MR. DENING AND CHUACH MISSIONS IN JAPAN. fro TES EDITOZ
OF THE " silicmoz."1
Bru,—With reference to Mr. Edward White's letter in your issue of January 20th, I must ask you to allow me to state that Mr. Dening has made no "refusal" to teach the dogmas named by Mr. White, for the simple reason that the Committee have neither formulated such dogmas, nor required him or any -of their Missionaries to teach them. It is Mr. Dening who has 'embraced one of the many modern theories on the subject, and demanded the Society's explicit sanction to his publicly teach- ing that one theory as the truth.
The practical theory is that commonly known as "conditional immortality," and the annihilation of the wicked. This explicit -sanction the Committee felt unable to give ; and finding that Mr. Dening was fully minded to teach the theory publicly, as .a Missionary of the Society, they had no choice but to disconnect him. The Sub-Committee, with which Mr. Dening had an in- terview, was an influential mixed Committee of laymen and 'clergymen. Several laymen were present at the interview, the President, the Earl of Chichester, being in the chair.
We find that information of the kind that was needed in order to deal with Mr. Dening's case is far more satisfactorily ob- tained by interviews conducted by a small body of men, than in n fall Committee of sixty or seventy members. In Mr. Dening's case, a single interview brought out the facts sufficiently to -enable the Sub-Committee to determine what to recommend; -otherwise, they would have asked him to meet them again.—I
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