A NEW NATIONAL CHURCH SPIRIT. ITO TTEM Emma or ouo
"Soocroroiel SIR,—Is not the reason why there is so much religions unrest in our Church the divorce from reality of our ecclesiasticism
Look, for example, at the almost childishness of the pro- ceedings in Convocation. The ordinary thinking layman wonders whether the members are merely playing with subjects thatarise or are addressing themselves to them in real earnest. One may easily alter Oxenstierna's famous aphorism and say that from the proceedings of Convocation we see with how little wisdom the Church is governed. Little wonder that the Hulsean Professor of Divinity in the University of Cambridge entered his protest in the Times for March 4th: "Falsehood is a sin even when practised by a clergyman only once in twelve months, and its alternative, disobedience, is not a virtue." A Church divided against itself cannot stand. A National Church in which poor and rich are sundered by bitter class animosity is no National Church at all. It may be that the fundamental unreality in our Church life is due to the curse of party which divides the Church in the individual mind. The best means of getting rid of that curse, which has placed the vast destinies of our Church at the mercy of a number of factions led by liturgiologists without imaginations is to revive the idea of a National Church in the hearts of all Heroism and a generous devotion to the common good are the only effective answer to unrest Calculations of party interest must be overborne. If we can revive and strengthen the National Church spirit—the old heroic English spirit of devotion to the common good—the problem might be solved. Something more than the destruction of the party system is required. There must be new ideas in keeping with the enlightened scholarship of the twentieth century, and there must be a real determination to give effect to them. As Archbishop Leighton remarked, "the body of religion is torn and bleeding, its soul is dying, while we are fighting about the hem of its gannent."—I am, Sir, &c., Giggiestriak-in.-Oravem THMOD01121 P. itneettlmntmwr,
Previous page
