A BISHOP ON CHURCH REFORM.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1500, 7 March 1887, Page 3

A BISHOP ON CHURCH REFORM.

The Bishop of Rochester, m his annual letter to the diocese, says : Churah Reform is m the air. It is about time that it was. It is also time for each of us to discover and eot about that particular duty with respect to it which is especially our own People who havo been to £_a iv the tropics well know tho ominous calm which sometimes intervenes between tho burets of a cyclone, and residents there know how to use it, we are m a calm now. Not because our adversaries relent of their purpose — of that they will never relent. Not b. cause the solid arguments again-t Church Establishment of any kind (there are such) are already dissolved m the air. Not even because the good and augmenting work the Church is doing softens the prejudices of her religious adversaries. Tbeie are iinplacables on tho other side, and they can wait Do not for any ment suppose the claims and criticisms of tho Liberation Society to bo either coincident or commensurate with the settled opinion of tlrat large mass of the people which, neither for the Church nor against her, wait to see how things go, « ish to ascertain if she will prefer a wise reform to a serious revolution. Of course, some changes are proposed bo wild and so revolutionary that they would destroy tho Church, instead oi improving her. Sooner than let one of her principles be forfeited, one of her do. trines denied, one of her characteristic features obliterated, let us oon.ent to be stripped of any dignity, privilege, and emolument we possess, and go out into the wilderness, rich m our unimpaired conscience and m the company of our Lord. But we need not just yet protest against what may never happen. What I feel most Btrongly about now is a more stringent discipline of crim nous clerks, a limitation of the freehold character of a benefice, the right of parishioners to ba heard before an institution, prcventio- of Bale of next presentation, and the abolition of donatives. Could theae immense changes bo effected, a generation would see an improvement m tie Church of England which we can hardly imagine.