an explanation to the rubric :