The Daily News. SATURDAY, JANUARY 31, 1914. A "STRIKE" OF CLERGYMEN.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 182, 31 January 1914, Page 4

The Daily News. SATURDAY, JANUARY 31, 1914. A "STRIKE" OF CLERGYMEN.

b'rom time to time wo hear of the clergy of New Zealand being inadequately paid, and as a consequence of this condition ol' things we also hear of a dearth oT students of divinity. Very much the same state of things appears to prevail in England, where even in the national church an organisation exists to raise money to supplement insufficient stipends. At a recent meeting of the Liverpool Diocese £lergy Pension Fund, it wa-i pointed out by Archdeacon Madden thai there were about 14,000 benefices in England, and in half of those the incomes of the vicars or incumbents were less than £2OO a year. That being the case, how was it possible for those clergy to live in the kind of respectable life that they had to live, to bo hospitable as they were hound to be, to educate their children as they ought to be educated, and then save enough to retire in their old age and live comfortably? Working men's wages had been raised as the cost of living had increased, but the salaries of the clergy had remained stationary. Another clergyman, the Rev. E. C. Collier, asserted that a number of the clergy of the Church of England had in a seme "struck," because they would not allow their sons to take holy orders, so that the services of many eligible men were lost to the Church. He made a strong plea for a ' living wage" for clergymen, and appeared to dread the consequences of poor men's sons being drawn into the clerical ranks. It was not, he said, in tho interests of the Church of England to be "making priests from men who had little standing in the world and had very little education as well.'* A statement of this kind reads very strongly, in view of the fact that the Founder of Christianity chose His preachers from among poor, illiterate ) fishermen and others. It is surely impolitic for modern priests to emphasise how different are apparently tho interests of the Church from the interests of Christianity. It is not at all clear that low pay is the real cause of men not offering themselves for holy orders in England. A salary of £2OO a year at Home is equal to at least £3OO in this country, and there arc hundreds of preachers in New Zealand who would think themselves in affluence if they had £3OO a year. Anyone in England who thinks £2OO a year is "misery and poverty" is unfit to be a preacher of I the Gospel to the poor; and those who .discourage their sons from following tho sacred calling from the sordid motive oi : pay . are surely poor exponents of a religion whose leading feature is self-sacri-fice.