THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND IN CANADA

JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS

OF THE

TENTH SESSION

OF

THE GENERAL SYNOD

HELD IN THE CITY OF LONDON, ONT.

SEPT. 24th TO OCT. 2nd, 1924

FIRST DAY

London, Wednesday, September 24th, 1924

Pursuant to the call of the Primate, the General Synod of the Church of England in Canada assembled in London at 11 a.m.

Holy Communion was celebrated in St. Paul's Cathedral the Primate being celebrant, assisted by the Archbishops of Nova Scotia and Algoma and the Bishops of Huron and Fredericton.

The sermon was preached by the Right Rev. Arthur C. Headlam, D.D., Bishop of Gloucester, England.

SERMON PREACHED AT THE GENERAL SYNOD BY RIGHT REV. ARTHUR C. HEADLAM, D.D., BISHOP OF GLOUCESTER, ENGLAND.

PSALM XVI. 6.

The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage.

You are assembled to-day as the General Synod of that branch of Christendom which we are accustomed to name the Church of England or the Anglican Church in the Dominion of Canada, and I do not think that it will be unfitting on such an occasion to try and estimate the origin, the characteristics, the mission of that particular branch of Christ's Church. It has sometimes been the custom of recent years to depreciate the Church of England. It is indeed a national characteristic of the English people at home to be only too ready to criticize their own institutions. It arises partly, I think, from the very high ideal that we have put before ourselves, partly from the desire that we have to avoid anything like self-exaltation and boasting, partly perhaps also from a certain feeling of pride which arises ultimately from a confidence so strong of the value of what we possess, that we feel that it is unnecessary to advertise or commend it. I think sometimes we carry this habit too far. I think that we may have done injury to the Church of England. Whether this habit prevails on this side of the Atlantic, I have no means of knowing. At any rate to-day I am going to try to put before you my conception of the Anglican community as a branch of the Christian Church, which has a great and lofty mission to fulfil in the world.

The genesis of the Anglican community is in the Church of England. The form it gradually assumed was not an accident. It was the result of elements which had begun to appear in the earliest days of its existence, which persisted in different forms during the troubled times of the middle ages, and which gradually worked themselves out in the tangled history of the Reformation. Ultimately it was due to wise and sober learning. The Reformation in England was prepared for by the humanistic school which was built up in Oxford in the reign of Henry VII. under the influence of Erasmus and the new Greek scholars. It was worked out,

expounded and defended by a long line of learned theologians, by Jewell, Hooker, Andrewes, Laud, Usher and Pearson. But the great transformation came in the nineteenth century. The colonial expansion of England, the formation of the British Empire, the wide-flung missionary work of the Church, have gradually transformed what was the national Church of the people of England into an international society representing the Christian religion under certain special aspects.

Let me try and sum up these characteristics.

First of all the Church of England is Catholic-by that I mean that its teaching and life include everything that can claim to be part of the universal message of Christianity. It makes no claim to be infallible, it makes no claim to be perfect, it is quite willing to allow that other churches may represent this or that element in the Christian message better than it does. Our knowledge of history and our powers of oberservation alike teach us that those churches which make the greatest claims to infallibility are often the most defective. But this claim it does make, that it preserves in its teaching everything that our study of Scripture or of historical theology shows us can be accounted an essential element of Christianity. We need have no doubt but that in the only defensible sense of that word we are catholic.

But secondly, as ts origin indicates, it has the characteristics of a national Church. It is always the tendency of a national Church to adapt itself to the life of the people and to be influenced by it. The English Church from its earliest days has played a great part in building up the English nation and it bears stamped upon it some of the most marked characteristics of the English people. It exhibits a respect for tradition, tempered by the element of progress, a certain moderation in its presentation of Christianity, a refusal to carry any one aspect to its logical conclusion, an attempt to obtain a wise and sober balance of opinion. It has therefore been labelled by some a mere via media, an irrational compromise. It would be more just to say that it is an attempt, however imperfect, to include all the different sides of Christian truth and to preserve a just balance between the different elements which build up Christianity.

A third characteristic of the Church of England has been its devotion to learning. So impartial a witness as Lecky says: "Looking at the Church of England from the intellectual side, it is plain how large a proportion of the best intellect of the country is contented, not only to live within it, but to take an active part in its ministrations. There is hardly a branch of serious English

literature in which Anglican clergy are not conspicuous.

There is no other Church which has shown itself so capable of attracting and retaining the services of men of general learning, criticism and ability."

The practical cause has been the close connection of the Church with the Universities. That in England has to a considerable extent ceased. There is a tendency everywhere for the University to separate itself more and more from religion and to become secularized. I cannot but think that this process of secularization is going too far. A Church without learning soon begins to fail in its work. A University without spiritual life is in great danger of becoming narrow and pedantic. There is a tendency now-a-days to lay much stress on practical religious life and to underestimate perhaps the value of sound learning. I am afraid that that seems to me something rather ominous. Unless the Church can command the best intellect of the country, unless it can meet the intellectual problems of the day, unless it can present to enquiring minds a more convincing explanation of the reality of things, it will never get a real hold on the mind of the time. Learning without 'practical piety becomes arid and unreal, but I am sure that if we are to look forward to the future, that Church, that form of religion will ultimately triumph, which has the most sound intellectual basis and which has worked with the greatest sincerity and capacity in attempting to solve the many problems which religion has to face.

A

A fourth characteristic of the Church of England has come to be its intimate association with the idea of religious freedom and toleration. It was only gradually that this conception of religion has been worked out. If we go back to the times of the Reformation, we see how every school of thought felt it its duty to use the power of the State and the weapon of compulsion to make its creed prevail. The most important thing in the world was truth. Minds strong, if narrow, were convinced that they had attained truth and could there be a more sacred duty than that of using every means that was possible to compel men to accept it? The same power and force which they employed, they found passed in turn to their adversaries. The very action of persecution alienated people from them. One after another, each school of thought became dominant. Each attempted to force its opinions upon the people, and each lost its hold until at last bitter experience made men realize what they ought to have learnt from their knowledge of what Christianity is, that the Gospel of Christ was never to be extended by such methods. "They that take the sword shall perish by the sword." The very essence of the method

of Christ was that He absolutely turned away from all secular associations of the Messianic idea and put forward his creed by the simplicity of his teaching, the power of his life and the influence of his death. So at last, however imperfectly, we have begun to learn the lesson of religious toleration and liberty, and I think that everywhere the Anglican stands for this conception, however incompletely it may still be grasped.

The last characteristic of the Anglican Church which I shall mention has come to be its comprehensiveness. Religion has always a tendency to present itself in three different ways. It may be institutional and traditional; it may be intellectual and critical; it may be evangelical and mystic. The one bases its idea of truth on the inherited doctrines of the Church; the second is always concerned to know whether that inheritance is really true; the third bases its faith on religious experience. These different elements have shown themselves in what are called the High Church or the Anglo-Catholic movement, in the modernist movement and in the evangelical movement. The truest type of Christian would combine and harmonize all three. But the human mind is always limited in its comprehension and there is always a danger that one particular type of thought may monopolize Christian thought. That has become impossible in the Anglican Church and it has arisen partly no doubt from certain traditional attributes of the English people, partly from the accidental circumstances of the English Church. Two somewhat anomalous institutions in the Church of England, the parson's freehold and the great variety of patronage, have made this comprehensiveness possible. No one can be turned out of his cure of souls without a legal process and the law courts have always tended to decide in favour of the freeholder. No Bishop can entirely dominate his diocese, for the private patron has the right of presenting and, except on grounds capable of being supported in a court of law, the Bishop cannot refuse institution. These characteristics, accidental perhaps in their origin, have impressed themselves on the Church of England, and through the Church of England on the Anglican community. This manysidedness of the Anglican community, which is bewildering to the outsider and is sometimes severely criticised by those within, is the only possible way of preserving within the Church that variety of thought which alone will enable it to present religion in its completeness. Such are some leading characteristics of the Anglican community.

Let me dwell for a moment on the lesson which this attained comprehensiveness teaches us. We have learnt that it is possible for