PREFACE

IN the following pages an attempt is made to estimate the position of the Church of England in relation to recent religious thought, this latter being understood in a large sense, as including not merely professional theology but also the opinions of men in general on religious subjects.

The work is divided into four parts, each of which is intended to expand the scope of the inquiry from within outwards. Thus, in the first part, the Church's internal state is discussed. This leads to the consideration (2) of the Dissenters and (3) of the Alienated Classes, as following next after each other in the order of their separation from the Church of England. Finally, (4) the catholic claims of the Church are examined, no longer as regards persons or classes, but as regards the intrinsic capacity for universality of the contributions recently made to the Church's theology.

The author's main concern has throughout been with those tendencies of religious thought which, though by no means universal in the Church of England, are, or seem likely to become, predominant. It

is necessary that this should be borne in mind, since otherwise the principle of selection which has been followed as regards the subjects discussed might not be apparent. Let it be understood then that what is here attempted is, not to provide the reader with a vade mecum of all the various forms which religious thought in the Church of England has recently assumed, but rather-starting from the hypothesis of the Church's increased and increasing specialisation of herself in one direction-an hypothesis which in the first part of this work is vindicated-to show in what the religious thought of the Church-as thus determined-consists, and at the same time to show how the Church's position-as thus determined—is modified by external circumstances. The present

attempt is therefore not an exhaustive survey, but is rather to be regarded as a work of constructive criticism, by which what is meant, in reference to its subject, is that it aims at giving a consistent and intelligible account of the underlying basis, the governing purposes, and the reflexive movements of the contemporary Church of England.

As regards its practical object, this book has been written in order to exhibit the wider possibilities of development now opening up before the Church of England, together with the helps and hindrances to their realisation. That in conceiving of these latter the author should find himself alternately at issue, and in agreement, with prevailing tendencies, arises from his view of the Church of England as at once reactionary and progressive, the first, owing to certain traditions inherited from the Oxford Movement and since further elaborated in the same

sense; the second, owing to the influences of the Church and the National Life affecting each other reciprocally. Looking then to these two opposite characteristics (the attempt to combine which is what really constitutes that specialisation of the Church in one direction spoken of above) the author's judgment follows two different impulses, according as he contemplates the one or the other of them.

It is not, however, in connection with the Church's mutually exclusive aims that "the wider possibilities of development," referred to in the last paragraph, were intended to be understood. For though the author believes that the Church's attempted combination of these aims is at present more or less a failure, he believes also that ultimately it will be a success and the signs of progress which he discerns are interpreted by him as pointing in that direction. More than this, the author's calculations are broad enough to admit of his hopes for the Church being realised, even should this not be by the path which he personally would have preferred. Hence, his purpose as fully developed, so far from being a controversial one, is really directed to show that the now dominant tendencies of English Churchmanship may be destined, to whatever extent, to triumph, and yet, in the course of working themselves out, may transcend the associations of their origin, and may acquire a truly catholic character in exchange for their present mere pseudo-catholicity.