This, in effect, was the cause of the breach with the Roman Church, and similarly it accounts for the strong feeling respecting the "Anglo-Catholics." Yet who shall say that this strong "Protestant" view is correct to the exclusion of all others? That would be the error of Rome over again-dogma asserted as essential truth.

The Anglo-Catholic section of the church represents those minds to whom mysticism is almost a necessity. It may be that such minds have been lifted to higher conceptions than those receivable by the ordinary mortal, and it is not for those who differ to condemn them as in error. They and their teachers are entitled to claim as much consideration as those who can grasp nothing beyond the simplest and plainest truth. Certain it is that the leaders of this section are, as a rule, particularly earnest and often saintly men who set a shining example of devotion to the practical side of the Christian religion. Unfortunately their very earnestness and enthusiasm lead them into the assertion of dogmatic belief, and in their inclination towards the position of the Church of Rome they catch something of the violence of assertion which characterises that church. There is latent danger in the decision of the English Church Union to protest against anything in the proposals for revision of the "Deposited Book," which is inconsistent with the doctrine of the "Real Presence in the Blessed Sacrament." There is danger also in the resolution passed in the following words :

That the English Church Union desires publicly to proclaim its faith that the presence of our Lord in His Sacrament, whether reserved or not, is adorable; and, furthermore, earnestly entreats the members of the Church Assembly not to consent to any Measure which may seem to prevent or hinder or discourage that adoration.

In such associations on either side of the question, in the impetuous propaganda of their leaders and in the support they give to priestcraft, more than half the difficulties of national religion find their breeding ground. In all religions, in every age, it has been the part of the official professor, the priest, to justify his dominance by the appeal to mysticism,-to hedge himself round by rules or formula which he alone can interpret. As with the Roman augur who smiled as he met his fellows, so it was with the Brahmins; so with the Pharisees; * and the

*Compare Milman, "History of Christianity" (1867), Vol. I, p. 270.

Christian religion has not been immune from the fault. As the tradition of its original government became fainter, as the world got further away from the apostles and the fathers, the reliance on dogma became more marked. It was the old story which had aroused the indignation of Christ: "They bind heavy burdens, and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers." This, despite many good bishops and honest humble-minded priests, was the basic error of the Church of Rome, leading to a series of iniquities and persecutions, at the remembrance of which humanity still shudders. The error still vitiates the pronouncements of the Papal See. The latest encyclical letter of the Pope* treats all differing in opinion as "infidels," and regards every attempt to inquire into truth as the pest of impiety."

"

Truly there is something to arrest one in the cynical philosophy of a Burmese gentleman cited in a recently published little book: "God is like an elephant round which blind men are groping. Each has hold of one leg and thinks that he has grasped the whole. Thus Buddhists, Hindus, Moslems, Christians-holding each a part of the truth-believe that they, and they alone, possess it all." This same error of exclusiveness has too often vitiated the faith of Christian bodies. And the ministers of these have fostered and exaggerated it. Hence the bigotry of the Scottish Calvinists. Herein the unsympathetic rigidity of "institutional religion," against which Mr. Sheppard inveighs.§

There is undoubtedly an eternal truth, and one day it will be given us to know it. It may be that in a matter like that which is now being discussed, it rests on a single point of doctrine; but it is much more probable that in a state of eternity and infinity, in the presence of infinite love, there are an infinite. number of ways of regarding any finite fact. We meanwhile here shall do well to make allowance for an endless number of variations in the manner in which truth may present itself to men.

To the fairly-balanced judicial mind it is inconceivable that under a system of religion differentiated from all the religions *De vera religionis unitate fovenda. Abstract in Times, Jan. 10, 1928. "Nothing so blue." E. Napier; p. 154.

Compare" Witch Wood," by John Buchan; p. 241 and 343, seq. 8" The Impatience of a Parson," by the Rev. H. L. R. Sheppard.

which have ever found a place in the world's history by its insistence on charity—on the genuine love of one's fellow menonly one way of regarding the problems of life, of aiming at the eternal truth, is the way of salvation. If one dogmatic view of the essentials is the only one which is right, if "heaven" is open only to those who adhere to it, then clearly all others are doomed to "hell." Such a view is contrary to the whole spirit of the Master's teaching. It is unnecessary here to argue the bearing of many cryptic utterances, e.g., " he that gathereth not with us, scattereth abroad "-" shall be cast into outer darkness," and others. They have their interpretation and their warning. But they are not to be applied to the honest and earnest inquirers after truth. The claim to exclusive and final authority in this world, if pressed to its logical conclusion, scandalises the whole conception of the Christian religion as it is unfolded in the books of the New Testament. If the Church of Rome is right, then the members of the Church of England are condemned to eternal damnation. If the Anglo-Catholics are right, how can the Baptist be saved? Put as baldly as this, the conclusion will probably find few supporters even amongst those of extreme views on either side: yet this is the implication which, perhaps unconsciously, lies in the exclusive attitude of each sect to the others. And if there were even a grain of truth in it, then, to borrow the phrase which the late Dean Stanley used one winter day in the Abbey of Westminster over forty years ago: "The resurrection of the just would be intolerable."

The difficult question of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, which is the crux of the present controversy in the church, was on the whole handled with great wisdom in the Thirty-nine Articles and in our present Book of Common Prayer. The statements defining and interpreting it may be said to go to the furthest limits of mystery which can be comprehended within the range of thoughtful inquiry. Once more it may be urged that in a matter touching infinity there must be left a place for infinite variations of apprehension. In the present Church of England there stand at one end the Protestants, represented by the recently formed League of Truth and Faith, basing themselves on unquestioned historical fact and the simple faith which appeals to the English mind; at the other end are the Anglo-Catholics, so close to the views of the Church of Rome that they have

seriously alarmed large sections of the nation. But between these two absolutely opposed conceptions there is an endless variety of gradations of opinion which it is the duty of the church to recognise. The more thoughtful and earnest a man is, the more likelihood there will be that he will not have precisely the same belief as his neighbour; and though authority may endeavour to guide, we are past the age when authority can with any advantage dictate.

There should, within wide limits, be room under the church for every shade of honest opinion and every conception of reverent worship; a generous latitude in doctrine and ceremonial. Is it not possible to bring home to all sections of the church the conviction that they should cast aside dogmatic beliefs and pronouncements, and reflect that they may not be all right and others all wrong?

Surely we may ask in all humility, both of ourselves and of others, what language the Lord himself would have used for these divisions. How would He regard the insistence on this or that particular view of His own memorial service? "It must needs be that offences come, but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh." Can we not appeal to-day to what after all was the great lesson of Christ's teaching-the living and far-reaching impulse which revolutionised the world-sacrifice of self and consideration for others? Is it too much to ask all those who are included within the Church of England to realise towards one another that large charity and generous self-suppression which have ever been the motive-power of true Christian progress.

It has been necessary to dwell on the question of the Lord's Supper because, in the controversy which has arisen round the rejection of the Deposited Book, the question of that service, and the related questions of reservation and adoration of the consecrated elements, have been the principal subjects of discussion. But passing to a wider vision of the responsibilities of the Church of England it is necessary to embark upon a criticism which goes deeper and further than any of the points raised in recent controversy.

"The clergy of the Church of England," observed a lady, who is markedly religious and practical in her public life, “make altogether too much of the Holy Communion." The speaker

belonged to a church* which, of and yet not in the Church of England, surpasses it in its thoroughness of organisation and the guarded use of ornate ritual and symbolism. It is a remark which accords with certain phases of evangelical thought, and the more it is considered the more it justifies itself. There has undoubtedly of late years been a growing tendency to exalt the service of Eucharist to the detriment of the general services of prayer and praise; a false sense of values has been imparted to many congregations. The trouble is intelligible: it is in part the result of a reaction against the neglect of the most intimate of services during something like a century and a-half: it is in part a tendency towards imitation of the Church of Rome and its ordinance of the Mass as the one object of religious concentration.

But neither in the wider religious life of this country, nor in that of His Majesty's overseas dominions, is there anything in the liturgy to attract men's minds like the simple services of matins and evensong in the Book of Common Prayer. The wisest of the clergy know this; and out in the furthest spaces of the British Empire the truth is over and over again driven home. An incident which illustrates the appeal of the simple service may not be irrelevant.

It is a brilliant winter day in North America: the sky overhead intensely blue, the wide expanse of snow-clad valley and hill dazzling the eye for miles. It is Sunday afternoon and the governor going, as his custom was, amongst the humbler people for whom he was responsible, had found his way out to a little mission church amid the firwoods and the snows. There, in unobtrusive fashion, he met the farmers and others who had come miles across the drifts for the afternoon service. But no parson was there. They waited in patience; for in such country and in such snow, delays are frequent. Some three-quarters of an hour passed. It was clear that no clergyman was forthcoming, and the sun was beginning to decline. So the governor, consulting with the churchwardens, decided to take the service himself, as far as he properly could; and thus were the old familiar prayers offered, and the lessons read, and the hymns sung, and a short address was given, more particularly to the young lads of the congregation; then on their sleighs or catamarans, or ploughing

*The " Catholic Apostolic Church "(Irvingite) does not consider its members as necessarily separated from the Church of England.