silent presence of the Unseen; of hard continuous watching at the post of duty; of the never-ending toil of a ministry, where each soul is a loan of which the account is due. In fine, it would not be stilted language to say that the condition of the Church of England now, compared with what it was in 1840, points to the creation within us, and around us, of a new national power, and a general energy which cannot, without treason to truth, be denied or even depreciated. Those who measure it and love it not are accordingly paying it the compliment of trying to stamp it out.

I may be told that I am proving too much, and that a Church which can do so much, and in so short a time, from its own resources, does not now need the crutch of the State. This is simply the argument of the brigand who cannot find a record of ill-deeds to justify his spoliation, but is forced to seek it in an appeal to that jealousy which ever dogs the path of virtue. To disestablish under such conditions would be to reverse the parable, and punish the good servant by taking away the talents which his faithfulness has accumulated. Of course, a Church, such as ours now is, would be better prepared for disestablishment than it would have been half a century back. But still more emphatically would its disestablishment now be more cruel and indefensible, for the confiscation would be the penalty for conforming to, and not for straying from, those conditions which are, according to the straitest theory of technical liberalism, the tests of the success and well working of institutions—such as expansiveness, elasticity, popular acceptance-evident practical results. The Church, cannot, of course, be turned into a something which is the antithesis of its own definition; but, being the Church, it is becoming more popular in constitution, more interesting to the multitudes, and more available for its appointed work, far beyond the dreams of its best friends in a past generation; and the way in which Liberationism grapples with the phenomenon is to deafen the air by loud screaming"down with it, down with it, even to the ground."

But the case is

These clamourers are behaving after their kind. very different when one whose splendid eloquence had hitherto been uplifted to proclaim the blessings of the Established spiritual order, by not discouraging the despoilers gives them effective aid. It is mocking our understandings to talk of "a large observance of the principles of equity and liberality" in connection with wholesale and purposeless rapine, and it is outraging our moral sense to prophesy soft things about "the vitality of the Church of England" over indefinite confusion and limitless ruin.

ADDRESSES.

(a) HISTORY OF CHURCH ENDOWMENTS AND PROPERTY. The Rev. AUGUSTUS JESSOP, D.D., Rector of Scarning, East Dereham.

WHEN a man has to address an assembly like this on a great subject in a very little time, he cannot afford to indulge in the luxury of a preamble. I must start by reminding you that, although the history of the first planting of Christianity in these islands begins in the region of the fabulous, there are certain landmarks of that

us.

history which are solid and irrefragable. You may question as you please as to the locale of their several dioceses, but it is quite certain that there were three British bishops at the Council of Arles in 314, and their names have been handed down to Arles is a long way off, and any one who has travelled down there knows that the old Roman town is not to be reached without some considerable expense even by rail. How did the British bishops get there? Who paid their expenses? Where did the money come from? Forty years afterwards another Council was held at Ariminum, further still from home. If we are to trust Edward Gibbon, an unexceptionable witness, there were at this time thirty or forty British bishops-a number of them were present at the Council. Some of them paid their own expenses. Three were too poor to do so, and consented to draw upon the fund which the Emperor Constantius had provided. This act of theirs provoked remark at the time, and the same sort of feeling against their taking the Emperor's money existed, which has existed in our own time when a voter at a contested election has accepted his expenses from one or other of the candidates. Seventy Christian years after this occurs the mission of Germanius and Lupus, and the memorable meeting at St. Albans concerning the Pelagian controversy. In the meantime the Romans had finally relinquished their hold upon this island; the Britons had been left to govern themselves. When that remarkable assembly took place, we are told by the historian that the British bishops were specially distinguished from the foreigners by the splendour of their garments and the evidence of riches they displayed. Observe, we have come now far into the fifth century. The next century is the century of Saxon invasion. The heathen swept over the land, and when a wave of heathenism sweeps over a country disendowment naturally follows; but when men talk of the mission of Augustine as if it were a mission for the conversion of a people wholly steeped in heathenism they talk as men who are ignorant of history. Doubtless, the conquering heathen had pillaged and oppressed, but if there is one thing more certain than another it is this, that whatever may have been the condition of the Christian Church in England on Augustine's arrival, corrupt though she were in doctrine and faulty in her practice, yet that Church still existed in some sense as an organised corporation-her clergy spoiled, it may be, of much of her possessions, deficient in culture, and disheartened by all they had gone through, but not beggared nor stripped bare, but having still property to support her ministry—possibly property enough to attract even unworthy men into her ranks. I understand the mission of Augustine to have been precisely such a mission as might at any moment be sent by an Archbishop of Canterbury to any of the Eastern Churches with the object of infusing into such Church some new life, and of bringing that Church into closer union with the rest of Christendom. The point, however, is that when Augustine came, ecclesiastical life, ecclesiastical organisation, had not become wholly obliterated in these islands, but had survived the generations of warfare and pillage, presumably therefore retaining some considerable portions of its property which not all the merciless rapacity of the conqueror had deprived it of. Augustine was with us just eight years. Regard him as an emissary from the most potent of all living Churches to a Church that had greatly fallen away from the life of our Lord, which had become confused by ignorance, dulled by isolation, and was, if you please, a but moribund, and the immense awakening, the immense stimulus, the immense revival brought about in those eight years, wonderful though it were, becomes at least intelligible; but, regard it as a simple mission by preachers of an unknown Gospel to a heathen people who had never known the Saviour's Name, the success becomes not only wonderful, not only inexplicable, but to some minds absolutely incredible. Again, I must remind you what my point is. When Christianity penetrated first into this

island I do not know, and no one can tell me, but this I do know, that there are proofs that in Roman times, and for centuries after, an ecclesiastical organisation existed in this island, held its ground from generation to generation, its bishops and presbyters keeping up an unbroken succession and exercising religious functions and possessed of some influence and authority, such influence and such authority as conceivably may rest upon a merely moral or intellectual basis in certain states of society, but which if it were dissociated from such resources as we understand by the possession of property in those rude and barbarous ages could not, in my judgment, have continued to exist at all.

To pass on. When in the latter half of the seventh century Theodore came, he found an organisation so perfect that one of the first things he did was to hold a Visitation of his diocese, and one of his grounds of complaint against St. Chad, Bishop of Lichfield, was that he had been consecrated by two British bishops. When he moved to the north he may have found, and he did find, the great church of York in a somewhat dilapidated condition, but that it was far from ruinous is plain enough from the fact which the contemporary historian has put on record—viz., that he scrupulously whitewashed the sacred walls. Theodore had been in Britain four years when Bede the Venerable was born. Before Bede reached manhood, he tells us that the Church had already grown too rich. Church property, for the most part, was in the hands of and administered by powerful corporations, monastic or diocesan, and the massing of this property had become perilous. It was Theodore's great aim to break up this over-centralisation of ecclesiastical resources. The dioceses were sub-divided-and perhaps the parochial organisation followed-I say perhaps, for I do not much believe in any great organic change having been effected in the constitution of Church or State in England in early times by a coup de main. Things grew to what they became in the slow lapse of centuries. But the effect of Theodore's reforms was to bring about the increase of resident clergy in the several townships, and to substitute for the somewhat fitful, irregular visiting of this place and that place by itinerant preachers and celebrants the settling down for life of a parson who was irremovable, and whose maintenance was assured, it matters little for my present argument how. Inevitably, as time went, there was a tendency for the owners of the soil to invite this priest and that priest to accept this or that benefice; precisely as there is now, as there always was, and gradually gifts of land were made-i.e., the parson's glebe, but the glebe was never in my judgment the main support of the parson. Whence then did these Bishops of Arles and Rimini derive their incomes, by means of which they met the vast expense of a journey to the other end of Europe? Whence did these disputants derive their resources to make the display they did at Verulam? Whence in the main did the revenues come which sufficed to keep up a succession of clergy from century to century, which when centralised made the earlier diocesan incomes dangerously large? The great bulk of those revenues at all times was, I believe, derived from the tithes. Here, again, I desire to enter my caveat against those who, with that mischievous hankering after definiteness in everything, and that superficial demand for a categorical answer, will insist on asking when the payment of tithes was enforced upon all Christians, and when the payment of tithes became compulsory by the law of the land in England. Such matters as these are not things which start into maturity, they are matters of growth. When it became the common law of the Church and the condition of Church membership that a tenth of all the produce of the soil should be paid for the support of the worship of God, the maintenance of the ministers of the Church, and other ecclesiastical purposes, I do not pretend to say; but this I am quite certain of-that when people, relying upon a foolish dictum of that profound scholar and antiquary, John Selden, maintain that the

origin of tithes in England dates from the time of King Æthelwulf, father of the great Ælfred, they are taking up a position which is nothing less than ridiculously untenable. You might with much more reason assert that Ethelwulf was the originator of the Poor-laws. If Æthelwulf's queer donative proves anything it rather proves that when he made the grant of a tenth of his private property he was making a sort of compensation for his remissness in paying dues which ought to have been paid long ago, and which he would take care none of his posterity should have a chance of cheating the Church of hereafter. When by his last will and testament, or by a codicil to a previous will, he ordered that every tenth of his private property was to go to the support of one or more poor men, he made it abundantly plain that the ecclesiastical tithe was not necessarily chargeable to any definite extent and by any hard and fast line with the support of the poor to the extent that the poor could claim it as their own. By the common law of Christendom it was held a duty to bestow a tenth to God's service. As that duty became more and more recognised so the payment was more and more easily and generally levied. Being levied, the next question arose as to where it should be paid. Prior to the existence of that wonderful organisation which we call the parochial system-i.e., prior to the time when there were parish churches and parish priests, and during the period I have before alluded to, when the parishes or townships were worked from a diocesan centre by itinerants sent forth from the central minster, doubtless the tithes were paid into the diocesan treasury, and the funds were administered accordingly; doubtless, too, from that diocesan centre great works of charity and almsgiving proceeded, and the machinery was an economical machinery, and could be worked at a much less cost than in the days when decentralisation had set in. But when a parish had provided itself with a church and a manse and glebe, the first thing that the inhabitants would demand would be that they should no longer pay their tithes to the diocesan treasury, but to the parson resident among themselves. Then, too, the poor of the parish would expect not to suffer by the change, and doubtless did not, but the dispenser of the alms to the sick and needy now became the parson, at whose discretion the distribution was made, just as before the distribution had been made at the discretion of the bishop or his almoner. That there ever was a time when any definite portion of the tithe could in any sense be claimed by any one but the parson there is not the smallest fraction of evidence, or anything approaching to evidence, I will not say to prove, but even to indicate. Of course the parish priest was a minister of good things from Christ to his parishioners, and of course a moral obligation lay upon him to use his revenues for other than selfish ends, and looking back upon the history of the Church of England, through all the long centuries, I do not believe that any Church in Christendom has a less reason to shrink from a scrutiny into the way in which her ministers have used their stewardship, but that the tithe or any definite portion of it could in any sense be claimed by the poor as their own is less true, if possible, than that any definite portion of the private estates of landowners throughout the country can be claimed by those who at any moment are in receipt of parish relief.

Having now reached the point where the payment of a tenth is recognised as obligatory and enforced by sanction of law, we have arrived at the point where the tithe has become a first charge upon the land; it was inevitable that it should be a first charge. Men might come and men might go, but the parson was there for ever. The land might change hands a hundred times, but the Church and the parish priest remained to be supported. Of every rood in the parish the parish priest was actually part-owner. But in the complex relations that grew up he was by no means the only co-parcener. Under the old tenures the same land might be said to belong to half-adozen people; it belonged to the actual tiller of the land as long as he fulfilled his

covenant to the copy-holder; it belonged to the copy-holder as long as he paid his dues to the lord of the manor; it belonged to the lord of the manor as long as he discharged his services to the over-lord. In old times as in modern ones it was rarely that the broad acres were free from charges, but as money increased and became more and more the one circulating medium the old services became more and more commuted into a money payment. The absentee landlord gladly received in cash the equivalent for the oats, the eggs, the hens, or the eels, which his forefathers used on the spot; the resident parson, on the other hand, had less need for money in proportion as he stayed within the limits of his parish, and where his household was too small for the tithe pig that came in on occasion there were always plenty of the poor and needy in his parish who would help him to consume it, and love him the better for their taste of the produce of the tithe. And this helps us to understand why it was that the payment of tithe in kind so long survived similar payments, although I beg to remind you that upon the larger estates the old services are not yet extinguished, and that the obligation to carry the lord's coal to the capital mansion, and the rendering of a goose at Michaelmas, or a turkey at Christmas, is still inserted as a clause in many an existing lease. These are survivals of the early payments to the landlord which have survived even the payment of tithe in kind. The tithe has at last in our own time been commuted for a money payment, but these services, relics of a former state of things, still continue, and are as likely to continue as most things in our days of violent and irrational change. I have said that the owner of tithe rent-charge is part owner of the land. In the case of the lay-owner he receives his tithe without any duties being claimed or expected of him; in the case of the clerical owner he receives it only on condtion of residing upon his benefice, and fulfilling certain duties in return for the enjoyment of his income. If such a calamity should befall this country as that the property of the tithe-owner should be confiscated, would you limit the extent of the confiscation, and while taking away the tithe from the resident parson, who necessarily gives it back in some form or another to the parish in which he necessarily resides, would you allow the layman to retain his tithe undisturbed because he does nothing for it, is not obliged to live in the parish from which the tithe comes, and may spend it as he will and where he will, in Belgrave-square or the Riviera, at Paris or Monte Carlo? Surely it is a strange, a very strange and unintelligible principle that the owner of property who does nothing for it and is restricted by no obligation of duty in his engagement of it has therefore a more indefeasible right to it than he who holds it subject to such obligation—that the man who does something and must do something may be ousted-the man who does nothing and need do nothing should be held to possess a right which is inalienable. I have reached the limits of the time allowed, yet I must needs say one word. The tithe-holder is part owner of the land; so is the Crown, which demands its land-tax; so is the mortgagee, when any mortgage has been raised; so are the annuitants and holders of jointures and the like. More than nine-tenths of the land of this country may be said to be held in divided ownerships. No nominal owner of a farm ventures to charge the tenant with the payment of all the dues that the land is burdened with. He does make his tenant pay certain rates and taxes, and he does make him pay the tithe, but he never makes him pay the jointures, annuities, and interest of money borrowed. We all know why. But why the law should protect so inordinately the man who is merely the nominal owner of the soil, who, though part-owner, is actually the very last of the co-parceners to whom the residue comes-that I cannot see. This I can see very clearly, that when you have got rid of the ownership of the first charge upon the soil you are not likely to stop there, the annuitants may go next, the mortgagee may follow in due course, the nominal landlord will vanish in his turn, the