The Larger Life of the Church
Towards a Christian Commonwealth. By Gladys M. Edge: Privately printed by the Athenaeum Press.
THOSE who obtain their knowledge of the Church of England from the accounts in the Press of the controversy over the Prayer Book must suppose that it is a body that consists of die-hard Protestants and fanatical Anglo-Catholics engaged in mortal combat. The enormous majority in the Church Assembly, which refused to surrender to either of these extreme wings, will perhaps have undeceived some. But the debates will have done but little to reveal the fact that there is growing up within the Church itself a new outlook hardly at all concerned with the outworn struggles that loom so large in the public eye. That such a new outlook is steadily emerging is an undoubted, and most hopeful, fact.
A new realization that Christianity is a way of life, resting on a doctrine of the relation of human beings to one another, is making headway. It is not a new idea.. It is as old as the Gospels, and indeed has its roots much further back in the Law and the Prophets. But it is being apprehended afresh, its implications for the world to-day are being grasped, and its urgency is inspiring those who have come under its sway with the enthusiasm of crusaders. Many converging forces and movements are contributing to the renascence of a more brotherly conception of religion. There are associations like Toc H, the Industrial Christian Fellowship, the Guild of Health, Copec, the League of the Church Militant, and there are elements in the Anglo-Catholic movement, all of which are doing their share. They make their influence felt in many individual lives, and they find partial expression in numberless unknown churches. The most significant corporate mani- festations of this fresh outlook are to be seen in St. Martin's- in-the-Fields, in Miss Royden's Guildhouse, and in Chester and Liverpool Cathedrals.
The interest of Mrs. Ralph Edge's book is that it synthesizes one of the modern aspects of Christianity in a way that nobody else has quite done. She sees visions of a Christian Commonwealth which is based on faith in God as Love, Joy, Peace, and an unshakable belief in the latent goodness in all human beings, and she offers to her fellow idealists an enormous crop of practical reforms, most of which could really be brought about, if only people would put truth and reality in the first place. There is no room here even to. summarize them. They deal with industrial questions, with housing conditions, with marriage, and also with public worship. She appeals to capitalists and workers, . to artists and scientists. She appeals, moreover, to those who know and love the Church's ways and worship, to find room for these and such as these—" all the known and the unknown souls who love the Lord and His truth." Many will think her proposals would burst the old wine-skins. Some might, but certainly not most of them. She does not hector as reformers often do ; she has none of their spiritual pride. When she talks of love and humility, she surprises one by really believing in them. Her faith is lit with the flame from the altar, and her attitude bespeaks a hearing which we sincerely trust our readers will give her.
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