ANGLICANISM
HALF a century ago these words, which might serve as a text for Canon Carnegie's book, were penned : " I am not blind to the peculiar dangers that beset the English Church. I fear that its position, standing, as it does, a mean between two extremes, will engender indifference and sloth ; and that its freedom will prevent its preserving a discipline and organizing power ; nevertheless, as a Church it is unique ; if suffered to drop out of existence, nothing like it can ever take its place."' We quote the fore{ oing, be muse, in this " Introduction to the history and philosophy of Anglicanism," Canon Carnegie shows himself alive to these perils, and to others besides, such as the slight influence which the English Church now exercises in the area of industrialism and in the arena of public affairs. It should be, as in times past, a centre of unity, a potent corrective to sectionalism. Instead, it is " often stigmatized by onlookers as a fruitful source of contention and controversy, and these with regard to issues which seem to them of minor importance." Such a sentence has the more weight since the import of this book is to show the help which Anglicanism, diffused through- out the world as the special expression of the Anglo-Saxon race on its religious side, can afford to give with regard to the present-day problems of Agnosticism, Materialism, the Higher Criticism, and social ethics. More, the writer hope- fully quotes Guizot's opinion that if Christendom is ever re- united it will be through the agency of the Anglican Church.
We are struck by the careful balance and judicial temper of the historical chapters. The debt that Europe owed to the internationalism of the Roman Curia is fully recognized, and we almost expected a quotation of Hobbes' great description of the Papacy as sitting a crowned ghost on the grave of the Roman Empire. But the measure of independence preserved, if not by the English Church, at any rate by the sacrosanct English Crown, receives remarkable illustration. Calvinism and its daughter Puritanism are well described. " Puritan- ism," it is justly observed, " came to pose as the protagonist in the struggle for civil and religious liberty. The pose was altogether fictitious. Puritanism aimed at dominance, not freedom." But again the results to the English Church of its efforts to come to terms with Calvinism are well put. If its formularies, designedly drawn up to embrace Catholic and Calvinist allegiance alike, are open to the charge of ambiguity, they at least admit of liberty in days when Calvinism has lost its bid for an international theocracy. And Calvinism did succeed in impressing on the English character " a type of manhood which compels admiration and respect."
It would be possible to criticize, here and there, the chapters which deal with Science, Criticism, and Agnosticism. We do not think that the reconciliation of Science with Religion, though they live now on more courteous terms, is as near as Canon Carnegie thinks, nor that Modernism would lack a reply to his objections. Again, the statement that " the Church from the first recognized the Fourth Gospel " seems a rather strong phrase for a date in the last two decades of the second century. Lastly, repeated emphasis is laid on St. Paul's " final certitude " as to the Resurrection being the " result of prolonged and careful conversations " with the Apostles and their associates. We should not gather this from the man who declared that he received not his gospel'
from man, neither was he taught it, nor did he confer with, flesh and blood, and only after three years of self-communing went to Jerusalem to stay with Peter for fifteen days. No, doubt the results of the visit were momentous, but St. Paul does not record them. His own conversion, however, and Canon Carnegie is right in stressing it, was one of the world's turning-points of history.
- To conclude. This is a book of moderate compass, but it justifies its title. It is an Introduction to Anglicanism, and the reader who takes it as such will be more and more impressed by the amount of carefully summarized history, balanced state- ment of doctrine, and reasoned hope for the future which make it typical of the sane and solid virtues of the religion of Englishmen.
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