CHAPTER V.

INADEQUACY OF PURE VOLUNTARYISM.

But to limit our animadversions to the more influential, the more numerous, and the more wealthy of the two leading sections of pure voluntaries-what, it may fairly be asked, are the Congregationalists doing towards the evangelization of the swarming population of this country? What are they doing towards the practical exposition of the voluntary principle? Enough has been said. What has been done? Here is the true test of the efficiency of a system. What has pure voluntaryism done, and what is it actually doing? Is it adequate to the church's mission? it compassed the great social problems? Has it justified its own arrogant and pompous assumptions? Is it the omnipotent thing it pretends to be? Are its deeds as brilliant as its words? These are of course questions which every churchman has a right to ask, and in as far as it lies within his power, not only to ask, but to answer.

Has

Now if the facts are fairly examined, it will be seen that, when attempted in practice, a pure voluntaryism,—it is said pure, because the argument is not directed against a mixed voluntaryism, demonstrates its own intrinsic and inevitable futility. As a theory it may be fascinating but as a praxis it is a failure. Take for example the positive achievements of Congregationalism within the limits of the United Kingdom. In the following table will be found the statistics of that denomination.

Here it will be seen that the population according to the census of 1861 for the whole of Great Britain is 29,299,274. Out of such a population Congregationalism has only been able to organise some 2,651 churches or companies of the faithful, 257 of which are "vacant," that is, have no pastoral supervision. But although there are only 2.651 churches, yet there are 3,485 chapels, being an excess of chapels over churches of-834. Now, these 834 chapels are at the best but mere preaching rooms. For where there is no living church-no spiritual temple, it matters little that there is the merely material edifice. But here there is suggested a subject of no little interest in connexion with the tactics of Dissidence. Dissenters are sufficiently aware of the importance of statistics; and have artifices of their own in order to secure as large a numerical array as is possible with their comparatively meagre and unsatisfactory materials. Thus for example of the 2,651 churches, not a few may consist of from 6 to 30 individuals. Many of the so-called "churches" have but a nominal existence; as has been shewn, 19 out of 28 of the Irish Congregational churches have an average of 6 members

to each; and yet withal they are reckoned as churches. Again, in 1857 the average number of members for 46 churches in the West Riding of Yorkshire was that of 29.5 or 29 to each. In another county the total number of members is 1,300. In Kent the average number of members for each church does not exceed 71.3. And the same phenomenon presents itself at a hundred points over the whole surface of the country. But even were the whole of the so-called "churches" what, in mercantile phrase, is called a bonâ fide article-were they thoroughly

orthodox, where they are latitudinarian-enlightened where they are fanatical-united where they are factious, schismatic, and contentious-and were they influential societies of christians where they are mere collections of half-dozens, dozens, scores, and thirties, the sum total would, notwithstanding all, be shamefully and miserably small.

Then again, as to the "chapels" or edifices so named a few observations will not be inappropriate. The name would very naturally suggest a structure of sufficient capacity to accommodate at the lowest 500 worshippers. But is this the case? Certainly not. It does not "take much" to make a "chapel."* What sort of a "chapel" is

* In 1851, "the three denominations (Wesleyans, Independents, and Baptists,) possessed 11,645 Chapels and 7,363 preaching stations, viz. :-39 per cent. were "rooms, etc." Now, all these thousands of private apartments figure as "chapels” with “ accommodation" ""free and appropriated" in the "Census of Religious Worship." Many a poor cottager would stare if told that his little kitchen, where Robin Smith the ploughman, or John Brown the carpenter, holds a meeting of the neighbours on a Sunday evening, is reckoned up in a Government return as a "chapel," the space for every stool and bench being called a sitting! Far be it from me to depreciate such influences; but it is right that we should know what we are talking about. When we remember that so many as 13,092 places of meeting had no minister, or only share of one, we see something more of their character. On the same principle we might almost reckon the houses in which there are family prayers— at all events, our cottage lectures are often much more important. There are three such in my parish; or, according to Dissenting exaggerations, it contains four churches.”—The Actual Progress of Dissent in England, by the Rev. A. Hume, D.C.L., F.S.A., pp. 32, 33.

"In the three groups selected from Mr. Baines, the percentage

it, that can be built at a total cost of £145?

What sort

In one

of "chapels" are they that can be built for sums severally of not more than £250, £260, and £280. county in England,-a county which is reckoned as a strong-hold of Dissent, out of 46 chapels, nine are erected at a total cost of less than £330 each, 19 at a total cost of less than £901 each; and the average cost of the whole 46 did not exceed the sum of £677 6s. each.

Then furthermore, it is not to be supposed that these "chapels",-uncostly as they are in many instances, are honestly and fairly paid for. A surprisingly large proportion of the total number of Dissenting chapels are at this moment burdened with an original debt which no amount of subsequent effort has been in any wise able to remove.

is 39. If we take single bodies the percentage of rooms, etc., even by Mr. Baines's return, and on the supposition of no exaggeration, is-Association Methodists, 36; Baptists, 41; and Primitive Methodists 68. Please to bear in mind that these are all called "places of worship" at one time, and" chapels" at another. The simple point which distinguished many of the cases from mere family prayers, was that drawn out in Question 3,180, by Mr. Lawrence Heyworth, that the neighbours had access. The meeting was so far public, but no further. Thus many a labouring man's kitchen figures in the government return as a "chapel," a statement which is technically true, but conventionally quite false.

In a Parliamentary paper, No. 443, of 1836, there is a list of 14 chapels, on p. 27, described as merely dwelling-houses or rooms. On the same page, a Dissenting meeting-house, known as 'Ebenezer Chapel' is described as a summer-house in John Hunt's garden'; and another is a room in John Golder's dwelling-house, Pockthorpe, (Norwich) opposite the Jolly Sportsman.'"-Defence not Defiance, or a Few Words for the Church of England, by Rev. Dr. Hume, p. 48.