AN ANGLICAN VIEW

Hokitika Guardian, 3 July 1930, Page 6

AN ANGLICAN VIEW

SCHEME. FOR- LAMBETH FROM

SOUTH INDIA

WELLINGTON, July I

The opening next Saturday of the Lambeth Conference was referred to at considerable length by T)r T. TI. Sprott, Anglican Bishop of Wellington in his presidental address to the Svnod this afternoon.

“The conference,” he said, “is an assemblage of bishops of oui communion throughout the world. Being purely a voluntary assemblage, it possessss no legislative powers. Nevertheless its moral authority is great, rt is in fact, the only method at present available for ascertaining even roughly the general mind of the church on questions of common interest. The present conference is likely to prove to be the most momentous yet held. In regard to one allimportant subject, the subject of Christian /e-union, it' is hardly an exaggeration to say that the church ~iav find itself at the cross roads. Since 1887 the Lambeth Conference fins taken a leading part in advocating the re-union of Christendom. So far the conference’s discussions on this question have been abstract and academic. Far different will he the discussion at its session this year. For the. first time there will come before the conference a definite concrete scheme of union into which our Focuses in South India are prepared to enter. "With certain non-episcopal communions carrying on missionary work in the same reigion, it ought not to -surprise us that the first definite

Hi erne should come from the mission field. Many of us have long felt that so it would be. The Bishop of Dornakal, who visited us seven years ago, has said that, while in Christendom disunion is weakness, in the mission '■mid it is a crime; and we may add it is paralysis.”

Bishop Sprott detailed a scheme for re-union in South India,( and the hearing such a scheme would have on the question of re-union in Christendom as a whole. His observations, he pointed out, w'we hi« own personal opinions and should not he regarded as an autlioritve statement of the position of the church of this province. Tn '•oncluding a scholarly address, he remarked. “The old-established churches —notwithstanding the weakness they suffer from division—may he content •vaiting for cataclysms may for them missionary 'communities afford to wait? Will these South India Christians, who long as we cannot long for full communion and fellowship with their fellow Christians in a world of secularised Paganism, be content to wait— What if they come to feel that waiting for cataclysms may fer them earn extinction ? I do not believe that they will wait.”