But who are the laity? 'By a layman,' he says, 'I mean one who fulfils the duties of Church membership—one who is baptised into the Church, who has been confirmed if he has reached years of discretion, and who is a communicant.' A roll of Church members, he suggests, should be kept in each parish, on which should be entered the name of each confirmed person, male or female. The names of those who had passed (say) two years without communicating should be struck off the roll. Further, names should be removable for any scandalous offences.[45]
It is easy to see that the 'communicant franchise' would work entirely in favour of that party in the Church which attaches the greatest importance to that Sacrament. It would exclude a large number of Protestant laymen who subscribe to Church funds, and who on any other franchise would have a share in its government. But we need not suspect Dr. Gore of any arrière pensée of this kind. His ideal of parochial life is one which must appeal to all who wish well to the Church. We will quote a few characteristic sentences:
'Are we to set to work to revive St. Paul's ideal of the life of a Church? If so, what we need is not more Christians, but better Christians. We want to make the moral meaning of Church membership understood and its conditions appreciated. We want to make men understand that it costs something to be a Christian; that to be a Christian, that is, a Churchman, is to be an intelligent participator in a corporate life consecrated to God, and to concern oneself, therefore, as a matter of course, in all that touches the corporate life, its external as well as its spiritual conditions.... We Christians are fellow-citizens together in the commonwealth that is consecrated to God, a commonwealth of mortal men with bodies as well as souls.'[46]
With regard to ritual, he will not allow that the disputes are unimportant. The vital question of self-government is at stake. From this point of view, a 'mere ceremony' may mean a great deal. St. Paul, who said 'Circumcision is nothing,' also said, 'If ye be circumcised Christ shall profit you nothing,'[47] This is quite consistent with his hearty disapproval of the introduction of purely Roman ceremonial.
Does this ideal of a free Church in a free State involve disestablishment? Not necessarily, Dr. Gore thinks. Why should not legal authority be entrusted to diocesan courts, with a right of appeal to a court of bishops, abolishing the jurisdiction of the Judicial Committee in spiritual cases? It is the paralysis of spiritual authority, in his opinion, which pushes into prominence all extravagances, and conceals the vast amount of agreement which exists in essentials. 'We are weary of debating societies; we want the healthy discipline of co-operative government.'[48] The policy of this self-governing Church is to be 'Liberal-Catholic,' a type which 'responds to the moral needs of our great race.'
Such is the scheme of Church reform towards which the Bishop is working; and he has told us, in the sentence last quoted, what kind of Church he looks forward to see. But what kind of Church would it actually be, if his designs were carried out? It would not be a national Church; for his belief that Catholicism 'responds to the moral needs of our race' is contradicted by the whole history of modern England. The laity of England may not be quite 'as Protestant as ever they were, though we often hear that they are so; but they show no disposition to become Catholics. Catholicism as we know it is Latin Christianity, and even in the Latin countries it is now a hothouse plant, dependent on a special education in Catholic schools and seminaries, with an index librorum prohibitorum. Such a system is impossible in England. Seminaries for the early training of future clergymen may indeed be established; but beds of exotics cannot be raised by keeping the gardeners in greenhouses while the young plants are in the open air. The 'Liberal Catholic' Church, accordingly, would shed, by degrees, the very large number of Churchmen who still call themselves Protestant. Nor would the adjective 'Liberal' secure the adhesion of the 'intellectuals.' Bishop Gore's Liberalism would exclude most of them as effectually as the most rigid Conservatism. It would also be a disestablished and disendowed Church; for surely it is building castles in the air to think of episcopal courts recognised by law. The prospect of disestablishment does not alarm the Bishop. Some of his utterances suggest that he would almost welcome it. Indeed, disestablishment is viewed with complacency by an increasing number of High Church clergy. They feel that they can never carry out their plans for de-Protestantising the Church while the Crown has the appointment of the bishops. For even if, as has lately been the case, their party gets more than its due share of preferment, there will always, under the existing system, be a sufficient number of Liberal and Evangelical bishops on the bench to make a consistent policy of Catholicising impossible. And the Catholic party are so admirably organised that they are confident in their power to carry their schemes under any form of self-government, even though the mass of the laity are untouched by their views. Moreover, the town clergy, among whom are to be found advocates of disestablishment, find in many places that the parochial idea has completely broken down. The unit is the congregation, no longer the parish, and the clergy are supported by pew-rents and voluntary offerings, not by endowments. In such parishes, disestablishment might, they think, give them greater liberty, and would make little difference to them in other ways. But in the country districts the case is very different. Thirty years after disestablishment, the quiet country rectory, nestling in its bower of trees and shrubs, with all that it has meant for centuries in English rural life, would in most villages be a thing of the past.
For these reasons, the Bishop's policy of reconstructing the Church of England as a self-governing body, professing definitely Catholic principles and enjoining Catholic practices, seems to us an impossible one. The chief gainer by it would be the Church of Rome, which would gather in the most consistent and energetic of the Anglo-Catholics, who would be dissatisfied at the contrast between the pretensions of their own Church and its isolated position. The non-episcopal bodies would also gain numerous recruits from among the ruins of the Evangelical and Liberal parties in the Church.
But, it may be said, this dismal forecast may be falsified if the Anglican Church can win the masses. The English populace are at present neither Protestant nor Catholic; they are, if we count heads, mainly heathen. May not the working man, who has no leaning to dissent, unless it be the 'corybantic Christianity' of the Salvation Army, be brought into the Church?
Bishop Gore has always shown an earnest sympathy with the aspirations of the working class to improve their material condition. He is also profoundly impressed by the apparent discrepancy between the teachings of Christ about wealth and the principles which His professed disciples wholly follow and in part avow. These anxious questionings form the subject of a fine sermon which he preached at the Church Congress of 1906, on the text about the camel and the needle's eye. Jesus Christ chose to be born of poor and humble parents, in a land remote from the centre of political or intellectual influence, and in the circle of labouring men. He chose to belong to the class of the respectable artisan, and most of the twelve Apostles came from the same social level. In His teaching He plainly associated blessedness with the lot of poverty, and extreme danger with the lot of wealth. All through the New Testament the assumption is that God is on the side of the poor against the rich. As Jowett once said, there is more in the New Testament against being rich, and in favour of being poor, than we like to recognise. And is not this the cause of our failure to win the masses? Is it not because we are the Church of capital rather than of labour? The Church ought to be a community in which religion works upward from below. The Church of England expresses that point of view which is precisely not that which Christ chose for His Church. The incomes of the bishops range them with the wealthier classes; the clergy associate with the gentry and not with the artisans. We must acknowledge with deep penitence that we are on wrong lines. For himself, the Bishop admits that he has 'a permanently troubled conscience' in the matter. Then, with that admirable courage and practicality which is the secret of much of his influence, he proceeds to indicate four 'lines of hopeful recovery.' First, the Church must get rid of the administration of poor relief. Where the charity of the Church is understood to mean the patronage of the rich, it can do nothing without disaster. All will be in vain till it has ceased to be a plausible taunt that a man or woman goes to church for what can be got. Secondly, we must give the artisans their true place in Church management, and must consult their tastes in all non-essentials. Thirdly, the clergy should 'concentrate themselves upon bringing out the social meaning of the sacraments,' and giving voice to the spirit of Christian brotherhood. Lastly, we ought to free the clerical profession entirely from any association of class.
The Bishop is not a Collectivist, but he has great sympathy with some of the aims of Socialism. In a 'Pan-Anglican Paper' just issued, he discusses the attitude of the Church towards Socialism. Christianity, he says, must remain independent of State-Socialism, as of other organisations of society. Socialism would make a far deeper demand on character than most of its adherents realise. 'An experiment in State-Socialism, based on the average level of human character as it exists at present, would be doomed to disastrous failure.' (Bishop Creighton said the same thing more epigrammatically. 'Socialism will only be possible when we are all perfect, and then it will not be needed.') But what we have is no Socialistic State, but a great body of aspiration, based on a great demand for justice in human life. The indictment of our present social organisation is indeed overwhelming, and with this indictment Christianity ought to have the profoundest sympathy, for it is substantially the indictment of the Old Testament prophets. The prophets were on the side of the poor; and so was our Lord. Where is the prophetic spirit in the Church to-day? We need 'a tremendous act of penitence.' Our charities have been mere ambulance-work; but 'the Christian Church was not created to be an ambulance-corps.' We have followed the old school of political economy instead of the prophets and Christ. Broadly, we may contrast two ideals of society: individualism, which means in the long run the right of the strong; and socialism, which means that the society is supreme over the individual. 'On the whole, Christianity is with Socialism.'