The Free Churches in Perspective
" POTTED history " is proverbially dull, a mass of events unillumined by the sidelights which make the human scene a living reality. If to that is added the tiresomeness of history with a propagandist flavour, then the task which Dr. Horton Davies had before him in writing the story of the English Free Churches in 200 pages is apparent. That he has surmounted such formidable difficulties and written a book of quite outstanding quality is no small achieve- ment. It will rank highly in the educational text-books for the instruction of Free Churchmen in their principles and tradition. It has, however, a wider significance. In a period of religious history whose most hopeful aspect is the emergence of the oecumenical movement, it is necessary that the different sections into which the Church is separated should be fully acquainted with their respective contributions to the variety and wealth of a tradition in which they are all called to share.
A merely sentimental benevolence has nothing effective or perma- nent to contribute to the closer relationships of the Churches of the world. Dr. Horton Davies' book has great significance in this field. The polemical is subordinated to the design of seeing the whole scene in true perspective. He is objective but without the dispassionate chill of the superior observer of events. The story he tells is romantic enough to stir the imagination. The despised and persecuted sects of Elizabethan and Stuart times have grown into a body of Christians far outnumbering the Church which persecuted them. The new world to which they were driven has in Canning's phrase " redressed the balance of the old," while the evangelical passion which led to the great missionary movements has given to their witness a great place in the younger Churches. In the strange inverted reckoning to which history compels the mind, the Elizabethan and Stuart attempts at a restrictive uniformity have led to expansion and variety on the largest scale. In the same way the more niggling forms of persecution to which the earlier Nonconformists were subjected, as, for example, exclusion from the universities, led them to found their own academies of learning, which, as •Dr. Horton Davies remarks, outstripped the ancient universities in the teaching of science and modern languages. There are, of course, as in all things human, darker aspects of the story—the corruptions of power and wealth in the brief seasons when such temptations came, and new expressions of formalism when old rebellions had hardened into new rigidities. But there were new awakenings, tocr, as in the evangelical revival with its purifying and tonic breath felt in every aspect of the life of the nation. It is a great.story, greatly told, for the book abounds in touches of wit and wisdpm and always has the faculty of self-criticism on the alert. -c The tone and temper of the whole book are expressed in its con- cluding paragraph in which, after summarising the contribution which the witness of the Free Churches has made, Dr. Davies says : " Like every other Communion or groups of Communions, they are fragments of the Una Sancta, and therefore incomplete. They pray for the fulfilment of our Lord's High-Priestly prayer, ut omnes unum sint, believing that they have treasures to receive as well as to give, forgiveness to beg and to grant, in the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church Visible that is to be." SIDNEY M. BERRY.
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