Such
colleges as represent the evangelical movement are, thanks to their
title deeds, largely in the hands of pious laymen not very well
educated, who adhere rigidly to a school of thought which is associated
in the modern mind with an extreme of narrowness. Thus it comes about
that many men who might serve the Church with great power are driven
away at her doors. Something must be done to get men whose love of truth
is a part of their love of God.
The second difficulty concerns the leadership of the Church. Bishops
should be men with time to think, able when they address mankind to
speak from "the top of the mind"; scholars rather than administrators,
saints rather than statesmen; but such is the present condition that a
man who is made a bishop finds himself so immersed in the business of a
great institution that his intellectual and spiritual life become things
of accident, luxurious things to be squeezed into the odd moments, if
there are any, of an almost breathless day. This is not good for the
Church. The world is not asking for mechanism. It is asking for light.
It is, indeed, an over-organised world working in the dark.
Canon Barnes, however, is not concerned only with the theological
aspects of Christianity. For him, religion is above all other things a
social force, a great cleansing and sanctifying influence in the daily
life of evolving man.
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