THE DWINDLING SUPPLY OF CANDIDATES FOR ORDERS.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.']
Sin,—There is a sentence in Miss Martineau's " Autobiography" which, however harshly expressed, throws some light on the in- creasing difficulty of finding highly-educated men who will under- take office in the Church. " I am radically convinced," she says, " that the intellectual and moral judgment of priests of all persua- sions is inferior to that of any other order of men."
Under the obnoxious title "priests" she evidently includes all ministers, of whatever denomination, and she brands them all as priests because they assume, in her opinion, an authority over men's consciences for which there is no rational warrant. Such a dictum may seem to lose all force when it comes from the pen of one who worked herself clear from theology altogether, but in a modified form it does undoubtedly influence the minds of those who would otherwise find the work of evangelising men, rousing them from spiritual torpor, inspiring higher and loftier hopes, the glory of their existence. If such a man accepts a ministry in any Christian community, he shackles his intellect by subscribing to opinions and views which farther insight may force him to abandon. He sees how widely this process is going on around him, how old faiths are decaying and waxing old and ready to vanish away, and his very faith, if he have one, in a new heavens and a new earth makes him shrink from attaching himself to a system in which the leaven of the old yet works. If he joins such a body in the hope of reforming it, he does so at the expense of his "moral judgment," to quote Miss Martineau,—he professes to accept what he intends to improve. Can we really respect a man who, with the purest intentions, signs formularies which in his heart he feels to be antiquated and inconsistent with the light of modern research ? The formularies of the Church of England need a thorough revision, but who is to undertake the task? Not Par. liament, which has ceased to be even in name a distinctively Christian body ; not Convocation, which does not even represent the clergy, much less the laity.
Or is Sacerdotalism so deeply woven into the old garment that patching will be worse than useless ? Is the amalgam of free thought and authority disintegrating hopelessly ? Is it only held together by the base solder, the worldly interests which would be imperilled by its dissolution ?—I am, Sir, &c., DIACONUS.
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