THE INDIVIDUALISM OF THE INDEPENDENTS
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
Sin,—The true and generally fair article in your last issue should be supplemented by some words of the late Dr. R. W. Dale, one of the greatest of the Independents :—
" We have exaggerated and misinterpreted the great Protestant principle that religion is an affair that lies altogether between man and his Maker. . . , Isolation is not the law of the religious life. We are restored to God by those to whom God is already revealed. We are taught His will by those who are already doing it. . . . The saints of past generations teach us the truth
and the will of God. . . We continue to be dependent upon human teaching for the perfecting of our spiritual strength and knowledge. . . . The theory of Individualism in its exaggerated form is flagrantly inconsistent with the whole organization of human life. . . . The moat characteristic representations of the spiritual life and of our relations to the Lord Jesus Christ contradict the theory that religion lies altogether between the individual soul and God. Christ does not speak of us as being separately rooted in Himself, but as being branches of one great Vine, sharing a common life, living in each other as well as in Him. The Lord's Supper is not to be celebrated by a solitary communicant ; it is a festival in which Christian men sit together at the Table of Christ."
These brief sentences give only an idea of the other side of the Individualism of the Independents, so often forgotten, They are taken from Essays and Addresses, Essay III., on " The Idea of the Church."—I am, Sir, &c., Rawdon Cottage, Sutton, Surrey. W. E. DLOMFIELD.
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