And:
Jesu, my Lord, my God my all!
How can I love thee as I ought?.. Last lines are Sweet Sacrament, we thee adore!
Oh make us love thee more and more.
These verses clearly imply the worship of Mary and "The Host," and it is therefore surprising that a writer associated with the Shanghai Cathedral should wish to associate himself with this teaching. I have no hard words for those who can make these verses the expression of their religion; but I am amazed when men take them up and still wish to be called "loyal Sons of the Church of England." The Church of England has left this kind of teaching behind centuries ago as everyone knows, who is acquainted with the Prayer Book and its history. Therefore any attempt to reinstate it is a retrograde movement. No, Sir, we cannot return to errors which our fathers died to cast out.
3.—Again, I must express my pain that the leaders of this movement have captured a grand word and degraded it into a party cry. That word is "Catholic." There is surely no Christian who is not stirred by the thought of "the blessed company of all faithful people" which constitute the Catholic Church. But 'Catholic' to to them means something quite different. It is a narrow ecclesia: osticism based on a theory of Apostolic Succession which will bear neither Scriptural nor _historical investigation. (See Prof, Headlam's Hampton lectures on Reunion). Candidly, Sir, I am suspicious of a Catholicity which runs with open arms to the Eastern Churches, but which faces the Nonconforming Christians of the Home-lund with a rigid theory of "validity."
4.—The avowed aim of the Con-grosses is the "conversion of England." This admirable expression, however, has very little meaning for them, for they openly speak of the Mass in their programmes; and Canon Underhill in a recent issue of the "Guardian" said that one of the happy results of these Congresses was that an increasing number of people were attending Confession. If "conversion" means turning to these things, I am afraid it does not mean what Christ meant by it.
It really is incredible to me how members of the Church of England can talk of these things when the Mass in Article 31 is called a blas-phemius fable and dangerous de-celt. Of course, it is considered impolite to mention this, in the present day, but the Reformers had the gift of saying what they meant in plain English—a gift which many today might well emulate.
More painful than anything, Sir, in this movement is the incessant talk about the Church. Why is the Church forever talking about itself? Is that what it was commissioned to do? This morbid seliconsciousness is everywhere, 50 that many might ask if the Church has any other aim than to seek its own popularity and good name. All this self-centred talk indicates that we are more anxious about
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.