ANGLICAN INTOLERANCE.
[To THE EDITOR OP THIN "SPECTATOR."] Srs.,—Ycur correspondents cannot rightly understand their own, much less each other's, position until they go to the root of the matter and agree on some definition of the word "Church," if it be only as a temporary postulate. If we may judge by the vagueness of their public utterances, but few of our statesmen, and still fewer of our Bishops, have taken the trouble to do this. Yet the history of the word is not far to seek. Its origin and associations are familiar enough to all who know anything of the Bible. Beginning as "an Assembly of the faithful people of Yahwe," it soon came to stand (in either of its two forms) for "God's People." Whenever a prophet needed to point out that not all were faithful—" not all were Israel" that were "of Israel "—he appealed to a Church within the Church, arguing that "he was not" (in any real sense) "a Jew who was one outwardly," for there was a spiritual circumcision more vital than that of the flesh. Even if the nation became a mere valley of dry bones, a mere trunk or even stump of dying wood, still the Gates of Death should not prevail against it. God could raise up a Living Army from the bones by breathing life into theme he could raise up a Sprout, a Sapling from the root of the dying tree to be his true Church. God's People under the new Covenant were, like his People under the old, chosen because of their faith. All who had faith were still the (true) children of the "Father of the faithful." Directly Christ recognized the one thing needful (faith) in Peter, he bailed him with joy as a Stone that could be built upon, a foundation stone on which His (new) Israel, His Church, could be built. Thus the word retains its old meaning in Christ's mouth. It still continues to mean "God's faithful People" or an assembly of such. Similarly to St. Paul, the " Church " in any place always means God's faithful People, a community of "men of faith," of believers. It never loses its root sense.
And is not Church doctrine the same as Bible truth? The Church of (or in) England still means either, broadly, "the nation as Christian," or, pregnantly, "all who deserve the name Christian, all who are really men of faith." It is hardly necessary to point out that we sometimes speak of "the nation" ordering this or that, when it would be more exact to say "our civil authorities," and similarly of "the Church" when it would be more exact to say "our ecclesiastical authorities." In another way history repeats itself only too surely. With the Church of England, as of old with the Jewish nation (or Church), there is recurrent danger of the spiritual life of faith dying out in what seems the majority. But to us too comes the recurrent hope of resurrection (in the usual Bible sense), or, at least, of a sprout with vigorous life in it (be it "Methodist," "Oxford," or "Modernist " movement), rising from the rout of an apparently lifeless
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