of their successive regenerations. Now the 19th claims its own revival.

The spirit of 430 years ago demanded and effected such a rehabilitation on the express ground that 'Quæstionibus et negotiis indies occurrentibus antiqua non sufliciunt instituta.' (MS. Nov. Reg., p. 3.) Is not the axiom conceived in the very spirit of our own times? We must then briefly touch the needs of our modern Church (and we would willingly touch them in a spirit not less reverent than practical), and examine how far | the remedies are to be found in the revival of diocesan and cathedral institutions.

vert the cathedrals into such colleges is the withdrawal from the future occupants of canonries of the permission to hold livings, and the requirement of nine months' cathedral residence. The canons will still be as well off as most college tutors or university professors. This done, the colleges ipso facto exist. The difference between the 'old 'and 'new' foundations lies mainly here. The new foundations, colleges of seven or eight men, were founded with this for their leading idea. The 'old' foundations, though the same was their principal work, yet, as colleges of thirty, fifty, or sixty men, were inI. Clergy Training.-(1) Knowledge. tended to incorporate with this work of The foremost place in the functions of the learning, and to animate by it, a vast mass cathedral must be assigned to it as a home of practical work' besides. In their resand fountain of theological learning. The toration the aim must be not to revive the Universities are (it may be rightly) abandon- latter alone; this severed from the former ing this position, and that not with regard must lose its savour;' each may best be carto theological learning alone; they abrogate ried on in unison with the other-above all, the titie of seats of learning in the ancient if there be a specialising co-operation in sense altogether. The original function of the divisions of study. The first practical the University, as represented in the 'pro- issue then must be the dealing with candifessor,' was first to accumulate, secondly to dates for holy orders. It is an undisguised explore, thirdly to teach teachers. But the fact that bishops and bishops' examiners are present necessary vocation of the professor dissatisfied with the acquirements of those is to teach undergraduates. Science ad- whom they examine and certify for holy vances, learning accumulates, philosophy orders. Not a twelfth part of the candidates strengthens elsewhere also under the guid- in the most attractive dioceses can be said ance of less engrossed teachers. But the to pass each examination as all ought to pass Church of England cannot abnegate her it. The deficiency is general; accurate position as a learned Church; that position comprehensive study of Scripture, the Greek which has made her sympathetic with every Testament, the Christian evidences, scientific advance in knowledge, appreciative of every knowledge of Creed and Articles, are very expansion of art, capable of every develop- rare. Church history is commonly the best ment of method. In criticism, in science, in prepared subject, but the knowledge is deevery walk of literature, her clergy claim sultory. Latin,' even when required, is less some of the highest names. If in any satisfactory still as evidence of sound study. quarter of a century there has been in her Of the 'Sermons' it can only be said that the least declension of learning, then the they bid fair to perpetuate our current trasteadiness of her spiritual advance has dition. An observant examiner perceives that slackened too. The immediate prospects of what his examinees lack, is not ability or Christianity itself are so compromised in her earnestness, but cultivation. An experienced truthfulness, that we may well be jealous of examiner knows that more systematic Scripallowing her light to flicker. Practical ture knowledge is produced not only froin work' is the most popular demand just now, men's but from girls' training-schools, than by and 'results' immediate, examinable, the test the untrained average 'candidate.' The Uniof work.' It is a standard which, super-versities do not succeed in giving clerical ficial as it is, the English Church has no reason to fear; but the history of civilisation is read to little purpose, if it is doubted that on living truth, progressive science, accurate knowledge, practical work' can alone be built. Yet to the cathedrals alone and their developed colleges of canons may we now look for restoration of Church-learning. The Universities having apparently repudiated the task, association is necessary, provision necessary; neither alone nor unendowed can Church-scholars possibly work. Yet the sole legislative enactment needed to con

is

training to more than a select few. But were they ever so successful, and were the current of university feeling more favourable to such training than it is, they would not supply much more than a single diocese with cultivated men. There is wanted moderate, no doubt, but truthful and serviceable knowledge, substantial teaching for every man, whatever his calibre, or however imperfectly educated in classics, who, in earnestness and sober zeal (and these qualities abundantly exist), pre-. sents himself to be accredited as qualified to impart the Church's knowledge, to defend

hours of teaching,-constant exercitations in writing, and (though we have yet to form our method in this department) some oratorical instruction which shall elevate and advance the present level. What a Cyprian and an Augustine did not disdain to teach -what Cicero, at the age of twenty-eight, did not disdain to learn in the lecture-room of Molo-can be despised only by a 'rustic' or a banausic' spirit.

III. Again, is it hopeless to believe tha we may by degrees create a staff of Free Preachers? This belongs distinctly both to the ancient and to the Protestant notion of a cathedral. The Report (First, p. xxxiv.)that noble monument of conscientious wor

an

again quotes Bishop Stillingfleet's account of early London, with its persons sent up and down by the Bishop to such places as he thought fit, for instructing the people.' Cranmer's care for the six preachers of Canterbury is well known. These were ciently provided with horses, &c., for their tours. Knowing the effective use which both Rome and Nonconformity make of such institutions, we can scarcely doubt their advisability or their feasibility. Still less can we doubt that the most vigorous and most temperate rendezvous would be the headquarters of the diocese.

IV. But we are far from thinking that the cathedral does not owe a peculiar debt to its own city. It is a debt which the statutes frequently recognise. The severance which sometimes exists (though by no means always), has its origin in recent apathies, not in old usage. The very fabric-the magnitude, for instance, of the nave-represents the fact. Diocesan gatherings and city organisations also are beginning to require and to replenish them at intervals, and it is scarcely necessary to assure ourselves that we see

2. Thus much for one side of the training. For the other, men preparing for ministerial work should, for certain periods during the curriculum of the preparation, be broken up into twos and threes in country parishes, fours and sixes in large towns, and placed under the direction of able parish priests of experience. How many of these there are of mature age, whose youth was passed under certain great influences! And, we may say, how few there are of younger date who rise to the same level! But many of these would be most valuable guides, most meet at once to encourage and to temper the zeal and the energies of aspirants to similar work. Our true modern theological college would make arrangements, whether in the cathedral town or in other towns or populous parishes, for sending out its alumni (for nine months perhaps out of a two-years' course) to work ander the eye of such men as these, and to read for their examinations: the first fifteen months would be spent in the college itself. So would they be not only instructed, but enabled to deal with the shop and the cot. tage and the railway; useful from the first to some extent in church and school to the rector or vicar who receives them, but learning from him such method' as will save them years of disappointing labour, gaining the effectual unobtrusive art of giving expression to their sympathy and their de-a votion.

Some may have seen a certain photograph representing more than a hundred young men gathered to bid farewell to him who for ten years had daily studied the Greek Testament for an hour with them, and given pastoral training in his parish to those who would come and live within its boundary. Few are the men whose ability and ready learning and Christian tact could effect so much unaided. But well-organised institutions, in which one man should supply another's need; which could attract the interest of some of the leading clergy of the diocese; which could carry out pecuniary arrangements with economy and skill, might spring up in every cathedral city, whilst beautiful and glorious associations would dignify the work.*

several new deaneries and colleges of prebends were founded out of divers priories belonging to cathedral churches. Cranmer laboured with the king that in these new foundations there should be readers of Divinity, Greek, and Hebrew, and students trained up in religion and learning, from whence, as from a nursery, the bishops should supply their dioceses with honest and able ministers; and so every bishop should have college of clergymen under his eye, to be preferred according to their merits: for it was our archbishop's regret that the prebendaries were be stowed as they were.' Strype, 'Mem. Cran.,' i. p. 107. See also among the citations in 1st Rep. Cath. Commission,' p. xxiv., Cranmer's Letter to Cromwell concerning the Maintenance of Twenty Divines at Canterbury for reading Lectures in Theology and Arts. It appears," says Bishop Gibson (p. 180,) from 31 Hen. VIII. c. 9, that the great design was to make cathedrals nurseries of young divines for the service of the Church, who, being trained in the study of Divinity under the immediate inspection of the bishops, deans, and (Master of Trinity) account in the Letter prechapters, &c.'. See also Dr. C. Wordsworth's viously referred to, of the College projected in the reign of James I. to be attached to the Collegiate Church and Minister of Ripon,' in many points restored to its ancient use and dignity, with its splendid design for 30 colleagues, 70 junior fellows (10 students in arts, 8 in tongues, &c.), 120 probationers, 120 scholars, and 60 gram

mar scholars. See also Dr. W.'s extracts from Sir E. Sandys and Lord Bacon on the necessity

* Towards the latter end of this year (1539) of Divinity Instruction.

VI. There is another point in which the co-operation of laymen in cathedrals is seriously wanted on many accounts. The Library' was in the old times a distinguishing feature of the cathedral. It ought to be so still. And it never can be so long as the clergy alone engross it. A great bibliographer relates with glee how by a present of some splendidly bound modern books, he obtained possession of the chief treasures of a certain cathedral library. In that library you yet may turn over volume after volume, out of which the illuminations have been sliced by the penknives of visitors. In that library you still see strata as it were of col

but the beginning of such organisations. | V. Some due preparation of the order of The choir was well filled with chapter and 'Readers' will necessarily call for attention vicars. Who but the city required anciently shortly. The experiment is begun, and has such vast naves? Yet the class in society the countenance of the bishops. If we have which (if we can single out one) we neglect full confidence in the zeal of our rulers and more shamefully, more inexcusably than any the devotion of our people, we shall only exothers, is a city class; a class whose work pect its too rapid development. This order lies under the shadow of cathedrals, of col- must require some training, some lessons legiate churches, of the great old parish from experience, to guide and to chasten, churches, young men in bankers', in at- while it promotes zeal; some sense of unity torneys' offices, in large warehouses, and re- in their work. For the supply of elements, spectable shops. They have been well edu- so necessary to permanence and acceptablecated up to a certain age; well cared for in ness,' whither can we look but to some acgood schools; they are of excellent character tion of the cathedral and its staff? The or they would not be where they are. But country town has few suggestions to offer to from the hour they enter on their business- its own volunteers, and the university tone training all higher influences surrender, and and the university habits are typically those almost shun them. They need but a little which we do not want to give them. living interest to be found for them, witness certain London congregations. But, alas! what falls for the many of them! Alas, what years of impurity! separated from home-lonely in lodgings, what does society provide for them? The theatre, the musichall, the dancing-room, unless after sedentary days they have some special intellectual zeal left for solitary study. Some efforts are made, no doubt; but Young Men's Christian Associations,' thankfully as we own good work on their part, and still look for developments not necessarily stimulated by party spirit, are at present inadequate to such result. But wherever there is a body of clergy, wherever there is anything like a collections-plenteous ore in one generation, lege, wherever there are lecture rooms and libraries, there not only the authorities but the students themselves may be infinitely serviceable to one of the most interesting and valuable and important classes of society. The college should have its open lectures, as well as its close ones. Its late evening lectures on subjects not purely theological should enrol its classes of these men. If once the construction of vaulted roofs, the thrust of walls, the balance of buttressesnay, the construction of bridges, the formation and repair of highways were not unworthy studies in the most religious ages of the old and new foundation-will history, and physiology, and mathematics be beneath them now? Minds furrowed with some intellectual plough best receive the seed of revealed Truth. What a field here for association of clergy with able laymen in the actual instruction! what a palýτεvois of young laymen to be the very strength of the Church in its most important ranks. Let the cathedral body take a lead here. Its affiliations would overspread the diocese, and its associations would have an effect which the higher spirit in commerce would gladly recognise and advance.

from folios to broad-sheets, in the next gene ration tenuis argilla.' None of these mischiefs would ever have occurred-the library would ever have been, would still be the pride of the city and county, if the antiquaries, the literati, the country gentlemen, had been-some elective, some ex officio-members of the committee. The collections would have been intact, and they would have been uniformly progresssive. Small blame to chapters cut down to four or five clergymen. No given four or five barristers or magistrates would form an efficient continuous library committee. It was different when the chapter meant sixty people, and those who had daily right and pressure to use the library, and had no other books to use, were two or three hundred. Then it was at once a college library and a grand repository of archives. This it ought still to be. It ought to contain archives of every town, every marked family, and every corporation in the diocese, as well as to maintain at full efficiency a general library--a centre of light and happiness. What the Old Library' so governed has been in one of our great midland towns (and it may be in others) for some generations is well known.

Sterile exclusiveness has made the cathedral | whole congregation of Christian people')

a seed-plot of unfructifying germs.

has grievously forfeited ground that was all VII. After books we will take Music: her own, and the continent puts to shame but in a few words only. The cathedral our poor appreciation (except on some trewas once as we saw, in speaking of the mendous emergency) of the religious aspect precentorship-the musical centre of the and uses of the sacred office of nursing the diocese. Now, we see the musical centre sick. Our earliest attempts at the resumpfixed elsewhere. In the diocese we speak of, tion were too full of excitement. • Medical two officers discharge the identical office of jealousy,' if it has any existence (which we the ancient succentor. They travel from doubt), is no mere indifference to religion.* choir to choir throughout its counties, test- The most religious surgeon may not see lives ing, giving hints, introducing uniformity of endangered through inexperience, however style, organising a really great musical zealous. But one of the best nursed hospipower. But are they officers of the cathe-tals in London (King's College), by its condral? The cathedral is the last church to nexion with St. John's House, has given a concern itself with the function. How much precedent which will be followed. Trained both it and they lose by the severance. lady nurses with their staff are the very VIII. Equally practical, equally manage-angels of sick men ; nor can institutions for able, and already to some extent operative, is a cathedral system of School Inspection. The germ of what may become very important exists in the scheme of diocesan inspectors. This, too, needs to be bound up in the cathedral, and may have a very strait alliance' with the college. The time cannot be distant in which elaborate arrangements must be made for the religious instruction, and the inspection of all children who belong to our body. The Church will assuredly gain as compared with the denominations; we have to rise to the occasion, gratefully to accept compulsory education, to recognise all that it involves, and to be in time. Our districts will be our dioceses, with our chapter-houses and our sees as the headquarters.

We need say little of the city and cathedral schools themselves, (1) because it is not every cathedral which has such schools; (2) because, as chapters have frozen into dignities, the school has sometimes found their shadow chill; (3) because though as typical work it is important, yet the cathedral influence should not be supposed to limit itself to this work; (4) because the Endowed Schools Bill at present exempts the choristers' school from certain rules rather than groups others with it. But the 'Archididascalus' and 'Ostiarius' stall in some of the cathedrals have their moral; and it is interesting to see the training colleges taking their cathedral place here and there, the principal as prebendary, or as minor canon, even though the students are but as other strangers. And there are two other points on which it would be premature to enter, except in the pure spirit of hope that when our Church at large awakes to grander views of duty to all classes, the cathedrals may be the first to inaugurate them.

(1.) Organised charitable work in Hospital Service. The Church (that is, the

the training of Protestant deaconesses have their headquarters or local centres for country districts better than in the chief towns of the diocese-where counsel, buildings, money, recruits, and practice, can well be concentrated.

While the Leper's Hospital, founded in the city by the founder of the cathedral himself; while the medicine-niches within the very walls of the church bear witness to the old views of the situation; while Hugh's biographer tells of the matricula for incurables, on several of the episcopal farms, and of the bishop's frequent visits to them, 'materna lenitate blandiens....morum quoque bonorum documenta mira suavitate interserens verbis consolationis,' and while we cannot see without sorrow how the minster has been deprived of the power of making, even within the shadow of its towers, the least spiritual provision for those days of languor when the rudest are impressionable, and for those rare weeks of leisure-is it a hopeless vision to conceive that there may one day exist a Diocesan Corps of Hospital Chaplains, a Diocesan Staff of Trained Nurses, and even Deaconesses or Sisters?

The review of our needs as churchmen, even in a few particulars, has much in it that is saddening; but they are needs of a special order. Not one of these necessities is such as individual effort can deal with; they are equally beyond the grasp of a metropolitan centralisation; they can only be grappled with by association, by groups of forces around local centres. Various as they are, they admit to a great degree of being administered in concert from such points, while their variety will keep those centres distinct, and give to each the special, the individual,

* E. g. An honorary surgeon in a western cathedral town has lately built a beautiful hospital chapel, and endowed a chaplain at his own cost.