JESUS HUMAN AND DIVINE.*
WAS it Bishop Creighton who described " the weak brother " as a displeasing compound of the bully, the liar, and the fool ?
• Jaw Human and Divine. By Hastings Hasiniali, MD. London : Melrose- Od.1
The words might have been taken by the Dean of Carlisle as the motto for this reprint of his much-discussed Cambridge
paper, " Christ as Logos and Son of God," together with three sermons, two of which, " The Divinity of Christ " and " The Word of God," were preached in Carlisle Cathedral ; and the third, " The Greatest Need of the Church," at the Birmingham Church Congress.
Whether " the extremely difficult and complicated formulae which the Church has handed down to us " were a suitable subject for discussion at the Cambridge Conference is matter of opinion ; the quality of the press and party clamour provoked by the addresses is matter not of opinion but of fact. The methods of our Anglican Ultramontanes were frankly detestable ; the pretext of religion has a lamentable power of arousing the worst passions of mankind. The Dean, rightly, emphasizes this. Piety is no excuse for slander. The papers read at Girton
" were grossly, and in some cases, I fear, wilfully misrepresented. Many newspapers announced that I and other clergymen had ` denied the Divinity of Christ ' • and eminent ecclesiastics, who should have known better, proceeded to fulminate anathemas on the assumption that the report was true."
In one instance Dr. Rashdall was charged with the assertion that Christ was " man, and not God " :- " The statement must have been deliberately and maliciously invented. Exactly the same trick—the insertion of these very words— has been played upon mo before, possibly by the same Pressman. It was not a bona-fide mistake. The lie was contra- dicted and apologised for in the paper which was the first and chief offender, and in all others which reported it, so far as I could reach them."
It is to be hoped that the attention of those who have to deal with the Memorials on the subject of the Conference lately presented to Convocation by the E.C.U. and similar associations
will be called to " the systematic campaign of misrepresentation which is still being carried on " for party purposes in party quarters. A wise Scottish minister, being asked to pray for the General Assembly, did so, with qualifications ; asking that this venerable body might be guided " no to do ony harm." Some such petition is, perhaps, not wholly unsuitable to ecclesiastical assemblies nearer home.
The scandal said to have been given by the Cambridge Conference is not, and never was, a genuine scandal ; it was
engineered by sectarian agitators, and has been kept alive, with
difficulty, for sectarian ends. The lay mind is frankly not interested in the questions raised, judging rightly that they have little' connexion either with religion or reason ; theologians raise a dust, and then complain that they cannot see. If the average churchgoer is startled by some of the Dean's statements, it is because popular piety has fallen out of touch with its formal standards. Nothing, in fact, is as unorthodox as ortho- doxy ; a popular religion, says Cardinal Newman, is always corrupt. " Much so-called orthodoxy is really Apollinarian-
ism " ; to St. Thomas, as to the ordinary modem philosopher, modern Christianity is often " Tritheism pure and simple " ; and the Dean's erudition pleasantly discovers Monothelitism in that malleus licareatcrrunt, the Bishop of Zanzibar.
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