THE NEW ARCHBISHOP.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 190, 13 August 1928, Page 6

THE NEW ARCHBISHOP.

Balliol has not only trained great statesmen, but has just supplied two leaders for the Church. By the appointment of Dr. Temple to the Archbishopric of York it can now claim both archbishoprics for its sons. This indicates a change in the Church itself towards that broader outlook associated with Balliol. Formerly the higher posts in the Church went to men who were representative of distinct schools of thought, the main purpose being to safeguard the doctrinal position. To-day the Church has taken the wider view that its mission is to commend its message to all phases of national life and to show that it is an influence guiding and shaping every form of human activity. Few men are better able to interpret this wider view than the new Archbishop of York. He has the courage, natural force and veracity of his father, without that brusqueness of manner for which Archbishop Temple was noted. He has always taken an interest in industrial questions and is in sympathy with the Labour movement in its general outlook. He believes that particular problems of our social life depend for their solution on the spontaneous reaction of a morally-trained character to the actual situation. He is no believer in detailed regulations, based on general principles, to govern particular cases, since good people will solve problems, apparently identical in their constituent factors, in quite different ways. Hence lie holds that the fundamental contribution which religion has to offer is the principle of vocation, which he defines as "a strong sense in all members of the community that they enter their trade or profession and then practise it as their main sphere for serving God and man." Like all Balliol men, he is fond of quoting Plato, and he bases much of his teaching 011 the Platonic doctrine that to departmentalise what is essentially universal is inevitably to reduce it to futility. In other words, he believes that religion is that which gives to secular life its highest impulses and sanctions. He is not a party man in the Church. His work in the northern archbishopric will mainly lie in directing the work of the Church towards infusing into all social and industrial life that sense of vocation which he believes to be the true solution for most of the difficulties with which we are confronted to-day. Many thought that the Bishop of Durham would have been chosen as Dr. Lang's successor. He would have been a scholarly director of ecclesiastical thought. But Dr. Temple will make his influence felt outside the Church, and he will carry into purely ecclesiastical matters that breadth of outlook which caused him on one occasion to warn his hearers against the temptation to pass censure on those who, when confronted with problems, solved them in a manner different to that in which we ourselves might have done. God's supremacy over all aspects of life and of our daily calling is the outstanding message of the new archbishop. —W.M.