THE NEXT LAMBETH CONFERENCE. T HE Lambeth Conferences are a remarkable
instance of foresight in a quarter where foresight, at least in the sense of tonight, is not generally looked for. Thirty years ago there seemed many difficulties in the way. To bring together the Bishops of the Anglican world was to give formal recognition to an ecclesiastical development of which the magnitude had hardly been grasped. The ex- cessive parochialism of the Church of England, combined with its desire to keep to its own work and not meddle with other men's business, combined to invest the experi- ment with vague terrors. It was a new departure, and a, departure the signal for which was to be given by the chief Bishop of a Church which has little liking for new departures. Nor was Archbishop Longley at all a man likely to take the initiative in such a matter. Yet he did take it. He saw the objections but he overruled them, and in 1867 seventy-six Bishops answered to his call and constituted the first Conference. Archbishop Tait, who presided over the second Conference in 1878, was a man of far wider and more statesmanlike outlook than Archbishop Longley. But his statesmanship was eminently un- ecclesiastical. No one was less disposed by character and training to be the chief mover in an Anglican Council. But he too found the current too strong for him. The second Conference was attended by more Bishops than the first, and it began to be seen that the idea of a decennial gathering had come to stay. To Archbishop Benson the idea was congenial as well as familiar, and the Conference of 1888 was larger and more imposing than either of the two which had preceded it. For 1897—the date has been hastened by a year in order to make the Conference synchronise with the landing of Augustine-254 Bishops have been invited, and in numbers and in public interest at all events the occasion is likely to show a great further advance.
The agenda paper for next year's meeting was published on 'Wednesday. It is full of interesting matter. The Critical Study of Holy Scripture, the Organisation of the Anglican Communion, the Duties of the Church to the Colonies, International Arbitration, the Office of the Church with Respect to Industrial Problems, Church Unity, Reformation Movements, Foreign Missions, the Relation of Religious Communities to the Episcopate, the Book of Common Prayer, Degrees in Divinity—here are eleven subjects of which four at least might be thoroughly sufficient to occupy the whole time of the Conference. For that time is necessarily short. The Bishops meet on Monday, July 5th, and sit for one week. The next fort- night is spent in the most useful way possible,—in deliberation by committees. The whole Conference sits again from Monday, July 26th, to Saturday, July 31st. Thus twelve days in full session and twelve days in com- mittee is all the time there will be, and even this may be shortened by the occurrence of some public function. There is some danger, we cannot but think, that the Con- ference may be tempted to follow the worst possible example, —that of the Church Congress. There, however, general and aimless discussion is more in place. The Congress leads up to no conclusion ; it meets for the sake of meeting, and talks for the sake of talking. It is quite different with the Lambeth Conference. The object of this is not discussion, but decision ; the provision not of materials for consideration, but of helps for guidance. It is better in a case of this kind to have one difficulty disposed of than to have a dozen started, and the multiplication of subjects certainly points in the latter direction rather than in the former. Some, again, of the subjects chosen seem to us eminently unsuited to a Conference of this kind. No doubt very much more interest is taktn in the critical study of Holy Scripture than at any former time. The materials for it have grown in amount, and far more experts are engaged in the handling of them. But the only contribution to the work that it is within the competence of the Lambeth Conference to offer is a summing up of generally received truths. It is not probable that in the eleventh part of a fortnight it will carry original research any further ; it can only note the conclusions which original research has established. The time for doing this does not seem to us to have arrived, or to be anywhere near arriving. It is quite true that one effect of the new criticism has been to disturb and unsettle the traditional view of the Old Testament. But what can the Lambeth Conference do to reassure those who are thus shaken ? Just nothing at all. On such a question as this the opinion of the Lambeth Fathers, as a body, will be of no more value than the opinion of the man in the street. The Conference might be as positive as you please about the Davidic author- ship of the Psalms or the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, it might lay down without doubt or hesita- tion that there was only one Isaiah, or pronounce exactly whether the book of Daniel is history or prophecy or neither. But its decisions would carry no weight.
Critics of the new school and critics of the old school would retain their positions in serene disregard of anything that the Conference might say. The Conference can register reassuring commonplaces, and declare that the truth of Holy Scripture is wholly unaffected by the results of criticism, past, present, or to come. None the less, how- ever, will this remain the very question on which disturbed minds are seeking for enlightenment,—enlightenment, the attainment of which will only be delayed by the multiplica- tion of ex parte statements, however authoritative. For reasons more or less of the same kind, international arbitra- tion and industrial problems are out of place in such an agenda-paper as this. The Church never has been able to prevent war, and we may be pretty sure that she never will be able to prevent it. She can, indeed, preach useful generalities,—the duty of not aggravating international quarrels by violent words or hasty decisions, of judging our adversaries by the same standard that we apply to our- selves, of cultivating the habit of trying to see the force of their case equally with that of our own. But if any good is to be done in this way it must be done in, and with specific application to, times of special excitement.
The United States pulpit, for example, did this work ex- cellently at the beginning of the present year. But to preach peace and goodwill takes us a very little way towards international arbitration. That is only a particu- lar method of promoting peace and goodwill,—a method which at certain times and between certain Powers may lead to most satisfactory results, and at other times and between other countries may have quite the opposite result. Which of the two it is likely to have in a particular case, is a problem for statesmen not for Bishops, and though we do not doubt that the Lambeth Conference will recognise this truth, we cannot but fear that its recognition will deprive their pronouncement on the subject of most of its interest. Industrial problems, again, present different features in different countries and among different races.
What is true of them in England may not be true of them in the United States. What is true of them among Teutonic peoples may not be true of them among the Latin races. There are great commonplaces doubtless that are equally true and equally applicable in all countries and in all ages. But whether the Lambeth Conference would be profitably employed in their enunciation we must take leave to doubt.
The second of the subjects chosen would alone have furnished matter for the whole month during which th( Conference will be in session. The organisation of th( Anglican Communion raises issues of extraordinary in. terest and extraordinary difficulty. Hitherto the separate Churches of which it is composed have enjoyed and exercised entire independence. The Disestablished Church of Ireland, the Episcopal Churches of Scotland and the United States, have their own Prayer-books, their own Canons, and their own Courts. In theory, there is nothing to hinder them diverging from one another as widely as they choose ; nor does any provision exist for deter- mining what change in their mutual relations ought to follow upon such departures. Yet as years go on, and the daughter or sister Churches of the Church of England become more numerous and more active, a large amount of divergence will become increasingly likely. Is it not wise, therefore, to take time by the forelock, and, while they are still united, to make provision against future occasions of discord ? To this question there can be but one answer ; but as we give it, we are impressed with the risks that must attend the giving of it. Of course it is wise to make some preparation against an inevitable future. Now that the Anglican Episcopate has grown to two hundred and fifty, how can they hope to escape con- fusion and schism except by making some advances in the organisation not merely of the separate Churches, but of the whole Anglican Communion ? On the other hand, directly we read of a "central consultative body," of a "tribunal of reference," of the "relation of Primates and Metropolitans to the See of Canterbury," we realise upon what thin ice the Conference will be walking, and how easily such a discussion may lead to its hopeless break-up. Anglican organisation is like Imperial Federa- tion,—an end to be greatly desired, but also an end to be hoped. for rather than expected. Of both, however, there is one thing to be said which is of paramount importance. The overtures towards closer union must come from the extremities, not from the centre.
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