THE PRESENT CONDITION OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

Tuapeka Times, Volume VI, Issue 286, 24 July 1873, Page 11

THE PRESENT CONDITION OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

(From the " Daily Telegraph ," April IG.J {Continued from our last.) Now what is the faith of this Church — what is the doctrine which it professes on behalf of the English people? Tiie Church rests upon a Divine j foundation, Jesus the Christ, and holds a commission from Him to bring all men to faith in and obedience to Him. Its rule of faith is Holy Scripture, I which it dedares " contains all things necessary to salvation," and its faith is summarised in the Prayer-Book. The different parties which exist in the Church have these bonds of union, Further, they all believe in the existence of an outward visible Chuvch. This is a necessity ; there can be no inward religion without an outward demonstration of it ; the power of the Spirit must be proved by its manifestation. But here we meet with a divergence. One party holds that there is only one particular form of the visible Church, divinely appointed, involved in the original structure, and to remain until the end of the world. Those who hold this view are called High Churchmen. The Low Churchmen hold that the form of the visible Church is an accident which varies according to circumstances and expediency, that its ceremonies are variable, and that nothing is absolutely necessary but the internal life and faith and love which the indwelling Spirit gives to those who love God. Now, if these two views are absolutely irreconcilable and internicine, it is hard to see why they ought to exist within the same body of religionists. But if it should prove that they are two poles' of the eternal truth — that the view held by each side is a view which religion " cannot afford to lose — then it will be the glory of the Church of England that both views are held within her pale. It is true that each view wiien pursued logically to its full conclusion, will land men outside the confines of the the Church of England. The High Churchmen, who pass into Ritualists, use their endeavors to exalt the forms which they reverence so deeply, and are denounced by their opponents as returning under fair pretences to the superstitions and ecclesiastical bondage from which the nation three hundred years ago escaped. The opposing party again have been accused of setting light by the Prayer-Book they have vowed to follow, and of giving themselves to insubordination, intellectual licentiousness, unbelief. Now, as a matter of fact, there have been men on both sides of the highest piety and goodness in the Church of England, be their position logical or not, who have found themselves able to rest in her, and to stand in her defence. Not to make mention of the living, there have been in our time such men as Keble and Bishop Hamilton on one side, and Bishop Waldegrave and Henry Venn on the other, of whom all men speak with love and veneration. For the great truths of Christain theology are beyond the domaiu of logic or definition. The sovereign power of God and the free will of man seem to be in antagonism ; we cannot reconcile them, we can only state them, Pursue either doctrine logically, and you have on one side rejection of human responsibility, Mahometan fatalism ; on the other, the denial of Omnipotence and of the Divine government of the universe. And so there is not a truth of the G-ospel which has not a correlative truth, without which each would become an exaggeration and distortion. It is a painful but a necessary subject to touch upon here, the hard words which have been thrown by one party at the other; but we have seen hopeful signs also of late days. Take the simple expression, "Private judgment." and think of all the things that have been said about it. It means, says one man, judging without knowledge, deciding without evidence ; it slights everything that is venerable, disputes everything that is approved. It will be so m certainly to a man who asks questions boldly, without any desire to walk by the truth he has learned, who talks loudly and with studied recklessness to frighten his mother and sisters. But it has a righteous and reverent meaning when it expresses tho feelings of one who cannot accept conclusions which are presented to him in complicated form, who feels that he is responsible to Grod Himself for his belief, and who enquires in order thot he may be assured " what the will of the Lord is." It is not the private judgment that is to be condemned, but self-will that lacks earnestness. So again with the charges that have been brought against those who have approached the Church of Rome, that these men were " traitors in the camp, eating the bread of the Church and falsifying the doctrines." Let it be borne in mind how self-denying have been the lives of some of those who were accused, how impossible it is to convict them of any selfish motive. Men do not play the traitor to ruin all their worldly hopes. "Traitors in the. camp" was the phrase again applied by at least one living emimenc man to the Evangelical clergy because they appeared to deny the doctrine of regeneration in baptism. Believing in the absolute necessity of personal individual faith, and in the sovereign and incomprehensible grace of

Grod, they looked upon the declaration in the Baptismal Service as the mere fallible expression of men, which we ought to interpret subordinate] v to thoss truths which they held to !><> of such superlative necessity, and which the Prayer Book Phraseology seemc-d to them to be in danger of obscuring. " Traitor " is certainly not the word which any one now-a-days would apply to Archbishop Sumner. But spite of these hard words, there ' are signs of better things at hand. Churchmen are ye.-'rninrr for moderation I — not, like tlut of Gullio, philosophical indifference, which is akin to contempt, and which is commonly the offspring of ignorance or of recklessness, but the moderation which lies in a pious and reverent regard for the conscientious convictions of others, nut beatuse social propriety demands it, but because such convictions are based upon some re;il and God-giving apprehension of truth. If in an evil clay one party in the Church should drive out the other, the loss would not be merely the loss of the piety of the defeated members, but of the truth of which they are specially the defenders. Eor the mutual antagonism is one of correlative truths ; while the one side is realising Christianity in inword consciousness as a subjective verity, the other is substantiating it in outward acts, making it an objective truth. The one sees in Divine grace a sppcial and particular gift, the other teaches men to seek it as a universal boon. To the one the Gospel comes i through the written Word, to the other through the living body, the Church, the heurl whereof is Christ. The oru> sets forth the Word, the other the Sacraments ; the one asks for spiritual, the other for outward service. Let any pious earnest man look upon the people around him and judge whether there is not need of both, whether the loss of either would not be most grievous. I am persuaded that the strength of the Church of England lies in the strenuous holding of their opinion by each paity, and its weakness in their forgetting in their zeal what is clue to cash other. It might probabty be shown here that the influence of both parties is very great for good upon all the religious bodies in England outside the Church. And " Broad Churchmen " — what of them? Can it be said that they have any mission to fulfil, or are they merely to be tolerated until it is possible to get rid of them 1 For people have been ready enough here with their nicknames, and have applied the names " heretic " and " infidel" to men whose goodness, personal sacrifices, and zeal ought to have protected them from the imputation of baseness, and who have done, and will still do, good work among us, though thoy, liks the rest, have their dangers and temptations. The word is applied certainly to men of the most various opinions. But there is only one class of whom we need speak here — namely, those who have found the scientific discoveries of late } r ears in conflict with traditional Christianity. Now here, as in other cases, it is idle to counsel "moderation," meaning thereby abstinence from enquiry for fear of coming to unpalatable concusions. Nor shall we do the faith any good by stigmatising enquiry as " lawlessness." A man who loves and fears God cannot be lawless. The moderation which characterises him is the caution and reference which every true philosopher will feel when he looks back upon the nobleness of the past, and contemplates the power of the traditional belief upon men and women around him. He will not speak lightly of snch belief so long as he is seeking God and his truth. ''It is no blame to the Church of England," said the Primate in his late charge, t# but rather it may its pride, that it is able to include amongst its ministers the most active and enquiring intellects, and that it has no fear least a bold examination of truth should destroy those truths of God on which it teaches men to depend for their salvation." "Doubts," as one of the acutest intellects in England has observed, " are often the punishment of existing neglect of duty. Persons who make no effort after strictness of life, who do not live by rule, who do not attempt to know themselves, to correct their faults, to keep out of temptation, to resist evil, and to deny their wills, must not be surprised if they are uusettled and restless." An excellent and well-timed warning, but not a saying which we are to use as a touchstone for trying the faith of neighbors. For doubts are often the result of faith, and humility, and conscience ; and abscence of doubt is often the result of indolence, faithlessness and presumption. The duty of all Churchmen is plain — namely, to uphold, as earnestly as they may, the truths which they love, and to walk in the light of them. Earnestness and zeal for God will bring us unity out of diversity ; and the Church of Engltind will continue to bring forth out of her treasures things new and .old.