LIBERAL EVANGELICALISM.

Liberal Evangelicalism. An Interpretation by Members of the Church of England. Edited by the Rev. T. GUY ROGERS, B.D., M.C. (Hodder and Stoughton. 1923.) 6s. net.

THE English Church has been waiting for the book that has recently appeared bearing this title. It issues from a number of men in the one of the groups within the Church of England which claims direct spiritual and intellectual descent from the Evangelicals. These men and women held at one time, as is very well known, a place in the forefront of the religious life. of the people-a position largely due to their clear convictions, their spirituality, and their capacity for organization. No body of men of whom so much as this can be said is ever devoid of positive principles and constructive aims. There come times, however, when such a body, owing to special conditions, throws so much of its energy into negation as to have little to spare for the readjustments of thought and language which the process of time always demands of every form of human society, however positive its tenets. This has been the case during the last ninety years with the Evangelical group, or party, or school of thought, in the Church of England. Earnest and active at the beginning of that period, to an extent sometimes hardly recognized, it felt itself bound to oppose the Tractarian movement with all its power. Its measures of resistance were often more natural than wise. It entrenched itself behind phrases and words. It confirmed its purpose by recollection of the great things God had done for and by it in the past. Its adherents forgot that to do no more than this is the behaviour of weakness trying to seem strong, and betokens an abated vitality. They lost sight of the truth, stamped indelibly upon all that Scripture of which they were skilful rather than profound exponents, that in Christ Yea' had come to be.

The time was bound to come, as all could see who knew that the principles of Evangelicalism can never die while Christianity lives, when negatives would be largely dropped, when protest would no longer be the main characteristic of Evangelicalism, when old phrases would be remodelled or interpreted afresh— the new losing nothing of the idea at the heart of the old-and

when the great positive truths of the Gospel would once more inspire the hearts and fill the teaching of the Evangelical group.

The aim and execution of the book before us fulfil these expectations. Not that the execution is exhaustive. The last effect the authors thought of producing on their readers was that there would be found in its pages a completely rounded statement of the Evangelical position. They are much too well aware that when a completely rounded statement of any theological position is attained the time has come to move on. The purpose of the book, and the fact that the purpose exists, are of far more importance than the final effectiveness of the essays, or the inequality of the treatment of their particular subjects by the various authors. No criticism is more futile than that of finding fault with any work on the ground that it does not do what the maker did not propose or attempt to do by its means. This book set out to be positive and constructive, not final or complete. There is hardly an unnecessary negative to be found in it. Familiar phrases and words which no longer contain their original meaning are remarkable for their absence. Experience of the life and power of Christianity is interwoven with the work throughout.

It is very necessary to observe that the Evangelical group, as represented in this book or elsewhere, claims to hold and to teach the whole Gospel. It would not for a moment allow, any more than any other considerable group in the Church would allow, that there is a kind of partition among the groups of the Church's doctrinal territory, or that, by a federation of the groups alone, can the sum total of the truth of the Gospel be attained. Even if it could truthfully be said that the groups together compose the Church of England to-day, they would all repudiate the suggestion that they severally hold one or more pieces of the truth, which together make up the doctrine of the Church. Each one is aware that it has much to learn of the meaning and power of the Gospel, although perhaps it may not be unfair to say that the Anglo-Catholic appears to be less fully aware than others of the possibilities of the future, as compared with the attainments of the past, in this respect. No group can allow that its tenets are doctrinally defective until they are combined with those of other groups.

The importance of this fact is considerable when we seek to determine the attitude which any one group should take in regard to any other. To be more specific, the Evangelical is unable to sacrifice truth to a false charity and admit that the Anglo

Catholic is in possession of fundamental truths which he does not himself hold, while he may freely allow that he is not concerned to deny the tenets of the Anglo-Catholic except where and when those tenets controvert or deny his own.

The Bishop of Manchester, in a recent lecture, finds the origin of the various schools of thought within the Church in the possibility of making any one of the fundamental articles of the Christian religion the intellectual focus of the whole of Christian doctrine. In the following sentence he changes the metaphor and describes several of these fundamental doctrines as pivots of various schools. Which kind of focus the Bishop had in his mind is not clear, but if we accept the figure of the pivot we have to ask whether all the doctrines chosen by the various schools are fundamental doctrines, and whether the pivot will always bear the weight imposed upon it; and again, whether the pivot may not be shifted by this or that school to such parts of its doctrine as will result in bringing down the whole of it in collapse. The pivot, that is to say, can be shifted only within certain limits, and we cannot acquiesce in the desire of those who beg us, for Christian charity's sake, to raise no objection to men choosing their pivotal doctrine as and where they please. We must condemn their action as essentially untrue, if it reduces our own clear convictions of the truth to disorder, and our vision of God to illusion.

There may be, and there certainly ought to be, compromise between the groups on matters of ceremonial and matters of taste; nor ought one group to condemn another because the latter attaches importance to some subjects which the former finds neither attractive nor edifying. Compromise and tolerance between the groups on subjects such as these is clearly a Christian duty, even if it be not a pleasure to the loyal hearted servant of Christ. But the case is entirely different when the tenets of one group falsify those of another. Where the tenets of one are fundamentally destructive of those of the other, compromise is inadmissible. Any group is bound to oppose, though never with bitterness, any other whose position makes its own impossible.

The need for humility, for discussion, and for study never passes from any group. Endeavour to see things from the point of view of others, especially when those others are our fellow-Christians, must never be wanting. In the end, however, a decision must be made when both cannot be true, for, while two apparently irreconcilable positives may both be ultimately

true, we cannot allow that the man or the group asserting a doctrine to be true, and the man or group denying it, can both be right.

Now it is a remarkable fact that, at the present time, whenever able and learned men of any group succeed in explaining in carefully thought-out words what they understand to be the true doctrine of Christ and His Church, their attitude is almost, if not quite, entirely positive, and that the men of like qualifications in any other group find comparatively little to object to in what is, under these conditions, actually said.

A man, for instance, whose understanding of Jesus Christ disposes him to antipathy to the Anglo-Catholic position as expounded by papers and people he has seen and heard, reads. something of the addresses given at Anglo-Catholic Congresses. He reads these addresses in order to learn the point of view of the writers and their reasons for taking it, as set forth in these more or less authoritative declarations. What does he find? Positive statements for the most part with which he is in agreement so far as they are clearly expressed. He has little liking for some of the modes of expression, but that is not important. He finds, too, a good deal of insistence on the importance of Anglo-Catholicism, while there is so singularly little exposition of the meaning of it, as to set him wondering whether, after all, he too is an Anglo-Catholic, and, if so, what all the trouble is about. When the title is clearly explained the distinctions which it is assumed to imply seem to be diminished, and even tend to disappear.

Successful attempts by any of the groups 'to produce a reasoned and coherent statement of a theological positionwhich is what the writers of the book before us describe as their aim-are few and far between. When they are made, it would appear that the various groups within the Church of England are not so diverse as they sometimes, especially as represented by rank-and-file lovers of the tag-word and the negative, seem to be.

This is the impression conveyed by Congress addresses. Let us take another instance from the representative press. In a recent issue, the Church Times, treating of words in a charge by the Bishop of Sodor and Man and criticizing his imputation of certain views to Anglo-Catholicism, quotes and summarizes St. Thomas Aquinas to the effect that 'in no way is Christ's Body locally in this Sacrament.' And yet, if words and actions mean anything-words and actions familiar to us all-one

might easily suppose, with the Bishop of Sodor and Man, that the local presence of Christ's Body in the Sacrament was a cardinal doctrine in the mind of Anglo-Catholicism. Are we really so far apart after all?

On the other hand, to one to whom this book on Liberal Evangelicalism commends itself, and who, none the less, would be perfectly fair to Anglo-Catholicism, there appears to be little in the book to which an Anglo-Catholic of large and receptive mind would take strong exception. Where he did take exception it would probably be rather to degree of emphasis, or relative proportion, than to any statements he must regard as grievously objectionable.

What visions of peace among men of goodwill rise before our eyes when we take note of these things! If men would all think out what they mean, and express their thoughts in carefully chosen language-if leaders of groups would disavow the use by their followers of catchwords which the users shirk the duty of putting into current English, we should often find ourselves to be at one where now we think we are opposed, and, what is at least as important, we should learn where we really differ.

In this respect the volume before us is wholly admirable. The writers know what they mean and write it. The old catchwords appear, only to be laid aside, explained, or transcended. There is no rallying round familiar party phrases, or manoeuvring for position behind ambiguous words lest the enemy should secure an advantage-the bane of many a theological champion in the past. Still less is there any sign in these pages of glittering party rhetoric, from which, alas! the platform of the AngloCatholic Congress is not always wholly free.

And yet, although due account be taken of the unexpected concord on many points among the best men, which results from mutual explanation and clarification of language, and although we discount the efforts inspired by party zeal rather than heavenly wisdom, it would be untrue and unfair to insinuate that the groups differ over what they will some day discover to be no more than matters of idiosyncrasy. These differences are not wholly, nor even essentially, those that spring from diverse forms of temperament, of education, or of reaction. In the book we are considering, the differences are ascribed to various causes. In the introductory essay the keynote of Evangelicalism is said to be Freedom. Canon Guy Rogers writes of the Evangelical that his great concern is that no system should