8 



ANGLICAN CHURCHES. 



72 labor homes and other institutions had real- 

 ized 25,000 in the past year, and nearly 14,000 

 had been paid in wages to the inmates. Grants 

 had been received from a number of boards of 

 home guardians, and practical sympathy from 

 the home office, the prison commissioners, judges, 

 magistrates, and other authorities. In the lodg- 

 ing houses 80,000 beds had been let, 3,480 men 

 had passed through the Thames Embankment 

 Rescue Home, and more than 600 women and 

 girls through the London homes provided for 

 them. The general and evangelical accounts 

 showed an income of 40,208, and an expenditure 

 of 39,027 ; the accounts of the social departments 

 an income of 46,246, and an expenditure of 

 46,405. The balance sheet showed an excess 

 of 28,442 in assets over liabilities. 



The Church Union. At the annual meeting 

 of the English Church Union, June 15, it was 

 represented by the presiding officer that 7,850 

 persons had joined the union since June 1, 1898, 

 of whom 5,450 had joined during 1899. The pres- 

 ent whole number of members, 37,900, included 

 4,370 clergy. Never in the forty years of its ex- 

 istence had the union been more united or more 

 determined to protect the doctrines and privi- 

 leges of the Church. An address by Lord Hali- 

 fax, president of the union, was read in his ab- 

 sence on account of illness, criticising recent 

 proceedings. The resolutions unanimously agreed 

 to by the union in 1877 were unanimously re- 

 affirmed. They deny that the secular power 

 has authority in matters purely spiritual. 



The Liberation Society. The Council of the 

 Society for the Liberation of Religion from the 

 Patronage and Control of the State at its annual 

 meeting determined to seek to have disestablish- 

 ment made a plank in the Liberal platform at 

 the next general election, and the society at the 

 public meeting held the same day adopted a reso- 

 lution approving of the step. 



Woman's Help Society. The Church of Eng- 

 land Woman's Help Society has for its objects 

 the cultivation of personal purity and of religion, 

 and works among the roughest girls. The re- 

 port made at its anniversary, May 3, showed 

 that it had made considerable progress, and was 

 doing much good in a quiet and unobtrusive way. 



Ecclesiastical Procedure. At a meeting of 

 all the bishops, held at Lambeth Palace, Jan. 

 17, it w r as resolved that a bill for the reform of 

 the ecclesiastical courts, drawn on the lines laid 

 down by the Royal Commission in 1883, should 

 be submitted to the convocations at their meet- 

 ings in February. The Royal Commission re- 

 ferred to was appointed in May, 1881, at the 

 instance of Archbishop Tait, of Canterbury, to 

 inquire into the constitution and working of the 

 ecclesiastical courts. It presented its report, after 

 two years of consideration, in August, 1883. It 

 was understood that the proposed measure would 

 recommend that complaints against a clergyman 

 be heard and pronounced upon first by the bishop. 

 If the respondent failed to submit, the case should 

 be brought before a diocesan court consisting 

 of the bishop with a legal and a theological ad- 

 viser. From this court an appeal should be to 

 the provincial court of the archbishop, and from 

 this court a final appeal to the Crown, repre- 

 sented by a permanent body of lay judges. 



Convocation of Canterbury. At the meet- 

 ing of the Convocation of Canterbury, Feb. 8, 

 the Bishop of London said in the upper house 

 that he had received a petition, signed John 

 Kensit, for presentation to the house. His grace 

 the president had, however, expressed the opin- 

 ion that it was not desirable that the house 



should receive it, as it contained reflections on 

 the conduct of the bishops. The archbishop said 

 that the petition ended with a very improper 

 sentence, implying a sort of threat against the 

 bishops, which it w r ould be very unseemly in- 

 deed for that house to allow to appear on its. 

 records. He had, therefore, requested the Bishop 

 of London to be good enough not to present it, 

 and he could, if he thought fit, tell Mr. John 

 Kensit the reason why. 



The text of this petition as it appeared in the 

 newspapers was as follows: 



" To the Most Reverend the President and the 

 Right Reverend the Bishops of the Upper House 

 of the Convocation of Canterbury: The honor- 

 able petition of John Kensit, of 18 Paternoster 

 Row, in the city and diocese of London, show- 

 etii that since your petitioner has approached 

 your right reverend house there has been through- 

 out the country a widespread feeling of alarm 

 and indignation at the prevalence in very many 

 churches in every diocese throughout the country 

 of practices distinctly Roman in their origin 

 and use, and that to the ordinary layman there 

 seem to have been few, if any, changes in ritual 

 acknowledged to be legal; that, nevertheless, 

 your lordships and divers organs of the press 

 allege that the evil is of very restricted charac- 

 ter; that your petitioner, with multitudes of 

 others, believes this statement to be utterly un- 

 founded; and he therefore humbly prays that 

 your grace and your right reverend brethren, 

 without delay, will furnish to the Church at large 

 a statement of the number and names of churches 

 in which, by your godly admonitions in private, 

 excesses have been abandoned and unsound doc- 

 trines are no longer taught from the pulpit, and 

 Romanizing manuals have ceased to be circulated. 

 That your petitioner, at the request of his dioce- 

 san, the Lord Bishop of London, has scrupulously 

 refrained from any attempt to interfere with or 

 protest against the services in the churches to 

 which this petition alludes; and that he would 

 deeply regret if, through episcopal supineness, 

 he has to resume on principle a form of protest 

 distasteful to himself, but which seems the only 

 course which really arrests public attention. And 

 your petitioner will ever pray. 



"JOHN KENSIT, 18 Paternoster Row. 

 "Feb. 8, 1899." 



After the remarks on Mr. Kensit's petition the 

 archbishop made a statement in regard to the 

 bill for the reform of the ecclesiastical courts, 

 to the proposed court of the archbishops for the 

 interpretation of tJie rubrics, and to a joint meet- 

 ing of the two convocations w r hich was contem- 

 plated to be held in the ensuing April. 



The lower house adopted a resolution of thanks 

 to the archbishop and their lords of the upper 

 house for proposing to rehabilitate the ecclesi- 

 astical courts of the country, " which as at pres- 

 ent constituted do not command the confidence 

 of the clergy as a body, and will do their utmost 

 to consider fully the measure sent down for con- 

 sideration. At the same time they desire to ex- 

 press their loyalty to the bishops and the direc- 

 tions of the Prayer Book, and their determina- 

 tion to do all that lies in their power to secure 

 obedience to both the written and living voice 

 of the Church of England, thereby assuaging 

 the prevailing anxiety." An article was adopted 

 requesting the bishops to institute measures look- 

 ing to the relief of the clergy from burdens im- 

 posed upon their consciences by certain provisions 

 of the marriage act of 1897. The house by reso- 

 lution expressed its dutiful desire to uphold the 



