Contribution List.

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Erratum.-In our last issue, Oldbury, under Warwickshire, should be unler Worcestershire.

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THE

CHURCH MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCER

AND RECORD.

MARCH, 1881.

ON EPISCOPACY IN MISSIONS.

IN his treatise on Christian civilization* Mr. Cunningham has raised a question of especial interest to all who are concerned in missionary effort. The primary object in Missions, in our judgment, is the conversion of individual souls, from the delusions under which they labour, to the worship of the only and true God. This, when it is executed in conformity with the commands of the great Master, is accomplished by the preaching of His Gospel. The seed is the Word of God. It takes root in individual souls, and, watered by the influences of the Holy Spirit, in due season it bears fruit. The chief function of the missionary, which must precede all others, is to be an evangelist, an ambassador from the Lord Jesus Christ to those who have hitherto been in open, although it may have been unconscious, rebellion against Him. When through the successful preaching of the Gospel there have been gathered out of heathenism an aggregate of converted individuals, then succeeds in due course the necessity for organization. This order approves itself to common-sense, as it does, we believe, to primitive practice. Even when a bishop heads a Mission for the conversion of the heathen in a new sphere, he must at first virtually sink his Episcopal office in his functions as an evangelist; nor can he exercise the authority of a bishop (èπíoκоTоs), except over the handful of followers he may bring with him, until he or they have persuaded some of the indigenous population to accept the doctrines which he teaches. In the rudimentary stages of a Mission, any real Christian bishop must be like those around him, an evangelist in the first place, a bishop in the second. When a Church has been gathered out, the order of collocation of these offices must rest with the sense of responsibility in the individual.

The author of the Essay which we propose reviewing is, we understand, a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, at which university he achieved considerable distinction, and is also a clergyman with marked High Church proclivities. He has, however, clearly on many points read and thought for himself, and has not accepted indiscriminately all the opinions of the school to which he belongs. Before proceeding to discuss his views on these points it may be well to premise some account of the preliminary portions of his treatise; what immediately concerns * Christian Civilisation, with Special Reference to India. By William Cunningham, M.A. London: Macmillan, 1880.

K

us has apparently formed the successful Essay for one of the "Sir Peregrine Maitland's " prizes at Cambridge.

In the earlier portion of his book, the author treats of what he terms "Catholic Experience and Individual Opinions." Assuming the possibility of experience and the existence of a God, he proceeds to discuss the question whether we can know what God is and what our relations to Him are. In dealing with this he shows how a common Christian consciousness grew up during the first century of Christianity out of the great principle, "Let every man be persuaded in his own mind." This principle he would advocate in reference to the religious difficulties of our own time. He then discusses, in reference to modern unbelief, the right of private judgment, which he maintains, like all other rights, is "correlative to the duty of private judgment"; this being another and an important consideration." Just in so far as any man has fulfilled his duty in seeking for the knowledge of God, just in so far has he a right to maintain the opinion he has formed." He then proceeds to review the value of the evidence upon which religious opinions may be rested, either on reflections drawn from observed or reported facts, or on direct religious experience. The value of this latter evidence he strenuously maintains, and in this sense looks to "Christ's Church on earth as the pillar and ground of the truth." Again, "In the Catholic faith, defined in the creeds, set forth in Christian teaching, shown forth in Christian worship, we have positive religious knowledge-the accumulated store of human experience of God." We omit his discussion of Christian Morality and Christian Policy, as not directly relevant to our particular interest in his Essay. He then passes on to the Unity of the Church. In his judgment "the object of Christian Missions is not to save individuals only, but rather to spread the kingdom of God." From this principle, whether he is right or wrong, he deduces" the infinite importance of all questions of Church organization." There is in his advocacy a manifest leaning to what are usually termed Church views; but he is not by any means insensible to the necessity of personal faith, or to the value of present religious sympathy. In due course he is confronted with the question, "What do you mean by the limits of the Church?" His answer is, that it is "a unity of the Spirit, which has never been expressed perfectly by identity in the doctrine and organization of the Church throughout the world, but which we hold to be an ideal that we are striving to realize." In answer to the question, Which of various bodies is the one Church? he cannot say "which of these various parts is the whole." By a historical review he shows that there “ never yet has been any actual society which at all approached to the ideal of unity." Still, he argues that there has been unity in fundamentals such as the Apostles' Creed, the Creed of Constantinople, the Canon of Holy Scripture, the necessity of some sort of Church Government, and so on.

We have very briefly and imperfectly analyzed these views of Mr. Cunningham which lead up to his theory of Church Organization, not as by any means expressing any opinion of our own concerning them, or with the intention of embarking in the vast sea of discussion which