OUR PRIESTS AND THEIR TITHES.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION OF THE SUBJECT OF THE WORK, OUR PRIESTS AND
THEIR TITHES; THEIR DEFECTS.

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They shall bring all your brethren for an offering unto the Lord out of all nations. . . And I will also take of them for priests and for Levites, saith the Lord."-Isa. lxvi. 20, 21.

OUR priests and their tithes are subjects which may well exercise our minds in these troublous times, and so late in the world's history as the close of the nineteenth century. It may be reasonably asked, "Our priests and their tithes-where are they?" For neither the one nor the other exist to the extent that they should in this country, which boasts to be the most Christian in the world, and, in some degree, to set an example to other lands. The number of our priests is, as a fact patent to all who will not refuse to see, miserably deficient for the work that is to be done within our own island, and, as we venture to think, and would maintain in the pages of this book, does not sufficiently respond to the requirements of the Divine law as it should among a professedly

Christian people who aim at fulfilling the demands of that law. And as to the tithes to call them by such a name is only to use what has become a conventional term for a species of ecclesiastical endowment for the maintenance of the clergy. We may, by a stretch of courtesy, so to speak, call them tithes, whereas it is evident that the term does not connote all that the same term does when applied in Holy Scripture to a similar purpose. We know how, owing to political intrigue and statecraft, our tithes, so called, have undergone various changes and diminutions since the time they were originally granted, so as to be at present wholly unlike that provision made by the Divine command for the Hebrew ministers of the Temple.

What are we to infer, then, from the position of the Church in this land? It falls very far short of the perfection which it is our duty to aim at and attain, by God's mercy. Priests, although of Divine ordinance and of Apostolical descent, however superior in other respects, or else imperfect and inefficient in the discharge of their sacred functions, are yet miserably few in number in proportion to the vast population of our so-called Christian country; few also in number in comparison with what Scripture seems to require of a Christian people; and therefore fewwretchedly few, shall we not say?-when we have regard to our boasted fidelity to the Christian faith, and what that faith demands of us.

Our present endowments, and that provision called tithes, are altogether inadequate for the purposes for which they are applied; they must put to the blush those of us who have any regard for the

glory of God and the honour of His Church; and as long as the present arrangement exists (of priests and tithes), we cannot afford to boast of much progress made in the economy of our own particular communion, nor yet praise ourselves for having fulfilled the duties we proclaim to other peoples, and which our Christianity imposes upon us, and rightly requires of us. Indeed, our provision, as regards both the sacred ministry and its due maintenance, is not only imperfect, defective, and miserably deficient, but is not in accord with the professions of our common faith, or, as we venture to think, with the requirements of Holy Scripture itself.

Undoubtedly, the reform of our own National Church, initiated in the fifteenth century, has yet to run its course, and we cannot too often impress upon ourselves the need we have of carrying out what was then begun. To flatter ourselves with the idea that all that was necessary to be done was then done, and to acquiesce apathetically in our present position, would be indeed to allow ourselves to live in a sort of fool's paradise, and to pose before the rest of Christendom as a model Church having no imperfection, and to arrogate to our own communion the claim of being the one infallible Church, which all who would be faithful to the Christian faith should copy, and thus to claim for ourselves what we are so ready to decry and deem an arrogant assumption in the case of other communions. Whereas, in truth, have we not need rather to take to heart the warning which our Lord gave on one occasion, to the effect that he who would presume to judge others should first remove the beam from his own eye, when he

would be better able to discern the mote in his brother's eye?

But, on the other hand, it too often happens to too many of us that we thank God that we are not as others are, and that we in some measure justify our position as almost unassailable and impregnable before the rest of our brethren. Can we forget that we are only a fraction of that Holy Church throughout the world which praises God-that we cannot claim to be the whole! Are we blind to the divisions which exist among those who profess to have one Lord, one faith, one baptism? Can we forget that there is not that loving communion betwixt the children of God that should be? Does not the question irresistibly force itself upon us-why should this state of things continue? Do we endeavour our utmost to avoid causes of offence, and employ only such means as make for peace, and tend to bring about reunion among the severed members of Christ's Holy Church? We have yet much to learn, not from opponents, I trow, as from our brethren of the Holy Catholic faith, if we sincerely desire reunion.

CHAPTER II.

OUR PAROCHIAL SYSTEM; ITS APPARENT WEAKNESS.

"When He saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd."-S. MATT. ix. 36.

UNDER a more favourable state of affairs than exists at present, we should not be inclined altogether to condemn our parochial system, whereby the whole of the country is mapped out into so many parishes, each presumably under the care of a priest. It has a charmed look about it, and would seem to be a realization of what our Lord so ardently wished for in the days of His earthly sojourn. So many souls under the care of a priest of God; so many sheep in charge of a pastor who will lead them into green pastures, and unto fountains of living water,—what more could possibly be desired? This is the sketch drawn for us of our parochial system, painted for us by speakers at Church Conferences and Congresses, and finished off, duly framed, for us by editors of Church statistics! And far be it from me to disparage what these worthy men have done for us by their labours. For they have given us much ground for hope where, otherwise, we might be inclined to despair;