IV.

Reply from the Right Reverend Handley Moule, D.D.,

My Dear Sir,—I have before me your kind letter of February 19, in which you are good enough to ask my opinion upon a doctrinal basis proposed to be accepted with a view to co-operation, and in hope of ultimate fusion, by various denominations of Christians in New Zealand.

It is, of course, a delicate matter for me, a Bishop of the English Church, to offer comments in such a case.

But you are pleased to invite an expression of my opinion in a way which will acquit me, I trust, of any intention, however faint, to intrude.

Few can be more anxious than I am, in view of the wofully divided state of even Protestant Christendom, to remove in every lawful way every barrier to "godly union and concord," and in particular to minimize rather than accentuate differences of doctrinal expressions where this may be rightly done. Nothing more impaired the power of the great English Revival of the 18th Century than the tendency, on both sides, to inflame rather than temper the expression of opinion on the doctrines of the Grace of God.

But incontestably there is a limit to concessions of this sort, if Revelation is in any degree definite.

In the present case, as I reflect on the quotations in your "Notice of Overture," I cannot but think that those would be well advised who decide to abide by the singularly temperate and carefully weighed Articles of the Presbyterian Church of England, in which I recognise just that anxiety to avoid needless accentuation of differences which I so much welcome.

Particularly, were I personally concerned, I should decline to modify the wording of Articles V., VIII., and XII The changes and omissions suggested seem to me for the most part to tend distinctly towards an impairment of reverent submission to the ruling of Holy Scripture on the great points in question. The English Presbyterian Article XXIII. appears to be as careful and absolutely Scriptural a statement as can well be made on this awfully solemn theme. Its omission would be a grave loss. The dread warnings of our Lord Jesus Christ, in His own words, can be spared in these days of a deepening materialism.

I humbly pray God's guidance into all truth and peace for those concerned in this grave discussion; and may He hasten the final day when we "shall know even as also we were known."