CORRESPONDENCE. "STAY AWAY'S" LETTER.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 171, 23 August 1909, Page 1

CORRESPONDENCE.

"STAY AWAY'S" LETTER.

To the Editor. Sir,—Concerning "Stay Away's" letter .on Friday: 1 gather from it that lie is a disciple of the late Archdeacon Uovctt. It is not safe to judge » man iiy his followers, and perhaps some other dis- ' eiple will inform me whether iL really [ was part of the late Archdeacon's teachI ing that if you didn't like the service I at,your pariah church you ought to stay away. I wonder why the average Low Churchman of pronounced prejudices generally develops such a nice sense of loyalty that he is impelled to foul hii own nest on every possible—and impossible—occasion? For it required some ingenuity to see in a reference to the falling attendance at another Church u chance to cry "Rotten fish!" about one's own society. If the late Archdeacon has many more disciples like "Stay Away," and they follow, the latter's illuminating example, St. Mary's will be —better attended! It would be interesting to know what was the Archdeacon's teaching on the point. Did he really preach such uncompromising disloyalty, and did he also believe in washing the soiled linen of the Church in the market-place? The answer will be, o f course, an emphatic negative; and that disposes of "Stay Away." As to the assertions, they are so puerile that no dotfbt the Church authorities will ignore them; personally, 1 am not concerned now whether they he false or true; but surely the remedy is in the hands of the congregation! In l any case, wliat prescriptive right, in the matter of unessentials, has any member of the congregation to ■ dictate to another how he shall worship? If the outward and visible sign helps a man (and the most elementary knowledge of psychology can prove decisively that it does) why should it be denied him! Surely it is not suggested that we a.e still in the intellectual gloom of the Middle Ages, when popularly such signs were put to superstitious uses? Was it the sign which was at fault or the use ? 1 am not a High Churchman, and J. don't necessarily cross myself, but i can't see why I or any other man should not have leave, without comment, without rebuxe. without scandal, without hint of disloyalty, to use the sign of the Cross, il and whensoever we desire.

The truth is 'tli.it the merely Protestant attitude typified by your correspondent is in these days just as absurd, I just as illogical, to the true Churchman as the merely Roman was to the Reformers of the Church; and the moot real Catholicism would allow the fullest individual liberty in private devotions. The difference 'between the High Churchman and the Low would seem to be that to the former the Prayer Book provides the minimum and to the latter the maximum of worship. At present the Church of England is slowly dragging herself out of the slough of despond into which the extreme of mere Protestantism plunged her. There is no virtue in such Protestantism per sc. if any one doubts it, let him read "Passing Protestantism and Coming Catholicism," by the eminent American' Coiigregationalist Mewraan Smyth. 'What is taking place in the Church of England is not a revival of Romanism, but a new Reformation. The mists of prejudice are rolling away; we are beginning to sec things in their true shape, in truer perspective, undistortcd by the fog of quarrel, uncolored by the Dervish fanaticism forced by circumstances on our forefathers. There may be some who will go over to Rome because we won't go far enough, but there will not be so many as have already gone over to the non-episcopal bodies because we will not mutilate and destroy enough to satisfy' them. Unless the reformers are driven out by Low Church inelasticity, there is not the least fear of a wholesale return of the English Church to Rome. Humanism in the Jliddlc Agcg may have reduced the Western world to religious and political slavery, but Protestantism has accomplished no more than the infinite dissection of its share of Christendom into warring cliques, thus accomplishing that very disuniiicatiou we were led to believe would be attempted by the Power of Evil. And this is the slough out of which the whole Christian world is slowly emerging. All Christendom is in a state ot transition, and whether to a better or a worse condition depends on the attitude, the reee.ptiveuess, the adaptability of Christians, and, as I believe with Newman Smyth, especially of Anglicans. The Modernist (an. internal Reformation) movement in the great Church of Rome will not be defeated, the cry of Protestantism for reunion will not 'be denied, and the growing desire for greater individual breathing-space, for more personal ritual freedom—in a word, for a truer Catholicism—within Anglicanism must not be refused.

What we noed to cultivate is greater liberality, more broadness of mind, a larger charity. In any case, Churchmen will make themselves and their glorious Church ridiculous and contemptible in ■the eyes of the world by exhibiting the puerility of mind expressed by "Stay Away." Even if his mind is static Anglican Catholicism isn't, and he owes it to himself to realise the truth.— \ am, etc, CHUKOHAIAX BOth August, 1009,