The Dominion. THURSDAY, AUGUST 31, 1911. AN INTERESTING APPOINTMENT.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1220, 31 August 1911, Page 4

The Dominion. THURSDAY, AUGUST 31, 1911. AN INTERESTING APPOINTMENT.

The appointment of the Anglican Bishop of Birmingham (Dr. Gore) to the Sec of Oxford, as announced by cablegram in yesterday's issue, is a matter of great interest to a very large number of people throughout the English : speaking world. Dn. Gore is one of the most inspiring personalities in the Anglican Church at the present time, and his fame extends far beyond the limits of the religious body to which he personally belongs. A pronounced High Churchman of the Liberal School, he was.an intimate friend of Dr. Dale, the eminent. Congregationalist, and it is generally understood that it was mainly duo to his influence that George Romanes, one of the most celebrated of the immediate disciples of Charles Darwin, returned shortly before his death to the Christian faith. In IS9O quite a sensation was caused in the theological world by the appearance of LuxMundi, a scries of essays by Oxford scholars dealing with the relations between religion and science and Biblical criticism, the excitement ' being mainly caused by Dr. Gore's contribution on "the Holy Spirit and Inspiration." The advanced views therein expressed gave rise to much controversy and alienated some of his closest friends, including Canon Liddon, of St. Paul's, while Father Ignatius denounced the author at one of tho (Jhurch Congresses as "infidel Gore." Theological thought has, however, travelled far since those days, and many of the most liberal views set forth in Dr. Gore's essay are at present so widely accepted that they are regarded by many as quite conservative. Indeed the pace has now become too fast for Dr. Gore himself, and quite recently he issued an urgent note of warning regarding certain tendencies in New Testament criticism, more especially the attempt to "reduce tho Person oE Jesus Christ to the merely' human limit, or eliminate the strictly miraculous from His life." As a matter of fact the whole question of the miraculous is at present being reconsidered from the scientific, philosophical, and religious points of view. As was pointed, out in a recent review in tho Times the old conception of a law of nature as being of universal validity, and of a miracle as a breach of such law is being challenged, many leading thinkers contending that the popular idea of the laws of nature is just as fictitious as the popular conception of a miracle. The reviewer contends that "if we hold that it is reasonable to expect unique results from a unique fact [i.e., the unique personality of Christ] we shall never go further in the negative direction than to suspend judgment on actual occurrences reported in the Gospel and we shall be more ready for a sacramental, as distinct from a pantheistic view of nature and experience." At Oxford Bishop Gore will bo in the thick of the discussion of such questions as these, and in the very midst of the never-ceasing struggle between the old and the new in religious and philosophic thought. He will, no doubt, exercise considerable inlluence on the work of theological reconstruction which is now going mi, but it is to be hoped that, in addition to his episcopal duties, he

will still find time to continue his endeavours in the cause of Church reform, and to secure a wise and just settlement of the pressing social problems of the day to which he has given much earnest attention in the past. Dr. Gore, who in his younger days had a very distinguished career at Oxford University, is sure to receive a very hearty welcome on his return to Oxford as Bishop of the Diocese.