CHURCH AND STATE.

Evening Star, Issue 10340, 14 June 1897, Page 3

CHURCH AND STATE.

• Speaking in London on April 27, under the auspices of the Colonial and Continental Church Association, on ' Church and State in New Zealand,' Bishop Julius said : The church in New Zealand presented many features of interest to observers outside. To the great Bishop Selywn, with the aid of several able men whom God raised up at that time, and who co-operated with him, the church owed the masterly constitution whijh had since formed the model upon which the constitution of the Irish Church and those of several colonial churches had been based. What would first strike a young English clergyman going out to New Zealand with regard to the church in the colony would be its weakness. It was a day of small things with the church as well as with the State in New Zealand. Coming to a land where there were no great churches or church institutions, young clergymen were apt to forget that England was 2.00U years old, New Zealand only forty. The colony had a few beautiful churches and many useful institutions, but as a matter of course tbey were all new. People iu England did not realise how their churches spoke to them eloquently of the past, and inspired reverence. Tnerc were no old things in New Zealand, at least the only things in New Zealand older than the children were the parents, and as they were generally less well educated than their children they perhaps failed to inspire the revereccß that oue might wisli to see. The church was not established in New Zealand. He hoped it never would be. He saw more than ever the advantage of having an Established Church, but he saw also that this was hardly possible in New Zealand. At the sarnetime he would be very sorry to see the church separated from the State in England. Church establishment no doubt involved much loss of freedom, but also carried an immense gain iu other respects. The connection of the church with the State in England did bring the bishops and the clergy out of their ecclesiasticism, and brought them more into sympathy with their fellow men. Here in England a clergyman wa3 able to work for the bodies as well as for the souls of men—as Christ did. In New Zealand churchmen were too apt to become a mere sect, and there was too much of a tendency to be content so long as people paid up well to the church funds. To the fact that there was no Established Church in New Zealand was due the absence of religious education in the State schools. There were so maDV religious sects in the colony that the State said it would have nothing to do with religious differences, and so cut the knot of the difficulty by deciding to have no religion at all so far as the State schools were concerned. To all Euglish churchmen he would earnestly say : " Hold fast by your church schools." One thing would strike a visitor to New Zealand was the luge number of laity who engaged in various classes of church work ; who took an active part in the synods, vestries, trust boards, etc. But was the " Church of the Province of New Zealand also the church of the people of New Zealand ?" He felt bound to say ho did not think it was. It might be so in the country. It was not so in the towns. And he did not hesitate to Bay that this was the fault of the ehurcb. One cause was want of elasticity in the church services. His own belief was that the regular services of matins and evensong were really intended for the communicants of the church. He feared that the masses could make little or nothing of those services. But the Church of New Zealand was tied down by its constitution not to make any change in its formularies until tho Church of England should be severed from the State. He wished to point out, however, that this constitution did not really bind the New Zeahnd Church permanently. The Synod which passed that constitution had no more power than any successive Synod. What one had done another could alter. Still it was not *ell to make rath or hasty changes. He hoped that one outcome of the approaching Lambeth Conference might be some scheme which should enable the church, while pre. serving its catholicity, yet to suit itself to the wants of the present age. As to the clergy of New Zealand, the bishop declared that they were quite equal to those of England. But what the church in New Zealand most wanted was more teaching power. had too much preaching, too little teaching. He was convinced that to the lack of teaching, in the sense that he used the term, was due the large number of sects in Christchurch. The settlement of Canterbury, which was also the diocese of Christchurch, was founded by the Church of England, and yet there were as many different sects as in England. But if a man came out to Christchurch whom the people felt or thought could teach them anything they would go to hear him and would listen to him. He micht be a mere American adventurer. " We had one lately," remarked the bishop, "and a precious rascal he was," but still if the people thought he could teach them anything they would go and listen to his teaching. Teaching was what the church wanted. " But then," remarked the bishop with a characteristic twinkle in his eye, " the great teacher was not the kind of clergyman most acceptable to the churchwardens. It was the great preacher they -wanted, the man who filled the church and swelled the offertories. But the great teacher was the man who did the most good. He left far more mark than the greatest mere preacher. Another drawback to the New Zealand Church is a fault which also we share with you in England—the fault of being too respectable. The church is regarded as thit of—l will not say the * upper classes,' for we have none in New Zealand, thank God—but the church of the well-to-do. People think they must be well dressed to go there " And then the church had traditionally become too much attached to one party in th.° State. He himBelf was a Radical, but he held that the church should know no party but that of God. He feared that there was too much tendency to respect a good balance at the bank, and that the wealthy members of a flock obtained much more attention than they really deserved. And there was too little sympathy among the clergy with the social wants and aspirations and movements of the time. The clergy needed t raining to take a right view of these things. Sometimps they looked with horror on a subject of which the people's heart was full. "We have cathedrals in most of our great town?/' continued the bishop, "but we don't know how to use them. I am sure we do not in Christchurch. When I was a boy I was taken to St. Paul's Cathedral in London. I remember to this day, with a shudder, what a dreary old hole of a place it was'in those times, and I am deeply thankful for St Paul's Cathedral as it is in the present day, when you see its frequent, services attended by va9t masses of people, and the great building itself sometimes crowded from end to end. St. Paul's, London, now is what a cathedral ought to be—the church home of the people. And until we get our cathedral churches to be so regard-d they will never fulfil their right, functions." Town parislip? in New Zealand were sadly undermanned. He did not believe in the " one-man-onc-parish" system. M my of the parishes needed six curates, but if tb«y hail them what could the bishou 'o with them? They would naturally lns.-k forward to g.'tting married aud to receiving proff'.ii.-ii',. TtiH English | bishopsoouk: ordain a nurnVr.-of men, the New j Zealand bishops could no:, for they mu»t se when theyordained men th-il they were likel e to have something to do when they married and settled. He would be thankful to see some sort of collegiate system established-

There had b?eh a proposal that young English clergy should come oat to the colony, work oat there for two years, and be able to return to England without loss of standing. He believed it would do many yonng English clergy a great deal of good to go out and rough it} but two years was not .enough. Probably some plan would be devised in course of.time. “But there are some classes of young clergy that we do not want in the colony, said the bishop emphatically. “We do not want men who come out to New Zealand and expect to be made archdeacons in three months. Nor do we want men who come out to put things right in the colony men who look with contemptuous disapprobation upon the way things are done in New Zealand, and remark, loftily : * is not how we do thing in Kensington.’ Nothing puts up the back of colonists more than that sort of thing. Colonists don’t think much of Kensington, and don’t want to be taught by Kensington. What we want is to have men who come out feeling that God has work for them to do there. I have been asked by a man who thought of going out to a parish in my diocese : ‘ Which aspect does the parsonage front ? ’ I had no notion, so I said ‘ All four ways.’ And then he said : ‘ And what soil is it built on, for my little boy could not stand a clay soil.’ I replied: ‘I have not the slightest idea.’ Then that is not the sort of men we want. I think we Want meu who will not get married until they are thirty-five. 1 confess that I married before thirty-live, but then you see times have changed. We mostly need men who could be told at any time to pack up and go to the ends of the earth, men who will say : ‘ Send me wherever you like ; send me to do what you like ; only don’t, don’t make an archdeacon of me.’ Bat can England spare such men '! Yes, I think she can. New Zealand has a deep interest for England. A great nation is springing up there ou the other side of the world, and much, very much, depends upon the foundations being well and truly laid.”