THE VOICE OF SENSE AND TRUTH. TI ORD BEACONSFIELD, it will
be remembered, said that after a long spell of that "hare-brained chatter of irresponsible frivolity" by which the autumn months were so frequently distinguished, the "voice of sense and truth" made itself heard in welcome fashion on the ninth of November. A like intervention has been needed, and has come at last, in the prolonged newspaper controversy which has raged over a variety of points of teaching and practice in the Church of England. Not, indeed, that " frivolity" has been at all a leading feature of those attacks and replies, rejoinders and surrejoinders, rebuttals and surrebuttals, which have filled pages of the Times for many weeks past. Far from it. Their dominant note has been one of earnestness, only too deadly, the earnest- ness of those who feel themselves, to quote Mr. Glad. stone's phrase, within measurable distance of civil war," and are by no means particularly depressed at the pros- pect, if, indeed, they do not rather enjoy it. And that is why, the Church of England being not only a Christian organisation, but the Church of England, it was high time that from some authoritative quarter a summons should sound forth, recalling heated combatants to a recognition of their common duty. Happily, such an appeal has been uttered, and in very weighty terms, and it is conveyed in the Bishop of Rochester's letter in the Times of Monday.
Not denying the benefits that may result from the venti- lation of diverse opinions and the expression of diverse feelings, Bishop Talbot deplores the lack, in the corre- spondence which has run so long a course, of "the attempt of different sides to understand one another,— to distinguish, to recognise what is true in antagonistic positions, and what are the weaknesses, or perils, or exaggerations of one's own." Such a temper, much as we all are accustomed to regard it as almost a matter of course in the world of party politics, can never fail to bear evil fruit. In the present case, as the Bishop of Rochester powerfully contends, it is to be specially depre- cated, firstly, because it ignores the profundity, subtlety, and solemnity of the subjects under consideration; secondly, because it involves a surprising indifference to the teachings of experience in the regions concerned ; and, thirdly, because it is peculiarly and radically at variance with the genius, and therefore injurious to the collective useful- ness, of the Church of England. The first of these reasons is too obvious to need enforcement, though it is conspicuously forgotten by newspaper controversialists. The second is effectively illustrated in the Bishop's letter by a reference to the manner in which the question of confession has been treated in the Times correspondence. We have recently set forth our own views on this subject, and shall hardly be regarded as prejudiced in favour of the practice. But we see no reason to challenge the justice of the observations employed by the Bishop of Rochester in summing up the spirit in which that part of the present controversy has unhappily been conducted.
But the point on which we desire to lay most stress is Bishop Talbot's third and final reason for deploring the temper which has marked very much of the recent discus- sion on Church subjects,—that it is at variance with "that which should be, and largely is, a characteristic excellence of the Church of England." The Bishop goes on to point out that the Church of England has always lived by a wise com- prehension," of which, I think," he adds, "as time has gone by, she has learnt increasingly to trust the intrinsic right- ness and validity. She has her own mind, and it is the mind neither of Romanism nor of Puritanism. But it is stated reticently and in a manner to include rather than to repel. The result has been that men of very varying convictions upon those matters on which it is easier to debate than to decide, and to be dogmatic than to be wise, have found themselves at home within her." All this would be excellent by whomsoever said, even by a latitudi- narian. Its peculiar value, however, lies in the fact that it is said by a prelate who is recognised on all hands as having deep and strong convictions, as it happens of the High Church type, and who is well known to be as remote as possible from the view that, in respect of questions of religious belief, nothing is of great consequence. From such a man it must be very specially useful that there should come at such a time as the present so emphatic a plea for wider recognition of the truth that comprehension is of the very essence of the Church of England, and that comprehension in this case does not mean mere legal in- clusion, but frank and friendly readiness to believe the best of one another's aims, and to learn as much as pos- sible from one another's spirit and modes of working. No doubt, as the Bishop of Rochester recognises, "such com- prehension has its necessary limits," and controversy may be useful in testing whether those limits are being exceeded. "But, not unhappily," he proceeds, "it has been mainly left to the quiet witness of the formularies and to the general influence of loyal opinion within the Church to modify or repel such opinions as really transgress the fair bounds of comprehension. And so it has happened from Elizabeth's time to now that men who seemed very near to the Roman and Puritan positions respectively have been held within the unity of the Church's life. But it has been a tenure on two conditions,—a condition of loyal conformity and a condition of not imposing what was peculiar to their own convictions as an exclusive test or standard upon the whole body of the Church."
There, we repeat, speaks the voice of senie and truth, and. we do not doubt that it has been, and will be, welcomed by multitudes of plain men, laity as well as clergy, throughout the national Church. If any human organisation has—as, indeed, all have—a law of life, comprehension serves that purpose for the Church of England. If, on any large scale, her members per.. sistently ignore that law, she will perish. It would be better so, no doubt, than that by comprehension religious zeal should be paralysed. In much of the eighteenth century, it might perhaps have been argued, not truly, but plausibly, that by embracing so many points of view the vigour of the Church as an evangelising and edifying agency was neutralised. But the melancholy story of the relations of the Church with Wesley showed that it was in larger, not in less, elasticity of in- clusion that the conditions needful for a revival of the Church's activity were to be found. And in the present century Anglican comprehension has been com- patible, not only with the full, but in not a few cases with the highest development of the three powerful spiritual move- ments which, to mention only those who are gone, will be associated in history with the names of Pusey, of Siineon, and of Maurice. In view of that fact, there plainly can be no reason for anxiety in any quarter as to the effect produced by the Church of England's obedience to the special law of her life, upon her conformity to the larger and absolutely imperative law of all religious organisa- tions. Rather have we good reason to believe that, in her case at any rate, comprehension not only facilitates, but stimulates, the evolution of spiritual fervour. Then, if so, is it too much to hope that we shall see much less of that temper and language in controversy which, as the Bishop of Rochester well points out, would lead logically "to an attempt to extrude from the Church, not indi- viduals guilty of flagrant disloyalty, but one or other of those great sections which in the good providence of God have been hitherto held together in a unity of life" P Before the prospect, even if dim and distant, of such an issue to the paper warfare in which he has participated, even the most vigorous and apparently remorseless of Anglican polemical writers might well pull up aghast.
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