The St. Aidan's Controversy The controversy between the Bishop of
Birmingham and the Archbishop of Canterbury has now got far beyond the question whether the Archbishop should or should not have instituted Mr. Simmonds to the benefice of St. Aidan's. Incidentally the Archbishop has made it pliin that he had no choice in the matter. It is now not even a controversy between the Archbishop and Dr. Barnes ; the question at issue is whether the Real Presence is a tenable doctrine in the Church of England. The Arch- bishop maintains that those who believe that it is tenable can appeal to the twenty-eighth article and to the Church Catechism. Dr. Barnes is willing to allow that the Bread and Wine are channels of grace in the same way that the sunset may be, or the Bible. But he will not allow anything more than that. He asks the Archbishop to join him in his exclusiveness. At this stage the Archbishop passes out of the controversy. But the demand has brought out a letter from the Bishop of Oxford expressing his agree- ment with the belief which Dr. Barnes would exclude, on the ground that the Eucharist through the promise and presence of Christ is the most assured moment in religious experience. The Bishop of St. Edmondsbury and Ipswich, writing as an Evangelical, recognizes that those who believe that a special presence of the Lord can be associated with the consecrated elements have a right to be in the Church of England. But he asks those who believe this to accept the limitations on devotional practice that the Church of England itself imposed in the Prayer Book of 1928. If Dr. Barnes had adopted this temperate attitude his position would have been impreg- nable, and the Church would have been the gainer.
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