REUNION OF CHURCHES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVII, Issue 17460, 3 May 1920, Page 6

REUNION OF CHURCHES.

THE ANGLICAN COMMUNION.

PLACE IN. THE MOVEMENT.

"FOCUS FOR SEPARATED BODIES." The position of the Anglican Church in regard to the reunion of churches formed the subject of a |M«* preached by the Rev. Percival Jamea. m St. Mary s Cathedral last evening. The preacher traced the history of the Church of England, in order to maintain that the continuity of tbM filwh *d been most jealously preserved, and that she wa* today, as she was in the sixteenth century, the same Church which was planted in England by Augustine, holding the same ancient faith without adding thereto or taking therefrom, using the same sacraments, with the same ministry of bishops, priests, and deacons, in unbroken sequence. Referring to the English Reformation, he said it was at first a political rather than a religious movement, the breaking away of a nation from all appearance of subjection to a foreign kingbishop, When later the English Reformation became religious in character, and Calvinist, Zwinglian and Lutheran teaching was being introduced from the Continent the Church strenuously resisted it. Mistakes were inevitable in the Reformation settlement, which had to be made in the teeth of narrow and bitter political and religious partisans, whose passionate tiff, bulence disgraced that page of history. Therefore the Church of England must claim the right to reform herself now. But he affirmed that all attempts failed to destroy the catholicity of the Church of England. ' ~.,... Mr. James vigorously denied that the Church of England called itself Protestant The word was not found in the* Prayer Book, and was an ugly, misleading unfortunate term. As an ecclesiastical term, it was not English. It had been imported from Germany. It had been put to such various and conflicting uses that it had now no generally-accepted meaning. Indeed it was a thoroughly mischievous word, which English churchmen should not apply to themselves or permit others to apply to them. In any movement towards a world reunion of churches the Church of England held a position more important than her actual numbers warranted. For, in the first place, her extent was world-wide. She was established in New Zealand, where she had played a large and beneficent part in the history of this Dominion. There were similar churches in Canada, Australia, South Africa, India, and the West Indies. The Church of England was in full communion with a largo and vigorous church in the United States. The binhops from all these parts would meet at the Lambeth Conference, missionary bishops from almost every region of the world, where the Gospel was being carried to the primitive and baftward races. Secondly the Church seemed more likely than any other to prove a focus to which separated bodies of Christians would be attracted. No essential point of faith or order separated hor from the great Orthodox Chrrch of the East or the greater Church of liome. And there were the happiest signs that the separated brethren, who during th<3 last century or rwo had left the old mother Church of Enffland for causes whioh, though they might have been real end potent enough at the time, no longer existed, were looking with affection towards her and shared the hopes of reunion. All over th« Englishspeaking world this "home-reunion' was recognised as the primary step. Mr, James urged that, lor the present, they might do much toward ultimate reunion by " sharing with all good men of whatever denomination, who believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the duty He laid upon all of bearing witness to Him." .