MR. GORE'S PROPOSAL.
IN a very striking sermon preached before the University of Cambridge on Sunday last, and printed in the Guardian of Wednesday, Mr. Gore makes a definite and startling suggestion. It follows upon a thoroughly just enumeration of the shortcomings of the Church of England. "The spirit," he says, " of corporate penitence, as opposed to all self-complacency, is the spirit which, beyond all else, needs to be cultivated by us at the present time." The Church of England "suf- fered the population of the United States of America to grow up without the provision of the Episcopate ; " she has adapted her forms and methods to the con- venience of the upper classes ; she has allowed the great towns of the North to become vast centres of popula- tion without any adequate attempt to provide spiritual ministrations for them ; "perhaps there is no part of the Catholic Church which has realised less successfully the essential ideal, 'To the poor the Gospel is preached ; ' " legitimate freedom of religious development has been cramped or annihilated by a quite misplaced subservience to State policy ; confessors have been too frequently conspicuously wanting in high places, and the spirit of those in high places reflects the spirit of the Church from which they are chosen. And then, after noting the com- mon characteristic of the Evangelical, the Tractarian, and the Christian Socialist revivals, he goes on to speak of the future. "Never, I venture to believe, was there a deeper or wider opportunity for a Church, liberal in comprehen- sion, rational in claim, moderate in government, but definite and intelligible alike in theological and moral doctrine." "And such a Church, ours, in ideal and principle, certainly is." In all this we can unreservedly go along with Mr. Gore. What all Churches need—what the Church of England needs—at least as much as any other—is to get rid of a fatuous self-complacency,—the temper of a mutual admiration society, the temper which finds its natural and congenial sustenance in the devout contempla- tion of our own virtues and our neighbours' shortcomings. If he had stopped here, if he had only said,—' This is the aim which those who most love the Church of England, and most study her real welfare, will strive to keep before themselves and to place before others ; ' if, in short, he had made self-abasement the text of a new revival,—a revival which shall "present and uphold what can truly be called by the noble name of a Liberal Catholicism," there would not, to our minds, have been a word to question, whether in his diagnosis of the disease, or in his choice of a remedy.
But Mr. Gore does not stop here. On second thoughts, however, we begin to doubt the accuracy of the word "startling," which a minute ago we applied to the sug- gestion which be goes on to offer. It is natural, perhaps, for a preacher who has been contemplating the great task which has been laid upon the Church of England, the great victory over shallowness and unreality and self- advertisement, which she has it in her power to achieve, to recall with indignation the extravagance and self-will which so often mars what in itself is so fair a prospect of success. It is this indignation that leads Mr. Gore to say that "the time is surely come when excres- cences weakening to the life of the whole body need to be pared off by the exercise of a moderate but impartial dis- cipline We should not lose much, for the loss would be our gain, if we were to let drop off what declares itself—I emphasise the words declares itself—as essentially indifferent or disloyal to fundamental dogmas, the dogmas of the Creeds ; or what is altogether without the sense of corporate loyalty, and speaks in defiance of the sacramental language of the Prayer-book ; or what, in a return to medimval doctrine, practically and effectually repudiates the appeal to Scripture." The proposal takes our breath away, but we fully admit its fascination. There is some- thing almost sickening in the anarchy that now prevails in the Church of England, in the toleration of doctrines that are mutually contradictory and of an indifferentism which is destructive of all doctrine. We cannot wonder if, to serious thinkers, the Church of England bears too close a resemblance to "jesting Pilate," who, when he asked "What is truth ? " "would not stay for an answer." Well, then, says Mr. Gore, will you not agree with me that the time has come "to appeal to our rulers for a restoration of reasonable discipline, and to show our willingness to submit to it ? " We may note in passing that the merit of this willingness may easily be exagger- ated. Mr. Gore does not expect to be "let drop off," and so has really nothing to submit to. The willingness would have to be shown, if shown at all, by those who would have to choose between submission and amputation. Still we are quite ready to concede, and that not merely for the sake of argument, that the suggestion is fasci- nating. Where we part company from the preacher is in relation to its practicability. What we take to be the meaning of the "reasonable discipline" which Mr. Gore wishes to see applied all round, is an impartial lopping off of extremes. The three types of excrescence which he enumerates, answer roughly to the extreme wings of the Broad, the Evangelical, and the High Church parties. Indifference to the dogmas of the creeds ; defiance of the sacramental language of the Prayer-book ; the repudiation of the appeal to Scripture, —each of the three parties could in turn supply examples of the diseased limbs, the loss of which "would be our gain." Has Mr. Gore taken account of the difficulty— the insuperable difficulty, to our thinking—of intrusting this process to our present rulers? It must be applied impartially,—that is the real and great merit of the sug- gestion. It must be based, that is to say, on "acknow- ledged principles liberally interpreted, and not upon popular prejudice and clamour;" it must be directed not merely against extravagance in ritual or in medirevalism, "but be consistent and impartial all round." The first requisite for the application of discipline in this sense would be an agreement on the part of the Bishops to apply the axe to the extremes with which they sympathise, as well as to the extremes which they dislike. Are there no Bishops who would be unwilling to lop off the clergy who do not read the Athanasian Creed ? Are there no Bishops who would be unwilling to lop off the clergy who deny the efficacy of baptism or of Orders ? And if instances at once suggest themselves in both directions, would not the temptation be great to begin by applying the discipline first to offending High Churchmen, and then to yield to the conviction that it is impossible to carry the process further? This is one objection to Mr. Gore's suggestion. A second is that its adoption would require a general acquiescence, in the mass of each of the three parties, in the exclusion of their extreme members. Is there any hope that such acquiescence would be forth-coming, —that the majority of Broad Chnrchiiien would insist on the regular recitation of the Athanasian Creed ; that the majority of Evangelicals would- consent to the deprivation of clergymen who think that the Reformation did not go far enough, and detect in the language of the Services for Baptism or the Visitation- of the Sick, a superstitious leaven 'of which the Prayer-book needs to be purged ; that the majority of High Churchmen would view without uneasiness the condemnation of men who think that the Reformation went too far, and who are convinced that they are doing good service to the Church in reviving usages that were then abandoned ? We greatly doubt it. On the contrary, we believe that each of these sections would be more impressed with the possible danger to doctrines which it holds, than with the advantage of getting rid of doctrines which it repudiates,—would dread lest the purification might not stop until it had attacked things dear not to an extreme wing, but to the party at large. Success in such a scheme requires the hearty co- operation of the main body of each of the three divisions in Churchmen, and we see no probability that this co- operation will be forthcoming. On the other hand, we see considerable probability that the attempt would be made in cases where it happened to be popular and then given up ; in other words, that we should have a restoration of disci- pline, but not such a restoration as Mr. Gore wishes,—not general, not free from prejudice, not superior to clamour, not consistent, not impartial.
We have left the third and most immediately formid- able objection to the last. This restoration of discipline can only be brought about by judicial process. The Church of England is an established Church, and so long as she remains so the State Courts and the State Legisla- ture have a veto on any changes in her constitution. Every step therefore in this process of purification would have to be confirmed by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. The whole tendency of the decisions of this tribunal in matters of doctrine, and their recent tendency in matters of ceremonial, has pointed to a larger com- prehension of opposite teachings. Do the decisions in the Gorham case, in the "Essays and Review" case, in the Bennett case, or in the Lincoln ease, display any dispo- sition on the part of the Court to apply "consistent and impartial" repression all round ? And has Mr. Gore counted the cost of thus reopening the flood-gates of religious prosecutions ? Has he measured the the irritation, the uncertainty, the paralysis of useful action, the encouragement of an inquisitorial temper, the dispo- sition to emphasise the things about which men differ, and to lose sight of the things about which they agree, which would be inseparable from such a revival ? We can hardly believe that he has.
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