Occasional Papers: Selected from the Guardian, the Times, and the Saturday Review, 1846-1890, Vol. 2Church, R. W. (Richard William)
Religion
Occasional Papers: Selected from the Guardian, the Times, and the Saturday Review, 1846-1890, Vol. 2
Church, R. W. (Richard William)
Christianity; Church and state -- Great Britain; Great Britain -- Church history -- 19th century
And for his success in this part of his work--in making the crowds in
Manchester feel that their Bishop was a man like themselves, quite
alive to their wants and claims and feelings, and not so unlike them in
his broad and strong utterances--his Episcopate deserves full
recognition and honour. He set an example which we may hope to see
followed and improved upon. But unfortunately there was also a less
successful side. He was a Bishop, an overseer of a flock of many ways
of life and thought, a fellow-worker with them, sympathetic, laborious,
warm-hearted. But he was also a Bishop of the Church of Christ, an
institution with its own history, its great truths to keep and deliver,
its characteristic differences from the world which it is sent to
correct and to raise to higher levels than those of time and nature.
There is no reason why this side of the Episcopal office should not be
joined to that in which Bishop Frazer so signally excelled. But for
this part of it he was not well qualified, and much in his performance
of it must be thought of with regret. The great features of Christian
truth had deeply impressed him; and to its lofty moral call he
responded with conviction and earnestness. But an acquaintance with
what he has to interpret and guard which may suffice for a layman is
not enough for a Bishop; and knowledge, the knowledge belonging to his
profession, the deeper and more varied knowledge which makes a man
competent to speak as a theologian, Bishop Frazer did not possess. He
rather disbelieved in it, and thought it useless, or, it might be,
mischievous. He resented its intrusion into spheres where he could only
see the need of the simplest and least abstruse language. But facts are
not what we may wish them, but what they are; and questions, if they
are asked, may have to be answered, with toil, it may be, and
difficulty, like the questions, assuredly not always capable of easy
and transparent statement, of mathematical or physical science; and
unless Christianity is a dream and its history one vast delusion, such
facts and such questions have made what we call theology. But to the
Bishop's practical mind they were without interest, and he could not
see how they could touch and influence living religion. And did not
care to know about them; he was impatient, and even scornful, when
stress was laid on them; he was intolerant when he thought they
competed with the immediate realities of religion. And this want of
knowledge and of respect for knowledge was a serious deficiency. It
gave sometimes a tone of thoughtless flippancy to his otherwise earnest
language. And as he was not averse to controversy, or, at any rate,
found himself often involved in it, he was betrayed sometimes into
assertions and contradictions of the most astounding inaccuracy, which
seriously weakened his authority when he was called upon to accept the
responsibility of exerting it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account