Dr. Selwyn has not succeeded at all as a Spiritual
Peer, his greatest speech having been a most rambling, incoherent affair, and be does not seem very likely to succeed as a leader within the the Church. In a Visitation Address, delivered at St. Mary's, Stafford, he has endeavoured to explain and defend the claim of authority as opposed to thought, but the total effect of his argu- ment is mere confusion. The "right of private judgment," he says, " is in its nature opposed to Christian unity," there " is no trace of it in the Bible." That is rather a strong assertion, stirely. We should have thought that when St. Paul withstood St. Peter to his face he asserted the right of private judgment after a most emphatic fashion, as did also St. Thomas—the first true Sceptic—when he questioned Christ's own statement. Christ did not cast him out for his private judgment, but changed his judgment by appealing to evidence. Immediately after, however, the Bishop of Lichfield shows that he confounds the right of private judgment with ordinary conceit, and preaches the virtue of humility ; and then, again he says, " take heed lest through thy knowledge the weak brother perish," and tells the cultivated to hold their tongues lest, though they may avoid unbelief, the mechanic or the labourer should not. If that is not to advocate the right of private judgment in its worst form, i.e., as the right to hold an esoteric creed, what is it ? As yet, the English career of Dr. Selwyn seems to justify the opinion of some
New Zealanders, that he is a man with a fine nature and lofty aims, but with little insight, and that little not available for use in governing the Church.
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