THE SIXTH CHELTENHAM CONFERENCE. [To THE EDITOR OF THE "
SPECTATOR."1 SIR,—You have very kindly allowed mo to give your readers some account of the five preceding meetings of this Conference of Evangelical Churchmen at Cheltenham. The sixth was held from the 26th to the 28th of last month, and perhaps you will permit me to say a few words about it. The Conference has now achieved an important position, and upon the subject of Christian unity, to which it has devoted considerable and con- tinuous attention, it can claim to have made an influential contribution. The subjects dealt with this year were: (1) Church Government; (2) Patronage; (3) Church Union; and (4) Unity Within the Church. The general sense of the Conference on the subjects discussed was, as usual, expressed in a number of " findings." To avoid trespassing on your space too much I must pass over the findings on (1) and (2), and with regard to (3) will only mention that the Conference, while recognizing the importance of commissioning non-Angli- can clergy before authorizing them to officiate in Church, em- phatically reaffirmed its previous conviction that such commis- sion should not involve anything which might be considered to be reordination.
The main interest and importance of the Conference this year arose in connexion with the question of unity within the Church. Special significance attached to the choice of this subject, having regard to the Bishop of Chelmsford's plea for the recognition of Anglo-Catholics and the pronouncdments of the Cambridge Conference of Modern Churchmen. The Con- ference Committee had invited two representatives of each of these groups to address the Conference, and the invitations were readily accepted by the Rev. M. E. Atlay, Vicar of St. Matthew's, Westminster, and the Rev. G. H. Clayton, Vicar of St. Mary-the-Less, Cambridge, foi tho Anglo-Catholics, and by the Rev. Canon Glazebrook and the Rev. C. W. Emmet for the Modern Churchmen. The two former spoke on the rela- tions between Evangelical Churchmen and High Churchmen,
and the two latter on the relations between Evangelical Churchmen and Broad Churchmen. The outstanding event of the Conference on its personal side was the really great recep- tion given to Canon Glazebrook, a reception which it is a pleasure to record. The findings may be summarized as follows: The Conference (1) reaffirmed its belief in the essential Deity and true humanity of Christ; in the unique inspiration of Holy Scripture and in the priesthood of every believing Christian; (2) recognized (a) the sincerity of men whose object it was to bring people into vital touch with the living Christ, even though their methods might be different from those of Evangelical Churchmen, and (b) the right of free inquiry and investigation in regard to all matters affecting religious belief, and declared its sympathy with all reverent attempts to interpret the Divine revelation so that it might be brought home to the hearts and minds of the people of our own age; (3) urged the duty of examining fully the viewpoints of other schools of thought within the Church; (4) affirmed its convic- tion that no true and lasting unity could exist where funda- mental contradictions in matter of doctrine remained unrecon- ciled, and that effective co-operation in conveying the Christian message required agreement at least as to the nature and content of the message to be given, and (5) was strongly of opinion that wherever possible there should be co-operation in matters outside the particular points of divergence.
It is not for me, in this letter, to attempt to suggest how these findings would work out in practice. Those of your renders who are interested must draw their own conclusions.—
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