THE ARCHBISHOP AND REUNION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20891, 5 June 1931, Page 15

THE ARCHBISHOP AND REUNION.

Sir, —With Canon Chatterton's general sentiment every sensible man will agree. Indeed it is very hard to disagree with so kindly a man as the canon. To pool Christian experience to "report as a man may of God's work" is what the sects without sacraments, and thoso with them, might very usefully do. For tho saints aro above tho sects, and religious experience is of the timeless world where our controversies make no stir. We greatly desire all iiuch communion and think that the most distressing of all things is that tho supreme communion service is forbidden us on such occasions of rapprochement. What the present writer wants to do is, not to sustain a controversy, but to clarify an issue. The canon says that "in the widest sense, and with utmost charity, tho bishops put forward the only constructive basis of reunion that is before :he Church." That sounds, exceedingly well, but what does the "utmost charity" of these comprehensive proposals amount to? Do they transcend the old differences ? Or do they reassert in an uncompromising way the most difficult and dangerous of them ? I do not hero refer to the philosophy of tho creeds insisted on. The most difficult and dangerous ol all Christian institutions, in the judgment of more than half of British Christendom, is the bishop himself, considered not personally but officially. Everyone knows that personally bishops are charming men, and effective men and commonly great scholars and great public servants. But to them there hangs a view of the sacraments and of their validity that prevents Canon Chatterton's dream of communion being sealed at the Lord's table. There is a view of the restriction of the grace of Christ to official channels against which those who believe in "free grace" are bound evermore to protest. Is a scheme charged with large charity and with a hopeful comprehension that is cumbered after this manner? There were Stuart kings who reigned once in England, and whose working maxim was "No bishop, no king." It all ended on a snowy day at Whitehall when the pathetic Charles became a quasi-martyr. The Lambeth scheme lias already reached the same snowy day, it has perished, as the King did through a mistaken attachment to bishops viewed as essential to the reunion of Christendom. J. J. North. N.Z. Baptist College.