er of assistant
clergy is (1910) about 7500, in spite of the hardships often attending
clerical life, the supply of men being kept up. The Queen Victoria
Clergy Fund and other voluntary associations and various educational
institutions have been founded to relieve clerical distress. In the
church at home there is much energy in numberless directions: cathedral
churches have become centres of religious activity, and in parish
churches the administration of the Holy Communion and weekday services
are frequent. Many of the laity co-operate in church work and liberally
support it. During the years 1898-1907 598 churches were built or
rebuilt, and during twenty-four years, 1884-1907, the voluntary
offerings for church building were L27,612,709, and for endowments and
parsonages L6,116,592, yet church extension fails to keep pace with the
increase of the population. Evangelistic efforts, the relief of the sick
and poor, and the inculcation of temperance are zealously carried on.
Good work is done by twenty-six sisterhoods and several institutions of
deaconesses, and one or two communities of celibate clergy. In the
British colonies and India the episcopate consists (1909) of seven
archbishops with two coadjutors; there are also seventy diocesan
bishops, and in other parts of the world thirty missionary bishops. The
S.P.G. has 847 ordained ministers, including thirty chaplains in Europe,
besides many female missionaries; the C.M.S. has 793 ordained ministers,
and many other missionaries of both sexes; the Zenana Missionary Society
has a staff of 1288; other church societies for foreign missions are
vigorous, and the S.P.C.K. in addition to its work at home spends large
sums in furthering the church abroad. The benefits arising from
conference have increasingly been valued since the revival of
convocation. Appreciation of the importance of lay support and counsel
has led to the institution of two voluntary elective assemblies called
Houses of Laymen, one for each province, and in 1905 an association of
the four houses of convocation and the two lay assemblies was formed
with the name of the Representative Church Council. During the last
forty years diocesan conferences, in which the laity are represented,
have become universal, while ruridecanal and other meetings of a like
kind are general. An annual church congress, established in 1861, held
its forty-ninth meeting in 1909. Of wider importance are the Lambeth
conferences, held