THE GATHERING OF THE BISHOPS.
WE have no wish to depreciate the advantages of counsel and deliberation. No one who believes in represen- tative institutions could honestly do so. But we think we see signs that the Clergy at least, expect something from such meetings as the Pan-Anglican Synod of next week which is not to be the fruit of mere counsel and deliberation, but rather of the sort of ecclesiastical magic which a certain school of Anglicans have always regarded as inherent in Councils. Every one knows that there is a party which speaks of the First Four Councils of the Church as quasi-infallible, or if not quite infallible, at least divinely preserved in these indi- vidual cases from actual error. And though it is obvious that a party which believes in the divine authority of only four Councils, and makes light of the utterances of so many subse- quent Councils as corrupt, cannot be very undiscriminating in its faith in such Assemblies, yet we believe many Anglicans do sincerely believe that if they could but get together a sufficient number of Bishops holding primitive Christianity, the Divine Spirit would speak through their deliberations and conclusions after a fashion quite different from, and very superior to, any- thing that can be expected from the minds of individuals. Now we must say we regard this as a strictly superstitious belief, a quasi-Vaticanism, which is far more in place in Rome than in any other Church, but which derives no particle of credibility from the study of history. Even the first Council, the Council of Jerusalem, announced nothing that can be said to belong to the substance of Revelation. It laid down a prudent and wise rule, affecting the conduct of Gentile converts, and prohibiting the Jewish Christians from trying to lay upon the Gentiles all the burdens of the Jewish law. And it announced that rule with words of great authority, no doubt, claiming for it the direct sanction of the Divine Spirit. But it was a rule of practical wisdom,—a rule of spiritual prudence,—after all, which issued from that first Council, not an eternal truth. All the divine teaching of Christianity came through individuals, either from the lips of Christ, or from one of his Apostles. Councils, even at their best, have added little or nothing to the stock of Christian truth ; and when they have wit- nessed to received truth, have usually been under the in- fluence of some commanding mind. And in point of fact, nothing conduces less to any high conviction than the meeting of a great number of different minds under the sway of different tendencies. Presbyteries, General Assemblies, Synods, Councils, Conferences, Congresses, are all very similar in character, and hardly any of them has ever been of a kind to enlarge the belief of the world in any great truth. It is in solitude, not in discussion, that truth takes its best hold of the mind. It is in solitude, not in discussion, that it is best uttered. Even in relation to Science, Congresses would be not only useless, but mischievous, if they were not preceded by these long selitary studies, those careful trains of cautions and silent investigation, which prepare the truth that the Congress only publishes. Public meetings are most
valuable as measuring the relative strength of different practical tendencies,—the relative value of different moral safeguards, the relative dangerousness of different moral temptations, the relative prudence of different remedies, but they are not the places to test the real significance or the real boundaries of truth. It is no doubt true that all organic life has a meaning and a soundness of its own, which you cannot analyse into the elements of which it is composed. There is something in a nation, which is not to be found in the individuals of that nation. There is something in a Church, which is not in the members of that Church. The body, when properly directed by the head, is much more than the various limbs. That we do not at all deny. But this we do deny,—that any Church is fairly represented by a public meeting in which the mere official heads of it meet to talk over the prospects before them and the best means of wielding the influence at their disposal. The histories of Councils and Synods are amongst the dreariest chapters of human history ; and especially so, we think, because they have always assumed what they were extremely ill-fitted to assume—a special jurisdiction in the testing of doctrinal truth. Yet such meetings, whether consisting of Bishops, or Presbyterian ministers, or Independent delegates, have always been occasions on which it would have been well if the discussion of doctrine' had been as much as possible avoided, and the discussion of practical rules and methods encouraged. Compromise is the atmosphere of such meetings. But compromise is not the atmosphere in which either truth or conviction is best elicited.
On the whole, we recommend the Bishops now flocking together for the Pan-Anglican Synod not to attempt a pastoral, as they did last time,—not to try their hands on points of creed,—not to suppose that for any purpose of defining reli- gious belief they will be strengthened by this concourse, if
not rather weakened. There are purposes for which the number of counsellors may be an advantage. Such meet- ings may, for instance, be well fitted to discuss, with a good many Missionary Bishops present, what should be the concessions made to pagan and heathen converts brought up under a very different morality from the Christian. That would be a subject of discussion in very close analogy to that of the Council of Jerusalem. They may, again, be much fitter to discuss in such a conclave, than they would be in smaller meetings, what are the aspects of modern unbelief which require the most care and study from the more thoughtful amongst them. Or they may find their numbers an advantage for discussing the practicability or impracticability of Church dis- cipline. But for one purpose, at least, they will not find their numbers any advantage, but the reverse, and that is for dis- cussing creeds. Hence we strongly recommend the Pan-Anglican Synod to renounce entirely the superstition which attaches to such assemblages of Bishops a sort of divine skill in discrimi- nating truth from falsehood. Indeed, we believe them to be under very special incapacities for any such discrimination.
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