RECONSTRUCTION.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1396, 23 March 1912, Page 4

RECONSTRUCTION.

\Yr, publish in another part of this issue a suimnarv of the first of a

series of lectures on "The, Reconstructiou of Belief" recently given by the Bishop of Oxford (l)u. Core). The lectures are remarkable on account of (he. man who delivered them, the audience which heard them, and the treatment of the subject. The great gathering which filled the Schools bore striking testimony to the unique position which DR.. Goiti: has won for himself at Oxford both by his personality and his scholarship. His audience was composed of the intellect of what is in the opinion of many the most famous university in the world, and included professors, men of all colleges' and creeds, experts in philosophy and theology, and representatives of almost all the other great branches of learning. Dr. Gore always has the j courage of his opinions. He is not afraid to stand alone, and whether his subject may be practical religion, theology, or social reform his utterances are listened to with great attention. His views on such a question as "The Reconstruction of Belief" are of special interest, for few men in the English-speaking world have been privileged to exert such a powerful influence, in the sphere of modern religious thought. In 1800 his essay in I,nx ifw.uli created a, great sensation in the_ Church owing t) what was then considered the "advanced" character of the views therein expressed; but theological ideas have moved so quickly since then that Bishop Gore's position is now regarded by some people as quite conservative. However that may he, his lecture shows that ho is as determined as ever he was to look the facts square in the He. is not one of those shallow optimists, who, by shutting their eyes to half the facts, arrive at the conclusion that everything is just as it should be and nothing could bo better. Dn. Gore has no time for a fool's paradise of this sort. He admits that there are disquieting and discouraging, if not actually antagonistic, tendencies at work. He is equally opposed to the. attitude of capitulation which would I abandon traditional Christian belief as something intellectually out of fashion ; to the spirit of scepticism— always balancing, never concluding; and to the attitude of moral panic which refuses to have anything to do with critical inquiry. Science and criticism must, he says, be free. The Church must make no claim to restrain the knowledge of anything that can be known, or the testing of anything that can be tested. Dr. Gore states that it is a vain delusion to think that the, central facts of the creed can be exempted from criticism, and declares emphatically that "if they stand, they stand only because free criticism leads to results which are compatible with, or suggestive of faith." The work of religious reconstruction is a continuous process. It Goes on in every age, but is especially active, in periods of great intellectual and social development such as the present. It has been carried on by leaders of thought like St. Paul, St. John, the Alexandrine fathers, St. Augustine, the great schoolmen, and the reformers, and able men in our own generation are engaged in the same task. All this is a sign of life, not death; of strength, not weakness. It has been well said that "nothing is a surer indication of life than the power of meeting new conditions," and the fact that Christianity has in the past proved that it has possessed this power in a very remarkable degree, amply justifies (ho confident belief that its resources will be adenuaic to meet the spiritual needs of the ages yet to come.