e paid at the current trade rates, while by
a gradually lessening scale of work and pay they are stimulated to
obtain situations for themselves and given time to seek for them. There
are about 120 homes in London and the provinces, and 56% of the inmates
are found to make these the successful beginning of an honest
self-supporting life. The Church Army has lodging homes, employment
bureaus, cheap food depots, old clothes department, dispensary and a
number of other social works. Every winter employment is found for a
great number of the unemployed in special depots, among them being the
King's Labour Tents and the Queen's Labour Relief Depots. There is also
an extensive emigration system, under which many hundreds (3000 in 1906)
of carefully tested men and families, of good character, chiefly of the
unemployed class, are placed in permanent employment in Canada through
the agency of the local clergy. The whole of the work is done in loyal
subordination to the diocesan and parochial organization of the Church
of England.

See Edgar Rowans, _Wilson Carlile and the Church Army_.

CHURCH CONGRESS, an annual meeting of members of the Church of England,
lay and clerical, to discuss matters religious, moral or social, in
which the church is interested. It has no legislative authority, and
there is no voting on the questions discussed. The first congress was
held in 1861 in the hall of King's College, Cambridge, and was the
outcome of the revival of convocation in 1852. The congress is under the
presidency of the bishop in whose diocese it happens to be held. Recent
places of meeting are Brighton (1901), Northampton (1902), Bristol
(1903), Liverpool (1904), Weymouth (1905), Barrow-in-Furness (1906),
Great Yarmouth (1907), Manchester (1908), Swansea (1909). The meetings
of the congress have been mainly remarkable as illustrating the wide
divergences of opinion and practice in the Church of England, no less
than the broad spirit of tolerance which has made this possible and
honourably differentiates these meetings from so many ecclesiastical
assemblies of the past. The congress of 1908 was especially
distinguished, not only for the expression of diametrically opposed
views on such questions as the sacrifice of the mass or the "higher
criticism," but for the very large proportion of time given to the
discussion of the attitude of the Church towards Socialism and kindred
subjects.

CHURCH HISTORY.

Church histo