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1902.

[And other Works.]

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THE

EDINBURGH REVIEW,

JULY, 1911.*

No. CCCCXXXVII.

ART. I.—THE ENGLISH CHURCH OF TO-DAY.

1. A History of the English Church in the Nineteenth Century. By F. WARRE CORNISH. London: Macmillan and Co. 1910.

2. Encyclical Letter from the Bishops, with the Resolutions and Reports. London: S.P.C.K. 1908.

3. Pan-Anglican Congress Report, and Official Report. London: S.P.C.K. 1908.

I

THE HE outstanding volumes in the historical series edited by the late Dean Stephens and Dr. Hunt are Canon Capes' English Church in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Cen'turies,' and that in which the Vice-Provost of Eton brings the undertaking to a close. The detachment and expert knowledge of the former writer and the sympathetic insight of the latter would be sufficient, if their contributions stood alone, to justify the conclusion that the work is indispensable to serious students of the history of the English Church.

Mr. Cornish has succeeded in being impartial where impartiality might seem impossible of attainment. Controversy fills so large a place in Church history, and the controversies of the nineteenth century are so near our own time that when we touch on them, with few exceptions, our speech bewrayeth us. Mr. Cornish is one of the few. It would be difficult from * All rights reserved.

VOL. CCXIV. NO. CCCCXXXVII.

B

anything that appears in his book to put him down as a member of any party, or to infer his personal views. Nor is impartiality his only qualification for the work of an historian: his writing is consecutive, his portraiture lifelike, and his style clear.

No more important period could have been assigned to him than that which has fallen to his lot. The nineteenth century has witnessed a transformation of the Church of England second in importance only to that brought about by the Reformation. This gave her freedom; that enlargement. In 1800 the English and Irish bishops constituted her hierarchy; to-day this hierarchy numbers 257 Sees. From a national Church, or Landeskirche, she has become a communion coextensive with the British flag and tongue. To read Mr. Cornish's book is to receive a vivid impression of this enlargement :

'We feel that we are greater than we know.'

The growth of the Empire was the condition of that of the Church; but, though the latter began with, it did not end in the work of ministering to our countrymen beyond the seas. The S.P.G., formed with this object, soon extended its operations; from the first the C.M.S. had direct missionary work in view. The result of this propaganda, and of the wide diffusion of the British race, has been that in every quarter of the globe native as well as colonial Churches, not indeed subject to the Church of England, but united to it by ties of origin and natural piety, have come into existence. The English Church is larger than the Church of England: it has become the name is not free from objection, but, for want of a better, we may use it the Anglican Church. Nor has this growth been one of extension only: material developement seldom stands alone. Its religious side has its dangers. To think imperially we must have learned to think sanely-and not all are sane. The position which the See of Canterbury has come to occupy, by no policy or design of its occupants but by sheer force of circumstances, offers certain points of resemblance to that partly, indeed, assumed by, but also to a great extent forced upon, the Papacy in early days. York, historically its equal, has fallen, like Alexandria and Antioch, out of competition to the Churches beyond the seas it is little more than St. David'sthe shadow of a once great name. From its greater accessibility, and its closer connexion with the capital and the Court, Canterbury has effectually distanced its northern rival; nor has the metropolitan authority claimed by certain colonial

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