CONTENTS OF ESSAY VII. Brief historical sketch of the South African Church, from the first establishment of the Diocese of Capetown in 1847 to the present time. Uniform practical results of all the decisions of the Courts in supporting the legal status of the Bishop of Natal. Conflict of opinions as to the attitude to be taken by the Church at home in reference to the controversy. Distinction between Free Colonics and Crown Colonies. Reasons for maintaining Royal Supre macy as a security for truth and order in colonies which do not contain the materials for Church synods. Royal Supremacy may be more safely exercised under a constitutional than an absolute Sovereign. Importance on religious grounds of a Court of Appeal recognising one uniform standard. This can only be secured so long as the Colonial Church continues to be part and parcel of the National Church at home. Hopes for the future. THE CHURCH IN SOUTH THE ecclesiastical controversy which has now for nearly six years agitated the Christian Church in South Africa has been watched in England through its various phases with a sustained interest rarely bestowed on the disputes of distant communities. The exceptional earnestness with which these remote combatants have been aided and abetted by their respective partisans in this country is due, no doubt, mainly to the conviction that whatever may be the final issue of the strife, its results will react not only on ourselves at home, but on every colony and country in which a branch of the Church of England exists. In this point of view the question assumes an importance co-extensive with the limits of Anglican Christendom, and must therefore be regarded entirely apart from the local and personal associations in which it has been hitherto almost inevitably absorbed. In its purely theological aspects the "Natal crisis" has been already more than sufficiently discussed. The debates of both Houses of Convocation, the voluminous treatises, pamphlets, letters, speeches, and newspaper articles which have exhausted every doctrinal topic raised by the writings of Bishop Colenso and the criticisms of his opponents, may be said to have left no argument untouched which could tend to illustrate the religious aspects of the controversy. With these we have on the present occasion no concern. Our question is simply what, under the existing conditions of the law, and on a review of all the facts and circumstances of the case, is our duty as Englishmen, and as Christians, in dealing with the crisis which has arisen in Natal, and which promises in one form or other to extend itself to every branch of the United Church of England and Ireland? A brief recapitulation of the facts of the case, stripped of all inferences and personalities, will perhaps best enable us to apprehend the actual position of affairs in our South African colonies. A chronological summary of disconnected events constantly changing their scene can scarcely be otherwise than dry and uninteresting, but it would be difficult to form an accurate and impartial judgment on a question, in almost all statements of which facts and opinions have been so inconveniently interlaced, until some historical basis has been previously laid. In 1847, the diocese of Capetown, comprising an area of about 200,000 square miles on the mainland of South Africa, and including the Island of St. Helena, about 1200 miles from its west coast, was created by Royal Letters Patent. In 1853, at the request of the Bishop (who in order to carry out the arrangement resigned his see), the diocese was subdivided, and those of Natal and Grahamstown carved out of it, that of Capetown proper being at the same time defined, and endowed with Metropolitan powers by a fresh Patent.* The personnel of the new episcopate as reorganised in 1853 was as follows:Bishop Gray retained the now contracted diocese of Capetown proper, with Metropolitan powers; Bishops Armstrong and Colenso were selected by Bishop Gray for the dioceses of Grahamstown and Natal respectively. For several years from this date no public controversy appears to have disturbed the peace of the South African Church until that which arose between the Bishop of Capetown and Mr. Long.† In May, 1862, a book written by the Bishop of Natal, entitled 'A Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans,' supposed to contain objectionable matter, was submitted by the Bishop of Capetown to the then Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr. Sumner), and a private meeting of Bishops, over which Dr. Longley, then Archbishop of York, presided. In February, 1863, another book, written also by the Bishop of Natal, and entitled 'The Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua critically examined,' was submitted to a similar meeting, who thereupon resolved, That the * These powers were, in the words of the Patent, "subject to the general superintendence and revision of the Archbishop of Canterbury." The Rev. William Long, incumbent of Mowbray, being commanded by the Bishop to convene a Synod in a form implying that the Church of South Africa did not form part of the Church of England, refused, and was in consequence deprived of his living. The judgment of the supreme court of Capetown in favour of the Bishop was reversed by the Privy Council, June 25, 1863. |