CHURCH REFORM.
[TO THE EDITOR OF TEE " SPECTATOR." ]
SIN—Encouraged by Mr. Lee Warner's letter, may I request you to allow a reminder to your readers of the reforms advocated
by the Church Reform Union to appear in your columns ? We propose that the system of local self-government, so beneficial in its imperfect state to the country—a system now about to be improved and extended—be granted to the Church. Theoreti- cally, the laity in Parliament govern the Church ; practically, each parish is under despotic rule. Naturally the laity cannot be expected to show any great enthusiasm in Church work or defence. Bnt if local Church Boards could be appointed by the same constituencies that at present elect Churchwardens (for we are not desirous of any constitutional change), and these Boards, subject to the law and appeal to the Bishop, took into their hands the whole management of the parish, and had a right of vetoing any nomination to the incumbency, then the nation would really have control over the national Church. Liberals can hardly be expected to be affectionately inclined to a system of ecclesiastical despotism, and it is only the good-sense of the majority of the Clergy that prevents the potential despotism being an universal reality.
Such Boards once elected, any such reforms as Mr. Lee Warner advocates would be sure to follow, if members of the Church desired them. No one would thrust reforms on an unwilling people ; but if many Boards showed strongly an inclination for any such measures as interchange of pulpits with Nonconformists, the permission to qualified laymen to preach, or the relaxation of subscription, the desired reform would inevitably come. It is to the Spectator that Liberal Churchmen would naturally look for help and encouragement in their efforts to make the Church the Church of the people, and to throw of all the fetters slowly wound round it by the ecclesiastical spirit. If the Church were made really national, why should the nation try to destroy its own Church P—I am, Sir, &c.,
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