TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE PAN-ANGLICAN CONGRESS.
NO member of the Church of England, no thinking Englishman, we may go further and say no thinking English-speaking man whatever his Church, can have failed to be deeply moved by the assembly of the Pan-Anglican Congress in London on Monday. The gathering of repre- sentatives, not only from all parts of the British Empire, but from wherever the English tongue is spoken, would have been impressive had the object been merely secular and material. The fact that the inspiration was spiritual, and that the Bishops, clergy, and laity, men and women, who came together at the service in the Abbey were drawn by a religious impulse, makes the Congress an event which, without any exaggeration of language, may be described as soul-stirring and awe-inspiring. But in spite of the sense of exaltation which has come, and naturally and rightly come, to the members of the Anglican Com- munion at the spectacle presented by the Congress, there have not been wanting voices of warning and anxiety. Such warnings and expressions of doubt and difficulty are, in our belief, not warranted, and will prove in the end to be concerned with, not essential, but superficial dangers. At the same time, we welcome them, and hold that they should be welcomed by all true friends of the Church. Where the free winds of criticism do not blow, decay and corruption are sooner or later sure to be present. The criticisms to which we allude are those which point out the risk of a more closely organised Anglicanism leading to a narrowing of the Church, and to that spiritual pride and exclusiveness which is the first stage in the petrifac- tion which has been the undoing of so many religious bodies. The Anglican Communion is an episcopal organisation, and without doubt will remain wedded to that form of ecclesiastical organisation; but we agree that it would be an evil day for that Communion should her special form of organisation be insisted upon in a harsh and pedantic spirit, and should there be a-failure to recognise the claims of the non-episcopal Christian Churches, and to admit that spiritual graces and blessings may be obtained outside the area of the Anglican Church. The notion of Anglicans arrogating to themselves a position which would treat non-episcopal Christians as possessing at the best only " the uncovenanted mercies of God " is one which should be odious and detestable to all who breathe the true spirit of the Church of England and of the Churches in communion with her. The prevalence and growth of any such belief must in the end ruin the noble edifice whose foundations were laid by the first Christian missionaries who reached these islands, and whose walls were strengthened and rebuilt when we shook ourselves free from the deadening tyranny of Rome. The Anglican Church is right to rejoice that she is " the holder of the Pearl of Price," but to do anything which may encourage the vicious assumption that she alone holds it, or has the only perfect right to hold it, is to encourage a Pharisaic pride which is the very negation of the true Christian faith. The Anglican Church may without offence believe that she has the better custom, but if ever she forgets that " God fulfils Himself in many ways, lest one good custom should corrupt the world," her doom is sealed.
But though such abstract criticism is true, and ought to be heard and heeded, we do not believe that there is any real danger of the Anglican Communion becoming possessed by a spirit of un-Christian exclusiveness, or of the Pan- Anglican Congress fostering opinions so deadening and so ignoble. There may be occasional signs of bigotry and narrowness, sporadic explosions of sacerdotal arrogance, unintelligent vauntings of spiritual claims half under- stood or wholly misunderstood ; but in the end the Church of England will obey the law of her being, and remain true to her mission,—the greatest, we believe, by which any single Christian Church has ever been inspired. What is the true mission of the Anglican Com- munion in the world, and what can she show to justify the claim we have made for her ? We maintain that history will show in the future, as it has shown in the past, that the Anglican Communion has a threefold inspiration and a threefold work before her,—work for which in time the whole of mankind will prove grateful. In the first place, we hold it to be the mission of the Anglican. Church to prove the possibility of maintaining the spirit of religious comprehension in the highest and widest sense without at the same time falling into antinomianism, spiritual anarchy, or organic chaos. Comprehension is as much the law of the Church's being—as much the condition of her usefulness and of her very existence—as it is a part of the law of the land in which we live. There is no machinery by which any man who desires to be compre- hended in the Church of England, and who leads a Christian life, can be excluded from the Church and deprived of the power of availing himself of her services. And this comprehension is no mere negative proposition or cold abstraction. The comprehensiveness of the Church of England is what it was described by one of her greatest sons,—" the liberty of prophesying." The door of the Church of England, unlike that of any other spiritual organisation in the world, stands always open, and though certain voices may be raised in wonder or protest that this or that man should desire, or be allowed, to enter or to remain inside, no one has power to forbid access to Christ through that door. The liberty of prophesying of which Jeremy Taylor wrote is no figment of his brain, but is guarded by laws which, though some may profess to regard them as of merely human devising, we, at any rate, consider to have as much of divine sanction as any canon of the Church.
Second in importance to the Anglican Church's mission to guard and maintain the priceless gift of Christian compre- hension is her mission to preach to mankind the need of understanding that the State has a spiritual as well as a secular side, and that the establishment of religion in a State, and the recognition by it of the spiritual side of man's nature, are of supreme importance. The Church of England stands for religious establishment, and against the secularisation of the State, not because she has a vested interest in certain privileges or in certain emoluments, but in order to make the world recognise that a secularised State is a maimed State. It is, in a word, her duty to show by precept and example that the State must not and cannot shuffle off all responsibility for the spiritual welfare of the people who inhabit it. If once the notion prevails that the things of the spirit and of religion are matters of small importance—an affair of priests, things which can best be left to the clergy of the various denominations to squabble over amongst themselves, but which cannot concern grown men—the State must suffer an irreparable loss. We shall be told, no doubt, that such a secularisation of the State has happened in America and in our Colonies, and that no very dreadful consequences have ensued ; and, further, that the multiplication of religious bodies makes it impossible for the State to choose one of them as its spiritual representative. To this we would reply that we cannot admit that the communities named have not suffered, and will not suffer, from their adoption of the secularist ideal. We believe, also, that in the end they will find some means of recognising that the State has something to do with the spiritual as well as with the material side of life. We should prefer, indeed, to say that this recognition is rather in abeyance in America and in our Colonies than that it has absolutely ceased to exist. After all, even in America, where the process of dis- establishment is supposed to have gone furthest, there still stands the dictum of Chief Justice Marshall that Christianity is part of the law of the United States. Some day America may give a public recognition of that fact. In any case, the Church of England stands for the anti- secularist principle. But she must maintain that principle in no narrow or exclusive spirit. Since only one Church, where there are many, can represent the spiritual side of the State, and since she is the Communion chosen in this country, a sacred obligation is laid upon her not to think merely of the religious interests of her own members, but to act also as a trustee in the widest and most generous sense for all Christian, nay, for all religious, interests within the realm. We admit that there are many urgent voices calling the Church away from her duty in this respect, and urging her to think only of the interests of her own members • but it is our hope and belief that in the end she will be guided to the wiser and nobler view of the Establishment.
Next to her mission to prevent the divorce between the idea of the State and the idea of religion is the mission of the Anglican Communion to show that, though co-opera- tion and social action are essential to the carrying out of the will of her Master, and of the Master of every Christian community, yet such co-operation and social action can be carried out without any deadening rigidity in her formularies or in her acts of association. Order and discipline there must be in every Church militant ; but there are two forms of discipline,—the discipline which deadens and destroys and which has for its motto Perinde ac cadaver—" As devoid of will-power as a corpse "—and the discipline which is co-operative and inspired by the spirit of life rather than of death. There is, in a word, the discipline of the free man and the discipline of the slave. The failure of the Roman Church has largely been due to the fact that her discipline has been that of the slave. If the Anglican Communion is true to her mission, she will show the world the superiority of the discipline of the free man.
What we have said as to the essential mission of the Anglican Communion will no doubt be challenged by many men with far better claims to represent the Church and the spiritual side of life than we have. Yet, though we may in a sense feel that it is almost an impertinence for a newspaper conducted by laymen for laymen to obtrude its views in opposition to those of many noble workers in the fields of the Church, we are nevertheless emboldened to maintain our ground. Our appeal is to history as well as to the teachings of Christ as set forth in the Gospels. History, we claim, shows that the English Church has always been at- her strongest and best, and has most fulfilled the desire of-the nation, when she has in fact, even if not in name, kept before her the ideals we have tried to describe. Narrow the Church of England to a sect, however active and zealous and however strong at the beginning, and there can be but one end. Maintain the inspiration which has been hers throughout her history in spite of many and . grievous faults and lapses from grace, and we may feel sure that the Church will in the future be able to carry out the work to which her history and her training show her to have been called.
Previous page
