The Liverpool Cathedral Case The Archbishop of York has a
critical decision to take in regard to ' the Liverpool Cathedral dispute.• Lord Hugh Cecil having presented a petition calling for action against the Bishop and Dean of Liverpool for permitting persons holding heretical opinions (Dr. L. P. Jacks of Oxford and the Rev. Lawrence Redfern, a Liverpool Unitarian-Minister) to preach in the cathedral, the question must be considered sufficiently sub judice to make it undesirable to discuss its merits here. But there is involved apart from the legal is sue a far wider and more important question of Christian practice. A cathedral, whether it be the most modern of structures, like Liverpool, or the- most ancient, like Winchester, is a building consecrated for the worship of God and the edification of the community around it on the basis of a fundamental faith, and there are few even of the broadest Churchmen who would desire to see access to its pulpit as free as to the platform of a public hall. Some standards must be set and observed, though it may always be legitimate to reconsider and perhaps redefine them. To disregard them would be indefensible ; but hardly less indefensible would be a deliberate repulse to the tendency of men of different communions to co- operate with increasing harmony in the pursuit of a common ideal. That is the problem that faces Dr. Temple. It could not be in safer hands.
* *
Previous page
