A REAL LIVE BISHOP.

Hokitika Guardian, 29 December 1919, Page 4

A REAL LIVE BISHOP.

By one who knows him. The Bishop of Peterborough, who has declared at the Church Congress that the need of the Church and the nation is a living theology, is himself a “live” bishop. A young man, a very young man for a bishop—he is only 45—the Right Rev. Frank Theodore Woods became spiritual head of a diocese that was ironically known among Churchmen themselves as “the Dead See.” He quickly turned it into a lively see. While far too many bishops give fortli groans, laments, and prophecies of gloom, and while a few bishops hindered rather than helped their country during the years of trial, baiting and biting when then should have been up and doing, the Bishop of Peterborough has tried to help the laity. Such oracular gusts as have blown from the “live” see of Peterborough have been virile and stimulating. I trampled with the Bishop of Peterborough on on© of his parish-to-parish pilgrimages in the fat lands of Leicestershire. A common comment upon him by the surprised maloslaitv was: “Ah he’s a man’s bishop.”

Said a farm labourer at Harby, “He’s the first bishop I’ve seen. Bishops don’t usually bother about walking round talking to chaps like us. But I often read what bishops say—how rotten this country is. There don’t seem to lie no good in nothing, according to bishops. To my mind, there’s far too many pimperkins among bishops. This bishop’s like our parson, that was a sailor once. He’s a man.”

The word “pimperkin” was new to me but when I thought of certain “mustn’thit the enemy hit someone at homo prelates I thought it a good word. Six feet four inches is the Bishop of Peterborough. If you saw him in lay dress in a crowded street you would turn to look at the giant figure,strong face, and big stride. When he marches down a country lane with his pastoral staff he so looks the “Church militant” that village heretics must fear hand grenades in the folds of his cassock. But tlie Bishop of Peterborough is far more interested in a Church militant id furthering human brotherhood than in a Church militant in enforcing dying dogma. I suspect that he is more concerned with Labour unrest than with tlie Athanasian Creed. He was a vicar of Bradford once, so there is little he does not know about Labour He has a belief that Labour unrest is not caused half so much by wage hunger as by hunger for socia enlargement and recognition. Ho told mo in 1917 that “tins war will have been fought in vain unless employers and employed are brought mto closer brotherhood.” He holds hat the Church’s immediate work is to b “power-house of such brotherhood ‘that is probably why he recently entertained the railwaymen at his pakc at Peterborough.) . .. . The Bishop of Peterborough is righ when he ascribes the disturbing spread of occultism and spiritualism to Dio failure of theology and theologians to feed the people with anything except “dry bones” worship. Rank and ions plants are growing apace in our ancient cathedral close of outworn able and mystification dogma. The dyed, draggled “medium” is replacing tde priest; table rappings are listened becaiuse the knock on the pulpi feeble and unheard .