development must be towards making the town school, like the country school, or the secondary school, or the public school, a free corporation, able to organize its own religious teaching. The Church of England and the Roman Catholic schools will take their place in this body, but there should be no financial penalty attached to them because of their religion. It would only be when there is a monopoly that any interference with liberty can take place.

There are, of course, many aspects of the educational problem which I have not been able to discuss to-day, but, looking at the state of education in this country, I am convinced that there are two movements, both dangerous to freedom, which have to be strongly resisted at the present time. The one, the attempt to make our education more bureaucratic, to get the schools more and more into the hands of the local authority or the central authority, to take away the initiative and freedom of the teachers and of the local governors. The other is the attempt to introduce anything like a uniform or systematized system of religious teaching. The remedy lies in recognizing that State control of education is just as great an evil as Church control, and that unspiritual education is more harmful than the intolerance of the old system. We want to secure, therefore, that the guiding principle of our education should be given not by Government offices, but by a body of free universities. They will set up the standard, and to that standard the secondary schools will have to conform. These secondary schools will themselves be a number of free corporations, some teaching in one way, some in another, free to organize their religious teaching in accordance with their charter in some cases, without even that restriction in others, only, in the case of schools serving a particular district, having strict protection of minorities. So our elementary schools will have their standard fixed by the secondary schools to which their more promising pupils will go, and

THE IDEAL IN EDUCATION

153 these schools, again, will be free bodies as regards religion. There will always be a strong protection of minorities wherever it is necessary, but the schools will be able to organize their religious teaching quite freely in accordance with their trust deed, or, if there be no trust deed, as regards education in accordance with the desires of the parents. No school will be penalized because it teaches religion.

I have purposely avoided attempting to be too systematic in my suggestions; at the present moment it is not system that we want, but it is a correction of our ideals. What we have to realize is first that the State control of education is as evil as the Church control; secondly, that religious liberty consists not in freedom from religion but in freedom to be religious; thirdly, that education is something spiritual, and that bureaucratic, or centralized, or office control is always injurious to it; fourthly, that the people of this country will not care for education until those who use the schools are personally interested in the management of them.1

1 In the historical part of this article I have been assisted mainly by two books: State Intervention in English Education, by J. E. G. de Montmorency (Cambridge: at the University Press, 1902); and The Schools of Medieval England, by A. P. Leach (Methuen and Co.).

CHAPTER VIII

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND AND ITS RELATION
TO OTHER RELIGIOUS BODIES

I PROPOSE to-day to address you on the subject of the relation of the Church of England to other religious bodies. In doing that, I do not want to confine our outlook to any one direction. We are dealing with the divisions of Christendom. Just as, when we considered the nature of the Church, we tried to work out a theory which would apply to all the different sides of Christian life, so in regard to our practical outlook we must not limit ourselves by looking to one side only. There are some who keep their eyes fixed on Protestant Churches, others on what they call Catholic Churches. Either point of view will give us an imperfect conception. We must be prepared to balance our judgment by looking all round.1

Now with regard to these divisions of Christendom, I want to try and estimate the cause of them. I do not mean the causes through which they have actually arisen. These have been varied. Sometimes divisions have arisen, we might hold, from good causes, sometimes from evil causes. In most cases there has been a mixture of good and evil. They have come from want of charity, from evangelical earnestness, from a desire of truth, from a desire of supremacy. It is not with these causes that I am concerned now. I want to estimate the intellectual cause which lies behind them, and I think that we may put it as this a mistaken view of religious truth, an idea that religious truth must necessarily be some

1 In this chapter I have introduced quotations with considerable fulness with the purpose of presenting the point of view of different schools of thought.

NATURE OF RELIGIOUS TRUTH

155

thing capable of exact definition, which can be quite accurately expressed, and that it is the duty of a Church to define in this or that direction its beliefs, and exclude from its fellowship those who are not prepared to accept the same point of view. It is the same with regard to ecclesiastical relations. It is held that the notes of the Christian Church can be quite definitely and decisively laid down, that we can say clearly and distinctly what is part of the Church and what is not, and therefore we must exclude from our fellowship all who do not fulfil these exact conditions. These two standpoints, the rigid definition of doctrinal truth and the rigid definition of the sphere of the Church, have been held in many directions. They represent, of course, the point of view of the Church of Rome and of the Eastern Church. They have been held tenaciously by some members of the Church of England; and many small Protestant sects have held the same view, and have felt called upon to separate themselves from anyone who did not conform to their conditions.

The changed point of view that has come or is coming recognizes that we cannot deal with religious truth or ecclesiastical conditions in this way; that our human language is too imperfect for it to express religious truth in the exact manner which is desired; that different aspects of Christianity appeal to different minds in different ways; that the different forms of Christian life which have arisen do not represent the one a right and the other a wrong view, but they both represent indifferent and imperfect views, and that therefore, whether in our judgment on the divisions of Christendom or in our desire for reunion, we must give up this rigidity of thought. Let me quote in support of this some remarks of Dr. Carnegie Simpson in his book on Church Principles.

"A first rule in all sound and scientific thinking is that we must never force our conclusions to be more precise than our data warrant. Theological thinking greatly needs to learn this rule, not merely in connection with the topic of the Church but in connection with many of

its topics. A real fault in much of our theology is that it has not known where to stop; but the power of halting at the right point is one of the rarest powers even of clear-sighted and truthful minds.' We must remember this in connection with the question before us. We should and must accept the fact that, while we have plain ground and reason to say that the Church on earth must be a visible body, and have adequate material in history to say that it has been and is visible, we simply have not the data which enable us to draw its outline with perfect precision and so locate it with absolute accuracy. We may wish we had. . . . But in all matters of fact, the question is not what we should like to have, but what we do have, or, to put it religiously, what God has been pleased to give us. And on this question God has not given us exact lines. That it is so is nothing exceptional. On many of the most vital matters of religion we have, while adequate, not absolutely exact data. Take the Bible. There is a real and reliable record of revelation; but there are places where the text is not authentic, and, possibly, even whole books may be of disputable canonical authority. Take the even more vital example of the earthly life of Christ. It has historical reality which is proof against all negative criticism . . . but there are details in the story which it is impossible for any candidminded student to deny are open to critical uncertainty. If, then, we are not given exact lines about the Bible, it is not wonderful that we do not have them regarding the Church. . . . This way of reasoning is unacceptable to the Biblical literalist and to the ecclesiastical legalist. But the foolishness of God is always better than the wisdom of literalists and even of lawyers. We have not got the exact data they demand. Yet all the time, there is an authentic revelation to read, a real Christ to know, and a true Church to see."1

It is this changed standpoint which has influenced the Lambeth Conference and has led to the setting forth of a new principle with regard to reunion, and there can be no doubt that this new standpoint has penetrated, or is penetrating, religious bodies in all directions in a way

1 Church Principles. By P. Carnegie Simpson, D.D., Professor of Church History in Westminster College, Cambridge. Hodder and Stoughton, London. Pp. 41-43.