Is Anglicanism Worth preserving?

Waiapu Church Gazette, Volume VIII, Issue 3, 1 September 1917, Page 20

Is Anglicanism Worth preserving?

Mr. ii. Y. Biggs, a well-known Melbourne Churchman and a pillar of the C.8.M.5., gave an address recently m Melbourne on the above subject Mr. De Crespigny, President of the Royal Society ' of St. George, who presided^ recommended every Anglican when making his will to re* member, the Church and leave to her at the very least fqne farthing m the pound of his estate. If Anglicans only treated their Mother Church as Romanists do theirs our financial problems would not be far from solution. ' Mr. Biggs spoke of the undoubted importance of Episcopacy as the Divinely appointed channel by which the sacramental, spiritual and historic continuity of the Church is preserved unbroken, but said it had been open to grave criticism on the administrative and organizing side of the Church's activity. It was a crying shame that there were no Australian Church huts m France and England. Australian Churchmen fell back on the Y.M.O.A. or on the Church Army huts and those provided by the parent society of the C.E.M.5.., which since October, 1915, had raised £20,000 for these rest and recreation houses. If Anglicanism was to be gloriously preserved and not merely tepidly continued three things were, m his view, urgently necessary : (1) More definite Church teaching by the Bishops and Priests so that the people might know really what the Grospel meant as taught by the Church of England; (2) More Church day schools m every thickly ■ populated Parish and a frank aband* onment of the whole idea of making Bible Reading m State Schools the official Church policy m elementary education; (3) A complete revolution m .the administration of Church gov* eminent so as to transfer to some central Australian body, on which the laity should have large representation, the power of dealing with war problems and other matters on which the Church is required to act swiftly and effectively on behalf of all her Australian members. .