TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE NEW PRIMATE.
THE Archbishopric of Canterbury has, as we ventured to hope, in the event of its being refused by the Bishop of Winchester on grounds of health and age, and in case the known reluctance of the Dean of St. Paul's to accept so high an office should operate as a bar to that most admirable choice, been placed at the disposal of the Bishop of Truro, and we trust that his Nolo episcopari will not be pronounced. Dr. Benson has shown most of the qualities which may make his administration of the See of Canterbury a great one. A most able, though a stern, and it is said, even severe head master, he has yet shown that towards his clergy in the diocese he has so lately organised, he can be neither stern nor severe, but rather the intimate friend and unofficious coun- sellor of all. If he has shown weakness at all, it is in the direction of over-strenuousness. The sentence with which it is said that in his last Diocesan Conference he con- demned the legends circulated in the camp of the Liberation- ists was not only injudicious, but wanting, to some extent, in thoughtfulness of judgment. "Crafty forgeries and miles of printed falsehood" are not published by any sane agitators, however passionate. As a rule, these people believe what they say, though anger may be the source of their delusion. To "suffer fools gladly,"—of course, we do not mean that Liberationists are fools, for hundreds of thousands of them are amongst the best and sincerest politicians in the land,--is even more a duty if the fools happen to be enemies, than if they happen to be friends. Dr. Benson has shown, in the Diocese of Truro, how courteous he can be in his demeanour towards manly and religious opponents. We trust that he will show, in the See of Canterbury, how courteous he can be to opponents, even when they are neither manly nor religious. St. Peter tells us that it is no glory to take it patiently when we are buffeted for our faults, but that if, when we do well and suffer for it, we take it patiently, this is acceptable. We are afraid that that which it is the least glory to do, is also, in general, the most difficult to do. But there are some strenuous and candid temperaments, like Bishop Benson's, which find it more difficult to bear undeserved blame well, than blame of which the conscience tells them that it is in part deserved. And we are inclined to think that the same is true of his attitude towards others. He can easily pass over offences for which he thinks there is just excuse,—the most difficult of all to pass over for many temperaments,—but when he sees real faultiness, he is in danger of losing his charity, and chastising with too vigorous a hand, As Archbishop, he will stimulate the Church, we trust, to a still higher note of strenuousness in a world of which the predominant vice is laxity, indifference, and depreciation of all high effort. He must beware, how- ever, of showing the tension of his own moral judgment in his treatment of opponents. He himself has said, in a very fine sermon preached before the University of Cambridge, that "even the presence of the unthankful or rebellious" [in places of worship] "is not and cannot be so alien to our Lord, as that it does not rather attract than repel the striving of his Holy Spirit ;" and if so, surely a Bishop may feel that even the cruel attentions of unscrupulous opponents to his Church, ought to attract rather than repel in himself that spirit of forbearance and magnanimity by which alone unscrupulous opposition is ever conquered. We do not in the least fear either want of zeal in Dr. Benson, or want of comprehensiveness towards the various sections of high-minded and religious men. If there be ground for fear at all—as we hope there is not—it is fear only of want of equanimity. Now, for one in the position of a Primate of England, and especially a Primate with high aims, equanimity is almost indispensable. Criticism and attack are certain to be at times provoked, wherever there is strenuousness and life. But criticism and attack are only too likely to defeat high aims, if they are to have power to irritate the nerves and disturb the composure of one so highly placed. The Primate of a great Church should be all sensi- tiveness to discern where new life is germinating, and where old life is dying away. But sensitiveness towards censure, whether true or false, he should show none,—not towards true, because he should welcome it ; not towards false, because he cannot better, justify, or at least extenuate it, than by making it the ground of a too vehement and indignant reply. But one thing we may be sure of in Dr. Benson. He will never underrate the function of the Church of England, or undervalue what she can do at the present moment to pro- mote the religious life of the English people. It is quite true,. of course, and no one knows it better that Dr. Benson, that at the present time, the English Church has much more influence with the richer and more comfortable classes than it has with the agricultural labourers and the manufacturing operatives. But then, as he has himself finely said, "Never was there a time in which the simple living of the affluent would bear happier fruit. Never one in which their diligent hours could effect so much, or reach so far." And no one knows better than Dr. Benson, again, that the noblest result of teaching the affluent to live simply, and the leisure-enjoy- ing classes to work hard, would be the effect it would' produce in inducing the indigent classes to live faithfully, and the toilers to look upward. For the time, no doubt, the Church of England is the Church of the rich and the well-to-do. Na one, however, is more likely than Dr. Benson to do whatever may be in the power of a great Primate, so to work through the consciences of the rich and the well-to-do, as to win over to, the Church,—or if not absolutely to the Church, at least to those articles of the Christian religion which are, after all, the- chief burden of the Church's tnessage,—the English poor, so as to bind together all classes of the country in a religious unity of which at present we know nothing. No one has preached so well on the spiritual dangers of class-life and clique-life as the Primate Elect. No one, we may well hope, will be able to do more to blend all the cliques of the Church of England in the great endeavour to make it the chief means of regenerating the- " dim, common populations." The strenuousness of Dr. Benson will be all that we want in the Primate's Chair. Let us hope that he may join with it that perfect equanimity, and even benignity, under attack and censure, which won for the late Archbishop so hearty a loyalty, even in the minds of some of his opponents.
One word as to the vacancies which the translation of the Bishop of Truro and the death of the Bishop of Llandaff will create in the Church of England. The Bishops, we hope, will not take it very ill, if we say that English Bishops, however sensible, and however dignified, and however self-devoted they may have been, have not often had in them much of per- sonal fascination. The qualities which made Dean Stanley so- attractive to multitudes outside the Church, are very rare in- deed on the Bench, and not very common among the, higher dignitaries of the Church of England at all. Yet where they exist, as they did in Dean Stanley, and still do exist in a very different man indeed, but an equally fascinating preacher and person, Canon Liddon, it is a very groat pity that they should not be utilised, for they are very potent in their influence on the external world of Dissent, Secularism, and Unbelief. We are not sure that either Truro or Llandaff is the precise See to which we should like to have Canon Liddon appointed, for we hardly know sufficiently the individual circumstances of either See. But of this we are sure, that Canon Liddon would be a much more- fascinating figure as a Bishop, to the Nonconformist world, than almost any Bishop now on the Bench. Ms great elo- quence, his profound and yet his refined devotional nature, his deep sense of the mystery of life, his humour, even perhaps his reticence and his wide knowledge of the difficulties of theology, all make him less likely to cross swords rashly with opponents than shallower men, while his sympathetic nature always finds out the best side of those around him. We do not under- stand enough of the special wants of the Sees that are vacant to venture on recommending any one divine for either ; but we do wish that room could be found on the Episcopal Bench for the one man of genius in the Church whose power every one, whether in the Church or out of it, recognises, and who is, probably, more eagerly sought after and read by the Dis- senters than any other dignitary in the Church of England. It is a great condemnation of any ecclesiastical system, that it dooms its men of genius to comparative obscurity.
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