Untitled - Electric Scotland

1863-67] CHARGE OF 1862 445
diocese with a population of more than 30,000, and only
a single Church eleven ; parishes with more than 20,000 for
one Church ;
"
fourteen with more than 15,000.
Let it not be supposed, he said,
"
that I am speaking as if
the sole way to remedy the social evils of an overwhelming
population, and propagate true religion, was to multiply churches,
or even clergymen. We well know that neither the buildings nor
the men will avail without the mighty Spirit of God. We are
not insensible to self-denying labours of Dissenters and Roman
Catholics, and we grant the value of many other appliances for pro
moting Christian civilisation used by our own Church. Yet are
we deeply convinced that our own parochial system, carrying
with it, besides churches and clergy, schools and a hundred
arrangements of charity and philanthropy, gives the best hope of
aiding our people for time and for eternity. It is difficult to con
ceive what a city of between two and three millions of inhabitants
must become if it be not broken up into manageable districts,
each placed under the superintendence of men whose mission it
is to labour in every way for the social and religious improvement
l
of the people."
He went on to suggest, in considerable detail, the modes
of carrying this counsel into practice, and, above all, the
need of greater liberality on the part of the richer citizens
of London.
This Charge, like that which preceded it, aroused wide
attention.
"Its whole tone and temper," said the Guardian,
"are such
as to command respect and confidence. It is candid, earnest,
and impartial, and the rules the Bishop suggests are often most
wise and practical."
\Ve do not know," said the writer of an unfriendly and even
vituperative article in John Bull, "why our daily contemporaries
accord to the Bishop of London s concio ad clerum an importance
so far beyond that which they attach to the authoritative enun
ciations even of our Primates. Yet so it is, ... the Charge has
formed the subject of comment in every paper, and, in several,
food for more than one article."
1
Charge of 1862, p. 65.