No breath from the class-rooms agitated by
Einstein can shake his faith in these absolutes. His Spirit of the
Universe is absolute truth, absolute goodness, absolute beauty. He is a
Neoplatonist, but something more. He ascends into communion with this
Universal Spirit whispering the Name of Christ, and by the power of
Christ in his soul addresses the Absolute as Abba, Father.
No man is freer from bigotry or intolerance, though not many can hate
falsity and lies more earnestly. The Church of England, he tells me,
should be a national church, a church expressing the highest reach of
English temperament, with room for all shades of thought. He quotes
Dollinger, "No church is so national, so deeply rooted in popular
affection, so bound up with the institutions and manners of the country,
or so powerful in its influences on national character." But this was
written in 1872. Dr. Inge says now, "The English Church represents, on
the religious side, the convictions, tastes, and prejudices of the
English gentleman, that truly national ideal of character. . . . A love of
order, seemliness, and good taste has led the Anglican Church along a
middle path between what a seventeenth century divine called 'the
meretricious gaudiness of the Church of Rome and the squalid slutterny
of fanatic conventicles.'"
Uniformity, he tells me, is not to be desired. One of our greatest
mistakes was letting the Wesleyan Methodists go; they should have been
accommodated within the fold.
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