Part 9 (1/2)

II

The Prime Minister's argument ran upon material and mathematical lines; he imported no pa.s.sion into the discussion,--there was no need. He had at his disposal all that was requisite--the parliamentary majority, the popular mandate, and, so he believed, the necessary expedient under the Const.i.tution for bringing the Church to heel. Episcopalianism no longer commanded a majority of the nation; Church endowments had therefore become the preserves of a minority, and scholars.h.i.+p by remaining denominational was getting to be denationalized. Having laid down his premises he proceeded to set forth his demands. Henceforth the Universities were to be released from Church control, all collegiate and other educational appointments to be open and unsectarian, scholars.h.i.+ps and fellows.h.i.+ps, however exclusive the intentions of their pious founders, were to follow in the same course; degrees of divinity were to be granted irrespective of creed, and chairs of theology open to all comers.

At this point the Archbishop, who had hitherto sat silent, put in a word.

”That will include Buddhists and Mohammedans. Is such your intention?”

The Prime Minister corrected himself. ”I should, of course, have said 'all who profess themselves Christians.'”

The Archbishop accepted the concession with an ironical bow.

”Unitarians and Roman Catholics?”

”That would necessarily follow.”

”I am ceasing to be amazed,” said his Grace coldly. ”We, the custodians of theological teaching, are to admit to our endowments the two extremes of heresy and of schism.”

”If both are admitted,” suggested the Prime Minister, ”will they not tend to correct each other? We study history by allowing all sides to be stated, and we admit to its chair both schools, the scientists and the rhetoricians. Why, then, should not theology be studied on the same broad lines?”

”Will the chair of theology become a more stable inst.i.tution,” inquired the Archbishop, ”by being turned into a see-saw?”

The Prime Minister smiled on the ill.u.s.tration, but his answer was edged with bitterness.

”That is a way of securing some movement at all events,” he remarked caustically.

”The Church,” retorted his Grace, ”denies the need of such movement. Her firm foundations--we have scriptural warrant for saying--are upon rock.

She is neither a traveling menagerie, a swingboat, nor a merry-go-round.”

”Yet I have heard,” said the Prime Minister, ”that she takes a s.h.i.+p to be her symbol, and one, in particular, very specially designed to be a traveling menagerie--containing all kinds both clean and unclean.”

”The unclean,” said the Archbishop, ”were by divine dispensation placed in a decisive minority.”

”Yet they shared, I suppose, the provisions of the establishment?”

”They did not, I imagine, sit down at the table with the patriarch and his family.”

”Perhaps the dogs ate of the crumbs?”

”It is not 'crumbs' that you are seeking,” said the Archbishop with asperity. ”From our chairs of theology we dispense to the Church the bread of wisdom from which she draws sustenance; and you ask us to let that source of her intellectual life become infected with microbes,--at a time when lat.i.tudinarian doctrines are sapping the unity of the Church and weakening her discipline, to allow their establishment as a principle in our centers of learning and in our seats of divinity! What claim to denounce heresy and schism will be left to the Church if in her very government heretics and schismatic teachers receive posts of influence, emolument, and authority? To what extremes may not the minds of our students be led, to what destruction of ecclesiastical discipline?”

”If you will admit free teaching in the Universities,” explained the Prime Minister, ”we shall not seek to touch your theological seminaries, or to invade your orders by an infusion of fresh blood.”

”Invade our orders?” cried the Primate. ”That you cannot do; no Bishop's hands would bestow them!” and he drew back his own with a declamatory gesture. ”You yourself are not a Churchman, and you do not perhaps know what to us the Church means. We hold in sacred trust the power of the Keys--if we surrender those we surrender everything.”

”They are in a good many hands already,” remarked the Prime Minister blandly. ”Episcopal power is not limited to the Church of Jingalo.” And then for the first time, as a p.a.w.n in the political game, the Archimandrite was mentioned. The Archbishop could not believe his ears.

”You would not dare,” he said.

”I am sorry,” replied the other, ”that you should be under any such misapprehension. Let me remind you that only a year ago you yourself recommended him for an honorary benefice--a church that had not a parish.”

”Yes, honorary; not with administrative powers.”