be discharged by any pious layman of good sense and fair education. So that what I am proposing really comes to this: to increase and extend the amount and the kind of assistance that laymen are often glad to give to clergymen, and by raising such lay agents into regular officials of the Church, at one and the same time to give them greater weight with the people, and to keep them in more orderly subordination.

Probably there are few clergymen in this room with large parishes who do not suffer from the present dearth of curates-a dearth which, in Ireland, Mr. Gladstone's beneficent proposals, if carried out, will raise to absolute famine. Many of us are literally crushed by the weight of what I may call almost mechanical duty, for which we can get no assistance under the present state of things. And yet, I dare say that almost every one of these suffering incumbents could name several men, each in his own parish, most fit to be made deacons in every respect required by the ordinal save one. "Virtuous conversation and sufficient instruction in Holy Scripture" are not uncommon; but where now, even amongst University men, shall we find that "learning in the Latin tongue" which the ordinal demands, and which in Queen Elizabeth's time, when the ordinal was settled, meant the power of speaking Latin with fluency, if not with perfect accuracy? Perhaps, therefore, a good general education may be allowed to take the place of an accomplishment which has almost died out, even at the seats of learning.

But, perhaps, the most powerful recommendation of my proposal is, that by giving a recognized position and sphere in our own Church to zealous men impatient of inaction, it would keep within her pale numbers who now leave her for denominations where they have more scope for their abilities and energies. Probably nothing has so much injured our Church,—not the abuse of patronage by statesmen or private individuals, not the lethargy and nepotism of bishops, not the carelessness of the clergy,-nothing has done so much mischief as the exclusion of the laity from all part and lot in her service. The revival of the primitive diaconate would do away with this-would bridge over the fatal chasm which has separated the clergy from the laity; for in her deacons she would have an order common to both, open to every intelligent and pious layman, giving him that interest in Church matters which can alone spring from authorized activity in her service. There can be no difficulty as to the higher order, if it be only understood, that though a deacon need not abandon his secular calling, a priest must. Whilst this very difference would put the office of priest or presbyter in a higher and more sacred light before the people. At present there is but a shade of visible distinction between the young deacon, just ordained in the plenitude of his inexperience, and the presbyter. They wear the same dress, they live the same life, they do nearly the same things. But if our people saw in every large Church numerous deacons waiting on the priest in order to assist him reverently, according to primitive usage, especially at the sacrament, by giving to each communicant the consecrated elements with the prescribed words, and thus expediting the service without abridging and thereby spoiling it; catechising the young, visiting, each in some district assigned to him, aud reporting to the priest those cases which might require his office and his experience; occasionally, perhaps, ascending the pulpit, when specially gifted and specially licensed and specially invited; connected with the laity by their life and avocations during the week, with the clergy by the reverent and most useful assistance they could give them on the Lord's-day and during service, but never occupying any position of apparently independent authority; they would, I think,

conceive a more distinct notion of the real difference between the two orders, and entertain juster views than they generally do of the work and dignity of the purely spiritual function.

Every consideration I have urged applies with equal force to the revival of the female diaconate. That cannot be a useless office which apostles instituted, and to the holders of which St. Paul addressed greetings and thanks, and gave commendatory letters. Women can gain each others sympathy and confidence where men, even though they be the ministers of Christ, nay hardly venture to intrude. In eastern countries, where women are secluded from male society in the zenana or harem, female deacons are simply Lecessary, if missions are to reach the souls of one half of the population.

Summing up, then, I would say, that to revive the primitive diaconate must be good in itself, because it is reverting to the theory and practice of the purest times; good in its effects, because it will afford an immensely increased amount of assistance in Church work where such assistance is most needed and can least be payed for; because it will retain in the Church much zeal and piety which are now lost to us for want of scope; and because it will contribute in the highest degree, not only to the service, but also to the dignity and estimation of the priesthood.

And, besides all these advantages, that it may be effected with the utmost ease, without the introduction or the change of a single law or canon, by any bishop who is not paralysed by the fear of doing something not improper but-unusual.

The REV. JAMES BARDSLEY.-Dean Howson opened the session this morning by reading for us one of the most striking and practical Essays I have ever heard upon the subject of Lay Agency; and he has laid this vast assembly under great obligations by giving us such a paper. As so much has been said about lay agency that is to be, may I just for two or three minutes trouble you with a slight account of a lay agency already in operation in the Church? In the year 1836 Mr. Frederick Sandes, a layman, employed in the East India House in London, conferred with a few clergymen there about the social condition of the Church of England, mainly caused by the want of Church accommodation and pastoral superintendence. The result of the conference was the formation of a society for the collection of funds for distribution amongst overworked and underpaid clergymen, to enable them to pay curates, and also to provide that wherever the vicar of a parish, or the incumbent of a district, saw that a layman could be employed in the parish or district with advantage, arrangements might be made to secure such lay help for the Church in that locality. We should have expected that a proposal like this would have met with a universal welcome, but instead of that, it was met by all kinds of opposition; and it was actually declared that employment of lay agents under these circumstances was an invasion of the authority of the Church in England, and that if the Church allowed it to continue it would hasten its downfall. The only prelate who gave in his adhesion to that society was the well known Dr. Sumner-clarum et venerabile nomen—who in a sermon preached on behalf of the society, said that "we ought never to see danger where God has prescribed duty."

For a layman to devote a little of his time to do what every layman is bound to do according to his measure, cannot be in any wise unhealthy. That society for thirty-two years has been employing hundreds of lay agents, under the conditions that I have mentioned. I may allude to one instance which came under my experience, when incumbent of a parish in Manchester, some years ago. There I had ten thousand poor under my care, and scarcely

a soul in the parish except two or three who could keep a servant, and I found lay agents of very great value and importance in my work; and I may be permitted to say, that the hundreds of scripture readers who are employed in that way here and there throughout the kingdom have laid the Church of England under great obligations. I believe that a scripture reader who acts thus in my parish, under my control, and directly under my sanction, is sufficiently authorized to do that work. I do not mean to say that if, as the result of the discussion of this question amongst us here and elsewhere, that reader receives a higher mark of authority than mine, namely from the Bishop himself, I would value his services less-no such thing—I have not one word to say against that course; the men who go out as pioneers into an unknown country, and thus open out for us new sources of commerce and lead, it may be, to the acquisition of further territorial possessions for ou Empire, have their names embalmed in the memories of their fellow-country men, and gain for themselves honoured places on the pages of nationa history. I do say, my Lord Archbishop, that a society which has been the pioneer in higher enterprizes than belong to merchandize, and has producel more precious commerce than the mere interchange of mercantile commodi ties, should have and enjoy in the consideration of such a question as the present, this emphatic and honourable mention on the part of an humble though grateful individual like myself. Lay agency now differs from what it was when that society was started: it now sails before a prosperous gale; and though I find that the late Bishop of London did not co-operate with the Pastorial Aid Society actively, yet with the candour which belongs to a great and vigorous mind, he admitted that his fears were groundless; and the “London Church of England Scripture Readers Society" was the fruit, if I may so call it, of his repentance. Professor Plumptre, in his writings, has spoken of the London Church Missionary Society as the first which established in England lay agency. But I say that that was not the parent but the legitimate offspring of the other society to which I have alluded.

There are two systems in London for the employment of Lay Agency. Why not bind these together and make them subservient to the great object of seeking and winning souls? I wish them both God speed, but I cannot help thinking that if these laymen of the Church of England had given in their allegiance to the association which works under the Bishop of London, they would have done better. They might not perhaps have cut down so much grain, but they could have gathered more wheat into the garner. I cannot but regret that, just as I regret the conduct of John Wesley. I desire to speak in all kindness and brotherly love, but I do believe John Wesley was never excluded from the Church of England. He had access to multitudes of pulpits through the length and breadth of the land, and if he had followed the example of other good men— -Owen of Huddersfield and Walker of Truro-he would not perhaps have left a people behind him to perpetuate his name, but he would have done better work perhaps for the Church of Christ. This association in London proposes to send out persons under the Bishop's direction and control, and with his authority to conduct schools and classes, to manage choirs, to read the scriptures to the sick, to visit from house to house and, occasionally, to perform services in mission-houses and school-rooms. The programme of work done and to be done is most elaborate, and in reading it over I thought there was work enough to satisfy the yearnings of every individual who has an interest in the cause of Christ. This association is intended to carry out what we think is wanting—that is, interparochial communion and interparochial sympathy; and as the productions of one climate are carried to another

where they are needed or desired, so where there are resources in one parish which are not there required, they are carried to other districts where they are more needed, and their loss more felt. We are getting laymen on in this way. Some little time ago some laymen in Manchester asked the Bishop to place a clergyman in a very poor locality. They built and endowed a Church for him, and all in consequence of what he had accomplished there; and they did not leave him to raise the funds, to endow and maintain his schools, because they knew that that would waste the energies and depress the spirits of any clergyman. It is not the work of collecting, though that is bad enough; but it is not work that kills a man, it is worry. I am in the habit of telling my Manchester merchants you ought never to go to Church twice a day-they say, Why? I say, Go once; have an early dinner, and come down then to the valleys of city life from the pleasant hills and beautiful groves in which your homes are located, and mix with your fellow workers, and do something for Christ by your example and your conduct. I believe, my Lord, I have the largest Ragged School in all England, and on Sundays we have more than one thousand children at our schools, and I have a band of female teachers, gathered out of factories and shops, who for their knowledge of scripture are fit to be compared to Priscilla, and for love of Christ to Tryphena and Tryphosa; and I have a band of young men teaching there from our factories and shops too, whom I never see without a feeling that I could take off my hat to them. At the same time, you know, we want men of the higher classes to leave their comfortable homes on Sunday afternoons, and come to work amongst our street Arabs. As to female agency, I cannot but feel that the women in apostolic days were more devoted even than the men; they were the last at the Cross and the first at the Sepulchre; and all the loving feelings of the Apostle Paul seem to gush out when he begins to speak of those women who laboured in the Lord. I believe these were not only voluntary labourers, but that they were set apart by authority; and I believe the more that subject were examined into by men like Dean Howson, the less controversy would there be on the subject now immediately before us.

AUGUSTUS ARTHUR, Esq. (Eastbourne):-In considering the difficult problem of "Lay Agency, Male and Female, authorized and systematic" within the compass prescribed by the short period of time allotted to this address, the field of inquiry must needs be narrowed in some way or other. This may,

perhaps, be fitly done by confining our remarks, in the first instance, to the system, or rather lack of system, in the male lay agency of the present day; and by afterwards adverting to the remedies which seem applicable to that grievous defect.

None of us can look at a parish in a populous town in England or Ireland (London, Birmingham or Manchester, Dublin, Cork or Limerick) without shuddering at the inadequacy of the machinery which the clergy attempt to bring to bear upon the mass of ignorance, irreligion and vice with which they are bound to deal. Just a few untrained district visitors, a Scripture reader or two, some volunteer Sunday-school teachers-these form the sum and substance, the bone and sinew, of the lay staff in our best-managed parishes. And each of these individuals, working almost independently of all the others, derives little or no help from them, but goes on his own unassisted way, trying to do the work which his parochial or district clergyman has assigned to him. The thought occurs to us-Is this loose system, such working by himself apart, necessary? Is it the usage and practice in other religious communions? Is it the practice even in regard to secular work?

Answers to such questions as these will, I think, lead us to the bottom of the matter and make us see clearly both the defect and its remedy.

First take the case of combined secular work of any kind, and how different is the principle of combination! See the beautiful order and exact system of an army-its divisions, its brigades, its battalions, its companies-all under their separate heads, all having an organic union, all bound up in theinselves and to each other by minute contrivances and devices, the slow growth of the centuries since the world began. Descending lower in the scale of secular co-operation; behold such bodies as the Freemasons, Foresters, Friendly Brothers, &c. Have not they, likewise, a corporate union, a corporate life, totally wanting among the lay agencies of the best-worked parish? They meet together frequently and know each other personally. They have their several surbordinate officers, their rules, their interchange of functions, their "esprit de corps." So it is with all other kinds of secular work—with fire brigades, colleges, corporations, &c. In all these, order, regularity, and association, corporate union and corporate feeling, nourished by corporate acts and intercourse, reign over and guide every movement of the individual agent in respect of his work.

Turning now to religious systems of lay agency in other communions, we see the same common-sense principle prominent. The Romanists, on the one hand, the Dissenters (for instance the Wesleyans in their class meetings) on the other, are too wise to neglect the very first principles of our common nature. They know that man is a gregarious animal, and that in nothing is he more gregarious than in his mode of working. They know that union is strength, that combined efforts multiply tenfold the results produced by the same amount of power exercised through isolated individuals.

Now, how or why have we, in our Church Work, alone of all bodies religious or secular, almost entirely passed over this first principle of co-operative association?

It seems to me that our mistake has arisen thus.

We have begun at the wrong end. We have begun with organizing the work-and then-not till then--have looked out for individual workers, as so many isolated units, to do its several portions. But does not all analogy teach us to reverse this process, and to begin by organizing the workers themselves as the primary and more important step, with an assured conviction that work enough will be found for trained and willing hands.

Let us then, for a moment, consider what are the elementary and indispensable conditions of this process of organizing a band of lay helpers. Clearly they must have some common object distinctly presented to their view; they must have some common undertaking, or at least some similar undertakings, to be carried on by them in the same spirit and with like aims. Moreover, in order permanently to keep such a body together there must, obviously, be created among them at least as strong a corporate feeling as that subsisting between Friendly Brothers, Foresters or members of Benefit Clubs; and, like those bodies, in order to maintain the brotherly feeling which is the very life and soul of their motive power, they must meet together frequently, and come to know each other face to face, unless the lack of such personal acquaintance can be supplied by the higher bond of a real spiritual communion. We must know one another before we can become personal associates. We must meet in order to know.

It may here be urged that just such bands of lay workers as I have described are already collected together, and are now working vigorously