ARCHBISHOP MAGEE. T HERE are, no doubt, more gifted theologians amongst
the clergy of England than the Archbishop-Designate of York, but there is hardly a more interesting public man amongst them, and assuredly there is none who has shown himself so much of a statesman. We have always held, and sometimes said, that if Dr. Magee had lived in the old times when Kings chose great ecclesiastics for their Ministers, Dr. Magee might well have been one of the ablest of those Ministers. As a theologian, we do not think that he always sounds the full depth of theological truth. His little book on the Atonement, published in 1887, struck us as defective in this respect ; and his sermons, though often reaching a high standard of eloquence, seem sometimes to make the subjects he treats clearer in outline than they really are, just as certain states of the atmosphere give to a landscape a hardness and definiteness of outline which is unreal and misleading. But'o'n political or semi-political subjects, the Bishop of Peterborough is almost always instructive, and uniformly masculine and distinct, He hardly knows what it is to say an undecisive word. The great advantage of raising him to the second place in the English hierarchy will„be, we trust, that we shall gain a statesman in the House of Lords who will shed real light upon all those questions in which Churchmen arc most deeply interested, and who will have the courage, moreover, sometimes to speak out against the feeble and wishy-washy sentimentalism of clerical dreamers. Wo will not answer for it, though we wish we could answer for it, that the new Archbishop will not confine himself wholly to what are thought the proper limits of episcopal public speech. It has always seemed to us a mis- take that a Bishop should suppress himself entirely as a politician, only that he may offend no one whom he wishes to reach as a theologian or an ecclesiastic. There are subjects of such profound moral as well as political interest,—the political relation of Ireland to Great Britain is one of them,—that we would gladly hear more coherent attempts on the part of the Episcopal Bench to treat that subject from the higher point of view of its ethical and religious significance. And there is not a Bishop on the Bench so competent to reach and fascinate the mind of the country in relation to that subject as the Archbishop- Designate of York. It is very likely that he may think it his duty to be silent upon it, though we earnestly hope that he may not. But we will answer for it that if he made it the subject of as great a speech as that which lie delivered against the Disestablishment of the Irish Church, there is not an orator in this country who could produce so great an effect on public opinion. Still, it is not, of course, for his purely political power, great as that is, that we welcome the prospect of his accession to the Archbishopric of York. There are many great subjects, like the proper .mode of dealing with the cry for Disestablish- ment, on which no one could speak with so much effect, and no one with a more manly disregard to mere selfish motives. Not many years ago,—in December, 1887,—at a Diocesan Conference in Peterborough, lie protested in the most powerful terms against advocating or refusing to advocate any possible reform, merely in order to avert or discourage the cry for Disestablishment. The object of any change of policy, or of any new mode of applying the influence of the Church to the world, and the sole object, should be, he held, to improve the working power of the Church, and to increase its beneficent action on the people of this country. Not for any motive of a lower order would he either urge a reform or resist a change which he would otherwise regard as a reform. He would concede nothing to the mere hope that by acting or refusing to act in a particular manner, he should take the wind out of the sails of the disestablishing party. Now, that is the sort of position which we earnestly wish to see taken up by the greater authorities of our Church, and we trust that in his place as Archbishop of York, Dr. Magee may find the means of impressing this high un- worldly doctrine on those who seem to be pillars of the political structure.
For, little as we like the late Lord Houghton's concep- tion of the true function of a Bishop as one who should , mediate between the Church and the World, in the way not only of making the World a little less worldly, but of making the Church a little more so, we do quite hold that it is a very considerable part of the duty of the, _rulers of the Church to teach the world to respect thsvitellectual and spiritual influence of the Church as a force that has to be reckoned with, and that cannot be stifled or sup- pressed by either bribes or flattery. Dr. Magee seems to us eminently qualified to fulfil this function, and as the head of the Northern Province, it will be his duty to take a much larger part in teaching the country what the English Church aims at, than as Bishop of Peterborough he could appropriately take. For one great quality, he seems quite unable to adopt that unctuous and edifying tone which is supposed to befit clergymen, but which certainly does a .great deal more to alienate the laity than it does, if it does anything, to please the clergy. That exudation of oleaginous benediction which seems to be a mannerism with so many of the Episcopal Bench, is not at all in his way. He is nothing if not manly. And manliness is a quality which makes a good deal more impression on the laity than even higherqualities make without it. The offence he has sometimes given in explaining his attitude towards the cause of Temperance, is an admirable illustration of this side of his mind. And to us it seems that whatever he has lost by his plain speaking in clerical circles, he has more than gained among those who suspect mannerism and abhor gush. An Archbishop who notoriously prefers liberty to leading-strings, even though the leading-strings are intended to keep the weak man from falling into temptation which he must, if he is to be effectually saved, learn boldly and habitually to resist, will be a sign to the British nation that Anglicanism is not feeble and fussy, but knows how to face the problems of life with as wise a i determination to teach men to be strong, as it displays in alleviating suffering, or in counselling and guiding the weak.
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