THE REV. R. J. CAMPBELL.

Press, Volume LII, Issue 15567, 17 April 1916, Page 8

THE REV. R. J. CAMPBELL.

4 ENTERS THE ANGLICAN CHURCH. CHRISTIANITY AND THE WAR. (raoil OUR OWN" CORRESPONDENT.) LONDON, February 29. Tho admission into the Church of Englan;l of the Rev. R. J. Campbell, for so many years the celebrated Minister of the City Temple, took place this week, when he was ordained deacon by the Bishop of Birmingham. This step had been expected for a long time. Before it was finally announced some months ago, it was taken for granted that the eminent preacher would sooner or later find himself within tli© Anglican fold. That he will go a step farther and join the Church of Rome is believed in some quarters. MaCampbell is descended from a wellknown Scottish family of Ulster Protestants. and the. Loyal Orange Institution in England (through its secretary, the Rev. L. A. Ewart) anticipated tho ordination by a protest to the Bishop of Birmingham, which says:— "We regrefc to learn that you intend to admit into Holy Orders the Rev. R. J. Campbell. Mr Campbell has recently expressed his belief in many doctrines of the Church of Rome, including the mass, prayers for the dead, and purgatory. Mr Campbell is but a religious tramp, a man with unsettled convictions, aild we are confident that he will eventually join the Church of Rome." THE CHURCH'S CRISIS. Tho ordination took place, notwithstanding. Preaching afterwards on the Epistle for the Day, Canon the Hon. James Adderlev, said :— "If the war has thrown us back on our religion and made us more certain than over that without Christ we can do nothing, it has also shown us why so many doubt the Resurrection. To many soldiers who call themselves hy our name we arc to all intents and pur- j ■poses a dead thing, to many of us at home the Church of England is a name and. nothing more. Can these dry bones live? That is what all true Church of England people are crying out. There has never been a more critical moment in the story of the church. Dear brother, you have an advantage over us in that God the Holy Spirit has so clearly shown you that H 0 is with you and was calling you, long before you were asked the question in the ordination service. Tho step you are taking to-day is a very real step onward in loyal membership of the Church in which you were christened and confirmed. It is in no spirit of flattery that, we welcome you to fellowship in the' Anglican ministry. You join us at a time which I have already described as critical, thank God not so much in the direction of alarm as of hope. Old controversies between Christians are ceasing to savour of reality; different denominations are able to learn from one another in a way that was impossible not .so very long ago; the three great divisions of Christendom are allied in a common warfare. Here at ~ home the descendants of those who were most. bitterly opposed to one another arc longing to walk together in the House of God as friends. Outside tho immediate circle of the church, the old quarrel between religion and science has almost ceased, while philosophers from every quarter - are making suggestions which are enriching Christian thought.'' HAVE WE DESERVED? Mr Campbell preached his first sermon at the Cathedral Church at Birmingham on Sunday evening,* when tliero was a long queue waiting lor admission. Takiiig his text from the 2nd Chapter of Philippians, Sir Campbell said: — "When God calls men or nations to a special destiny his promise of special giace therein is made conditional. Meeting as we do to-night under the •snadow oi tuo greatest war of all. recorded in history, there is a peculiar solemnity aho rn, the exhortation that the English nations as a whole cannot honestly claim that- it has deserved very well of God in the immediate past. The same might-be said of Christendom at large, perhaps, but that is not our direct concern just now. What we need to look to is ourselves. We believe our cause is just in this frightful struggle, and the greater part of the world think so too. We are fighting a brutal and relentless foe, who will show its no mercy if we lose. We are doing it for the future or civilisation, for the liberties of mankind generally, as well as jour own, and no doubt we are right; but are we entitled to maintain that our cause is also God's, and that that will ensure us victory in the end ? It doe s not follow. History demonstrates that over and over again a better cause hits had for the time to give way to the worse till the upholders of the better weic worthy of their trust. It may be so now. It is at least conceivable that the issue of the war will not be all we hope and expect, or that we believe to be divinely ordained. "God has other and higher aims to serve even in this terrific whirl of blcod and slaughter, and weeping eyes and broken hearts than are altogether visible to us. What man does with one motive God may permit or ordain with another. What comes to pass through human wickcdncss may be ordered and governed all through by Divine wisdom and love. He is at present in all that is happening from first to last, but His action is to some extent conditioned on what we are and do or leave undone, just as ours is conditioned by what He choose-s to bring into being or destiny. God never intervenes in anything. When some poople say that human wickedness has caused the war, they speak truly; when other? say that God himself has brought it about they also speak truly, and the two statements are not inconsistent. In one sense all we are suffering from to-day is the direct outcome of the gross materialistic ideals by which civilisation has been living for a long time past; and in another it is the ordinance of God to bring us ' through much tribulation to a rediscovery of eternal values, and the spiritualistic significance of all _ material things. Not all the. hardship being borne in the field. Perhaps as great as any is that which finds no voice that the world can hear; the meaning of the bereaved behind closed doors here in England—the cry of the broken heart-

Ed in the night that Teaches no ear but God's. There is hut one source of comfort that I know of in the midst, of such a period of universal mourning and desolation as this. Every, sorrow is a call upward—a summons away from what is only of the flesh and a beckoning towards what is rooted in the spirit."