[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] Sin,—The controversy roused by
the articles on "A Christian's Faith " dei:elops oddly. Trouble is coming upon me from every side. Mr. Hall has found me too rigidly orthodox, but now agnostic—" utterly wrong" in either case ; my own phrase, and I don't grumble. On the contrary, I am glad that he has come into the open, which he did not at find ; his divergence from St. Paul's mind is now explicit. That is something gained. But let me turn to the letter of the Bishop
of St. Edmundsbury.
That is a real surprise. All my life (or that part of it spent in England) I have been under a stigma as a sort of reprobate, not quite a citizen, a half-alien, " not one of us," because (I was given to suppose) I and other " dissenters," along with the Pope and the vast majority of Christians throughout the world, did not accept the validity of Anglican orders. And now it turns out that what severs us is conduct, not belief. Why, then, all this fuss about the Church in South India ? Is the Bishop waiving episcopacy as essential to the existence of a church ? Is he recognizing us all ? Timeo Danaos et dons
ferentes.
But there is more still to be considered. Here am I, to the best of my lights, dim as they arc, and conscious of difficulty, standing with Athanasius—I am speaking seriously ; and the Bishop suddenly holds out a hand of fellowship to Arius. .The late J. B. Bury wrote that the victory of Arius (that is, his mere acceptance by the Church, not the expulsion of Athanasius at all but the inclusion of Arius, whose life and character no one impugned) would have meant what Bury politely called the " premature " disappearance of Christianity. So thought Bury, and so has thought the Church ; but apparently the Bishop does not feel that danger.
One last point, the central one. When I read the Fourth Gospel, while greatly perplexed by author and by critics, I see one thing clearly—the constant emphasis on knowledge, faith, belief, truth—all words of the intellect. The writer definitely held, as did St. Paul (the unpopular St. Paul) that the centre of everything is a man's belief. Matthew Arnold would have it that conduct was nine-tenths of life ; I would say that belief is nine-tenths of life {if not more), for it makes life, and shapes conduct. Eyery action is the outcome of belief. But the same sort of action may on occasion come from quite different motives or beliefs. A man, for instance, is rude to me, and I do not hit him ;.• but that may be due to fear of his fists or of the law, or to laziness, or to Christian conviction. It is the motive that decides the value of the action or, of the life ; and that depends on S. man's general conception of the universe and of God. The Christian faith means belief in a Christ living, effective, and interested in me (Luther's emphasis on me in St. Paul's, epistle to the Galatians, eh. 2). At heart perhaps the Bishop also believes this, but his language was rather loose, I thought.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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