THE PAN-ANGLICAN CONGRESS OF 1908.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 373, 16 April 1908, Page 4

THE PAN-ANGLICAN CONGRESS OF 1908.

This year is to see a novel experiment in Church life. For the past 40 years the Bishops of the Anglicn Church have met from time to time to take counsel together on- great matters which have to do with the best interests of the life of the Church. But always hithetto it has been only the Bishops who have come to these meetings. In 1908, however, a gathering of a new kind will be held. For the first time clergy, laymen, and lay women will meet in conference together with the Bishops. It is this meeting that is known as the Pan-Anglican Congress. To see how big a plan this is, it is well to begin by thinking to what a great size God in His goodness has allowed the Church to grow. To get hold of this idea you have only to count the Bishoprics. There are 37 Bishoprics in England and Wales, and 123 years ago there were no bishoprics outside the British Isles. But now there are not less than 211 bishoprics outside England and Wales. These are in every part of the world, the United States, Canada, the West Indies, South America, Australia, New Zealand, India, China Jadan, and Africa. some possible results. New it is from all these that people are coming to join in the Pan-Anglican Congress in Eondon next June. Men and women whose heart God has touched with a longing to do something to help in building up the life of His

Chinch or to help in the spread of it, will take the trouble to travel long distances from all these lands. Most of them will be people who have been careful students of the various problems ol human society and of the life of the Church, or have had actual experience in those problems. By thus comparing notes with other people from other lands we may expect that some progress will be made in finding an answer to many questions and difficulties. How, for example, the Church may bring the power of religion into family life and into the questions affecting tmle and labour; how human thought may be guided to recognise the truth revealed in Jesus Christ; how clergy and layworkers, both men and women, may best be prepared for their ministry ; how unity among Christians may be restored ; how the white man in his isolation in distant parts of the earth may be kept Christian, and how the coloured man may be won for Christ ; so that God’s purpose may be accomplished that “ The eaith shall be full of the knowledge of the Ford as the waters cover the sea.” It is in London that these things will be talked out each morning and afternoon for a week (June 15 to 23) in seven different meetingplaces at the same time on subject at each placd. Each evening also in the Albert Hall, seating 7,000 people, will be held a meeting of a more popular kind at which some of the results of the discussions during the day will form the subject of the speeches.