■will be the loss when scholars and real gentlemen have gone. 

 English social life will be impoverished, religiously and 

 parochially. A man without a hobby apart from his profession 

 is generally an uninteresting and very often an unhappy man, 

 but with some special object of relaxation life becomes better 

 worth living and fuller every way. Such a man we have before 

 us. In his own profession he was most diligent and his 

 parishoners reverenced him for his work and sympathy, as a 

 pastor, friend and helper in all the various vicissitudes, pleasures 

 and sorrows of this mortal life. 



Theologically he was abreast of the age and kept himself well 

 informed in the highest of all studies, the relationship of God to 

 man and man to God and to his fellow creatures. He was a 

 powerful and thoughtful controversialist as the following letters 

 to the "Yorkshire Post" (190l) prove. They were on the 

 subject of "Keligion and the masses." 



Sm. — In your to-days issue "Interested" makes a most kind and 

 courteous reference to my previous letter, for which I thank him. Let me, 

 however, make a remark or two by way of answer to that part of his letter 

 which is' a reply to mine. He argues that the English branch of the Church 

 of Christ "stultifies her former teaching of centuries" by extending the 

 horizon of her outlook in accordance with the advance ever being made in 

 human knowledge of nature and the Bible. He might with equal justice say 

 that I stultify mvself by holding, at forty-eight, views somewhat different 

 from those which I held at eight. Unlike the Roman branch, the Church of 

 England lies on no Procrustean bed, but keeps her intelligence open 

 to all truth. 



Verbal inspiration of Holy Scripture has neTer been the teaching of the 

 Church of England, though she holds, of course, that "Holy Scripture 

 coataineth all things necessary unto salvation." In my capacity of President 

 of the Cleveland Naturalists' Field Club, I am to take the chair in Middles- 

 brough to-morrow evening while my friend Professor Kendall delivers a 

 lecture on "Early Man and his Relation to the Ice Age." I can assure your 

 correspondent that I would not do this if I supposed that my friend's 

 teachings would be at variance either with the teachings of the Bible which 

 I revere, or of the Church which I love. That they may be inconsistent with 

 the view which in days of weaker illumination the Church took of the 

 meaning of certain passages of Scripture is another matter, and one which 

 does not concern me as a twentieth century Churchman. It is possible that 

 in the fuller light of to-day we may place a somewhat different explanation 

 upon some of those passages of Holy Scripture which recount miraculous 

 events from that which our forefathers placed upon them. That which 

 appears miraculous to a child's intelligence sometimes divests itself of its 

 miraculous semblance before the inspection of a full-grown man. Just as 

 there was first of all an evolution of the Bible, so there has since been an 

 evolution of its truth. That, there has been an evolution on the part of the 

 English branch of the Holy Universal Church of Christ I need not only refer to 

 the events which took place in that period of her history usually known as 

 the '■ Reformation " to show. But though the Church may give amended 

 interpretations of certain passages of Scripture, she still recognises therein 

 the presence of the supernatural. 



