Page:The Church of England, its catholicity and continuity.djvu/223

Rh Before I close I want to speak upon another subject. The different schools of thought in the Church and the attitude of the Church to Dissent and of Dissent to the Church.

In speaking of the different schools of thought in the Church of England we tread on rather delicate ground. There are considered to be at least three parties in the Church. The Ritualistic or High Church, the Evangelical and the Broad Church party. If we speak of their numbers there can be no doubt at all that the High Church section is far the most numerous and the most influential. The Evangelical party is falling away. It has done a good work, but its weakness has been that it did not preach the whole Gospel but showed great zeal in enforcing one part of it only, viz., the doctrine of the atonement, while its tendency was to neglect other doctrines. The Broad Church party is too hostile to the importance of any doctrine to have any permanent influence. Because its policy is essentially a negative one it could not be expected to have long life. This party, while so busily engaged in discussing the importance or non-importance of creeds and dogmas, has generally reduced to a minimum its teaching about the Faith. It was the personality of the leaders of this movement in the Church which won people on its side rather than the message which it had to deliver. The fault of the Broad Church party has been that it did not think enough of the message of the Gospel which was entrusted to its keeping, and as its tendency was to lessen the importance of this there could be no life for it. For my part, I consider it is a mistake to labelled with any particular party name. We should call ourselves simple Churchmen. And we should be faithful