Relations with Other Bodies.

It afforded me no ordinary encouragement to have had, as your Diocesan, words of welcome on May 23rd from the Nonconformist Bodies. I have had since the privilege of meeting privately the members of the Auckland Ministers' Association, and also of making the acquaintance of several Nonconformist Ministers throughout the Colony. It was particularly kind of the Auckland Ministers' Association to give me the opportunity of meeting them when reporters were not present, and where one could talk as among men of honour, meeting together to freely, "because privately, learn each others' thoughts.

It is pleasant to work in a country like New Zealand, where one can be certain that there is no Nonconformist grievance arising from the Church having connection with the State. The conditions here, in this respect, leave one even freer to pursue the exercise of one's own form of religion than at Home. The Nonconformist, the Roman Catholic, and the Churchman are here equally ignored by the State.

These facts being so, I am looking forward to further meetings with the Auckland Ministers' Association. I have asked them to allow me, later on, the privilege of inviting them to Bishopscourt for private informal "Round Table Conferences." Nothing but good can result from men meeting together discussing, as men of honour and with mutual respect, in a private manner, those questions upon which they hold opinions or convictions. To know one another as men is a sure way to avoid misunderstandings.

It may be well, however, here and now for me to explain to you my own position and convictions. You have a right to know them. I will put the main idea and my own convictions thereon, and the policy I have resolved to pursue as briefly as possible. By what I page 38 publish to you I am prepared to stand or fall. I am not prepared to take any notice of verbal reports nor of anonymous attacks.

What is the function of the Christian Church? The answer is:—The Church is the sphere of operation of God the Holy Ghost: He works through the individual; the individual affects the nation, the unit the mass; therefore the function of the Church is: to sanctify, elevate, stimulate, the National Conscience. How does this principle affect Denominations? It first of all lifts thought on to a plane higher than Sectarianism: the work is spiritual and national, it is not arithmetical in producing statistics nor degrading through zeal for proselytising. Secondly, it makes for mutual respect. If we accept this theory of the function of the Christian Church, we are bound to allow for variety of method The Britisher has certain racial characteristics which make him independent, which indeed are the very possessions that fit him for being a colonist. He carries those racial characteristics into the form and manner whereby he expresses his belief in God. You never can hope to get the Britisher on to a plan of uniformity: it is against his whole nature. Consequently, you will always have High. Low, and Broad Churchmen, and the glory of our own position and the reason why we peculiarly meet the needs of our countrymen is: the Prayer Book supplies each sort of such men with the language of devotion most suitably expressing the man's own feelings.

But there have been men to whom such expressions were of no attraction, and men who, from one cause or another, have separated themselves from the National Church. This fact illustrates two things:—(a) The racial characteristic of the Britisher. (b) The blunders made in the past by the National Church in attempting to repress those racial characteristics.

Now, to a very considerable extent, the existence of Noncomformity is to be accounted for under the foregoing heads. Modern medical science treats diseases by trying to ascertain the "causa causans." If, limiting the view to Protestant Nonconformity, the present disunion is a disease, it will be far better for us to ascertain the causes instead of only considering the symptoms. If Nonconformity is not blameless for producing dis- page 39 union, neither has been the Church of England. There are pages in the history of our Church that make sad reading. But history is being written again, and when one considers the question of Reunion, anyhow of Protestant Christendom, one cannot help wondering at the causes operating to produce so many varieties of Nonconformity. They do not grow less, they increase. The new ones are not protests against a State Church. Honestly, the Church of England does not seem to be chargeable—anyhow, in this country—with being the producing cause of new sects.

In face of these principles and facts, what is to be our position as Churchmen? In my own mind, the following points are clear:—(i.) The teaching of the Church of England on the Sacrament of Holy Baptism forbids any sectarian limitation of the term, "The Church which is His Body." Through Baptism I am made "a member of Christ." It follows that every single person, baptized with water and in the Name of the Blessed Trinity, is similarly a "member of Christ" and belongs to His mystical Body. Thus I exclude none from what I claim as my own privilege herein.

(ii.) It is abundantly clear that episcopacy has been, since the second century, the normal element in the Christian Church.^*

(iii.) It is equally clear that, since the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in some manner different from that universally obtaining in the second century, God the Holy Ghost has been at work and has owned the ministry of men who do not acknowledge episcopacy to be of the "bene esse" of the Church.

(iv.) Under the foregoing circumstances I am not prepared to "unchurch" or "unpriest" any man.

(v.) The Lambeth Conferences of 1888 and 1897 laid down a certain basis for unity. As a Bishop of the Church of the Province of New Zealand I cannot go behind what the Lambeth Conference has laid down. As an individual, who has had to think out his position many years ago, I hold that the teaching of the Church of England, as voiced in her formularies and Ordinal, is the soundest, sanest, most historical, and most Scriptural, of any teaching in the world.

(vi.) The Church of England is neither a Sect nor a Denomination. She stands for a particular theory, delivers a particular message, and claims that both alike are Catholic and Apostolic. Her claim may be questioned or refused, but, for a Churchman, the duty is clear: loyalty. "We cannot," wrote Dr. Lightfoot. Bishop of Durham, "afford to sacrifice any portion of the faith once delivered to the saints; we cannot surrender for any immediate advantages the threefold ministry which we have inherited from Apostolic times, and which is the historic backbone of the Church."

(vii.) I claim for you and for myself nothing that I am not prepared to give to every Nonconformist in the world, i.e., freedom to worship God according to my own convictions; liberty of conscience to perform my own religious duties and exercises as my Church orders; absence of interference from those who have other con-victions.

There is only one form of proselytising that is fit for a decent man to engage in:—the exhibition in his own daily conduct of a character that has its basis firmly laid on the truths of the Christian Faith. The character produced by Anglicanism, Romanism, or Nonconformity, is of infinitely greater importance to the welfare of this Empire than any other question imaginable.

(viii.) And this leads me to the subject of United Services in which I have, when consulted, forbidden the Clergy of this Diocese to take part. The reason for such action will have already emerged from what I have said; but I should like to make it a little clearer.

Giving to every man what I claim and know for my-self—the arrival at his religious position after honest thought, and his consequent conviction of the saneness of the Creed he professes, and the reasons why he is what he is—giving all this to every man, it seems to me to be an insult to a man's intelligence to say:—For fifty-one Sundays of the year we cannot worship the same God in the same way and in the words of the same Confession of Faith; but let us play at doing so on the fifty-second Sunday in the year. Gentlemen, I cannot help it: I respect my God and I respect my fellow-man; therefore I cannot undertake "make believe" in the expression of my Faith.

But, again, if Religion is to play any part in National life, it must have some doctrinal basis. Character cannot be built upon sand. Therefore, in my judgment, it is of real importance to the nation that a man should know the area of his belief. Whether he be Anglican, Roman, or Nonconformist is to me not of so much moment as whether he is loyal and faithful to his own convictions within the sphere of his doctrinal belief. That is the fact that is going to touch his conduct, and that is the element of his value to his country. Therefore, I do not believe in Undenominationalism. You and I do not want, I presume, to be undenominationalized; and I am quite satisfied we do not want to undenominationalize any Nonconformist in New Zealand. We are what we are for good reasons, and we believe he is what he is for reasons that appear to him equally good. Well, let us honour one another's convictions, and not commit the unpardonable sin of attributing wrong motives. "Casting out devils through Beelzebub" is a phrase not unknown in so-called religious papers and controversy.

It is, in human judgment, a grievous waste of spiritual force and energy to find, say, in a township of 400 in-habitants, half a dozen different places of worship; but I am quite satisfied that you will only increase the number by watering down convictions, by weakening mutual self-respect, by picking holes in each other, or by pre-tending that we all agree when we do nothing of the kind. We shall help towards Unity by respecting each other, by honour amongst us as men who, anyhow, are serving the same God, by loyalty to our own convictions, by human intercourse with each other and getting to know each other's point of view. We Church-people cannot cover, and are not covering, all the ground we ought. Neither are the Nonconformists. Let us do our own work in our own way, and "be at peace among yourselves."^*

Lest there should be any trace of misunderstanding of these principles, and the policy I put before you, I desire to add this remark. There will be, no doubt, occasions in our National history when it will be the imperative duty of all men "who profess and call themselves Chris-

^* See Tucker's "Life of Selwyn," ii., 355, and elsewhere.

page 42 tians" to stand shoulder to shoulder on a public platform. Upon such occasions you will not find your Bishop failing to discharge his duty as a Christian citizen, nor will any Churchman be found wanting in zeal for the common cause of the Honour of God. The effect of such united action will be immeasurably increased by the union of men, differing in the form of expressing their belief, but animated by one conviction, paramount above all else, when the Being of God, the sanctity of Holy Marriage, the right of children to learn of their Saviour, the purity of National life, and similar questions, are insistent upon the attention of the community.