15 FEBRUARY 1868, Page 8

DR. GRAY AND HIS THREE EPISCOPAL MONITORS.

THEgreat "Macrorie " correspondence between "the lion- hearted " Bishop of Capetown, and the three English prelates who have counselled him (not too gratefully) in his troubles, is a curious and not unimpressive fragment of eccle- siastical literature. The correspondence opens with a friendly, statesmanlike, practical letter from the Bishop of London to the Metropolitan of South Africa, remonstrating temper- ately with him on his avowed intention to consecrate a new Bishop of the Church in Natal without any solution of the legal difficulties in the way. As you read it, you seem to see Dr. Tait's grave, business-like, manly face, bent a little anxiously over his paper, as he tries to make his unmanageable correspondent see the responsibility he is undertaking, by an act of consecration probably illegal, and certain to have split the Church at home into opposite factions, whatever might have been its effect on the Church of South Africa. You can see plainly enough that the Bishop of London feels no particular sympathy with Dr. Colenso. He is no theologian, feels the 'dangerousness' of many of Dr. Colenso's tendencies, and does not quite see his way how to discriminate between that "paramount and divine authority of Holy Scrip- ture" to which he earnestly clings, and that doctrine of Scriptural infallibility which his plain sense tells him to be thoroughly untenable, and which he sees that Dr. Colenso's judges have been compelled to assume. In this perplexity Dr. Tait adheres steadily, as the only wise and plainly intelligible course, to the strict authority of the law. He had no objection to declare Dr. Colenso's views "dan-

gerous,"—for be thought them dangerous, and of a character certain to lead to divisions, conflicts, perhaps schisms. He had no objection to entreat the Bishop of Natal to resign. He was scarcely theologian enough to see that this course, if he had complied, would only have deferred the difficulty, and not solved it. Could the Bishop of Natal have been persuaded to confess that his views were inconsistent with his position in the Church, as Dr. Tait thought them, the latter would have been relieved of the difficulty of a decision. He had no objection, again, to advise the Bishop of Capetown's citing him before the Court which it was then supposed that his letters patent gave him the power to hold over a suffragan bishop, and judging the case to the best of his ability in that Court, while leaving the appeal to be heard by any superior Court to which appeal might lie. That course, again, if it had issued in any clear result, whether favourable or unfavourable to Dr. Colenso, was the course which seemed laid down by law for the particular exi- gency, and would have taken the matter out of the region of mere private opinion. But all these devices for obtaining a legally binding decision as to Dr. Colenso's right or no-right to promulgate the doctrines he has promulgated, have failed of effect. Dr. Tait still holds Dr. Colenso's views dangerous,' but, like any other fair and statesmanlike man, he does not pretend to deny to another the right to hold opinions which he himself may think dangerous. He knows that probably many of his own views are held 'dangerous' by other prelates,—say, the Bishop of Salisbury and the Bishop of Capetown. He is not prepared to renounce those views simply on that ground. What he will not do himself he cannot expect Dr. Colenso to do. Consequently, he still holds him to be Bishop of Natal, declares that he is still in communion with him, and shall so remain till he is legally deposed ; horrifies Dr. Gray by addressing the heretical suffragan as "my dear Lord," and treating him as still a Bishop, and presses the legal view of the question on the incensed South African Metropolitan with a force, a sobriety, and a good temper which plainly indicate his own private belief that the wise and even divine safeguard for the English Church against the arrogance of private judgment is in the strictest deference to the decisions of legal tribunals.

To Dr. Tail's first plain, manly, and painstaking letter, expressing in every line a mind not without theological per- plexity, but bent on preventing, as far as maybe possible in every direction, any transgression of the law, Dr. Gray replies with a sort of disconsolate wail, half respectful, half rebellious; but betraying at every point his consciousness of the strength and sincerity of his reprover, even while he most bitterly com- plains of the Bishop's personal treatment of himself. He charges him with concealed and skilful advocacy of Dr. Colenso's cause, with personal unkindness to himself, and, in his last letter (just published by the Guardian), with not daring to discuss the matter in the Episcopal Conference where he could meet his colonial opponents, while doing all in his power to bring on the discussion in Parliament and in Convocation, where he himself (the Bishop of Capetown) has no seat. But the tone of sore and fretful complaint in these recriminations does not disguise the bond fide respect and sense of inferiority which runs through Dr. Gray's letters to Dr. Tait. He scolds, but he betrays that he is scolding at a power which he recognizes and feels,—at a statesmanlike, plain, practical view, which has a sense of duty at the bottom of it, and an English respect for law on the very face. He begins and ends his querulous and lengthy complaints with "my dear Lord," and while uttering all manner of reproaches, is evidently painfully sensible of the strong ground taken by his antagonist.

The next link in the trilogy, the correspondence between the Archbishop of York and the " lion-hearted " Metro- politan, is in a very different key. Dr. Tait had taken pains at every step to mark openly his adherence to the legal view of the question. He had spoken very boldly in Convocation, and also in Parliament. He had addressed Dr. Colenso as still Bishop of Natal, and his "brother in Christ." While he had lamented what he considered Dr. Colenso's dangerous errors, he had never hesitated to declare his intention to respect the liberty which the law allows, so long as it allows it. But not so the Archbishop of York (Dr. Thomson). The Bishop of Capetown remarks, with an accent of slight scorn, that the Archbishop interferes, with a number of legal and technical difficulties, in a question which does not concern him, at a somewhat late and unseasonable moment. For four years the Archbishop has been totally silent as to the deposition of Dr. Colenso, during which time his scruples

have been gathering force, till at the very last moment, when the popular cry is rising against Dr. Gray's procedure, he interferes suddenly with a public avowal of his legal anxieties and objections. Dr. Gray does not complain or lament to his Grace the Archbishop of York as he complained and lamented in the strong grasp of the Bishop of London. There is a tone of satire in his reply, and he even ventures to lecture his Grace from a high moral and spiritual point of view on his indiffer- ence to the critical position of the Church of England. He speaks to Dr. Thomson in the tone of benignant reproof in which the conduct of Pliable is criticized by Christian and his friends in the Pilgrim's Progress. He explains what he did at the late Conference of the Bishops of the Anglican Communion, dropping out parenthetically, "where I must say that it appears to me that it would have been more consistent with your Grace's position in the Church to have raised the questions which now trouble you, than through the columns of a newspaper." He trusts, with an anxiety evidently aimed at the Archbishop, that "the Bishops of my own loved Mother Church will not betray their Lord in the hour of trial." He concludes by saying that the course which the Archbishop of York seems prepared to adopt at this crisis fills him "with anxiety and alarm," and he never responds to Dr. Thomson's "my dear Lord," preferring to adhere steadily to the more formal address of "my Lord Archbishop." Dr. Gray evi- dently felt authorized in the Spirit to snub Dr. Thomson.

Perhaps the last link in this tragic trilogy is in some respects the most curious of all. The Primate of All England had adopted a singularly vacillating and zigzag course in this great dispute,—not from any shadow of crookedness of pur- pose, but from intrinsic hesitation of mind between a High- Church policy with which he evidently sympathized, and a respect for law, with which he evidently sympathized also,— swaying hither and thither according to the character of the strongest influence at hand. In Convocation he had declared against the policy of consecrating a new Bishop of Natal, at the very moment he was voting for the proposition that the Church of Natal might adopt that course without putting themselves out of communion with the Church of England. He pledged himself to the Bishop of St. David's that the Episcopal Synod should not discuss this great question, and yet hardly restrained the Bishops from practically discussing it after all. He attended a meeting at St. James's Hall to support the Bishop of Capetown in the movement for a new Bishop, and allowed Dr. Gray to state that he had the Primate's approval for what he was doing. He seems to have taken part in selecting Mr. Macroiie for the office in question, and to have declared that he saw no objection to the plan of consecrating him in Scotland with the assent of the Primus and Scotch Bishops. Then, again, at the last moment, he withdrew his consent on pressure from a considerable number of English Bishops, and informed Dr. Gray, in a rather em- barrassed letter, that he could not advise the consecration in Scotland, and would not allow it in his diocese or province, adding, awkwardly enough, "I still adhere to the opinion expressed in the letter addressed by the Bishop of Oxford and myself to Mr. Butler" [the former candidate for the Schismatic Bishopric] "that there is nothing in Dr. Colenso's legal position to prevent the election of a Bishop to preside over them by those of our communion in South Africa who, with myself, hold him to have been canonically deposed from his spiritual office." This was the last drop in the bitter cup of the " lion-hearted " Bishop's troubles. Here was his own Metropolitan, his chosen counsellor and own familiar friend, by whose advice he had all along agreed to be bound,— trusting not a little, we imagine, to his own complete confid- ence in the influence which he and Dr. Selwyn had acquired over their amiable Archbishop,—turning against him. He replies to his Grace in a tone of severe deference,—promises at once to give up the consecration in England and Scotland,—but deems it his duty to point out with a certain proud humility that he cannot understand the counsel offered to Dr. Longley by so many English Bishops, and accepted by him in spite of the pre- vious sanction which he had given to Dr. Gray's proceedings. In the bold Bishop's tone to the Primate there is a subtle differ- ence from the tone of either of his previous correspondences. lie is not irritable, and injured, and a little frightened, as in answering Dr. Tait ; he is not scornful, patronizing, and didactic, as in putting aside the meddling interference of Dr. Thomson ; he is fatherly, slightly compassionate, "more grieved than angry," as the phrase goes,—not unaffectionate,—not forgetful of the "my dear Lord Arch- bishop," at least at the conclusion, though his mood in the

commencement was more dignified and cold,—but above all, he feels bound to take the grand tone of warning. What the Archbishop says is law to him, so far as the Archbishop'a authority extends. It cannot alter his duty in South Africa. There he is bound by duty to his Lord to consecrate an orthodox Bishop as soon as possible. In the meantime let the Arch- bishop beware of allowing the Church in England to become a castaway. "I shall wait with trembling, in common with tens of thousands of its most devoted members, for some synodical decision which may remove the Church of England from the false position in which some of its Bishops have placed it. Should no further action be taken, it would, I fear, leave the Church of England burdened with the alliance of heresy, by the endurance of the deposed heretic as a Bishop in communion with itself." With this stern warning the colonial prophet girds up his loins and departs to his own diocese. He is evidently sorry for the Archbishop of Canter- bury, ashamed of the Archbishop of York, and rather afraid of the Bishop of London. That is not a bad measure of the calibre of these three distinguished prelates. If the Church of England is to take its stand on law and abide by the prin- ciple of a State Church, Dr. Tait is the man who ought to, govern it.