27 APRIL 1907, Page 13

A PASTORAL BISHOP.

A Pastoral Bishop a Memoir of A. Chinnery-Haldane. By Thomas Isaac Ball, LL.D. (Longmaus and Co. Os. 6d. net.)— Mr. Chinnery-Haldane was ordained in the Anglican Church, but passed the greater part of his ministerial life in the Scottish Epis- copal Church. After a curacy of two years' duration at Caine, he went to Edinburgh, where he spent ten years, and thence to Ballachulish. From this place, after five years, he was elected to the bishopric of Argyll and the Isles in succession to Dr. Mackarness. (He had become, in 1881, Dean of the Cathedral.) The election was unanimous,—a fact which indicates the great- ness of the change that has taken place since the days of Dr. Ewing, who filled the See up to the year 1874. To read the chapter in which Dr. Ball summarises the Bishop's theological views, and then to recall Dr. Ewing's beliefs, is indeed a curious experience. The frontispiece, which represents him in elaborate episcopal robes, is itself not a little significant. We do not propose to go into the subject, but it may be mentioned that the Bishop had serious doubts about the validity of lay baptism, and that he valued confession, not for any "direction " that may be implied in the practice, but for its absolving power. But he was not hostile to the Higher Criticism, and held distinctly a doctrine of Progressive Revelation. In his views about the invocation of saints he "shrank from approving even the moderate amount of invocation involved in the era pro nobis." The picture of the personality of the man is one of much grace and attraction. .