232 THE VERY REV. H. WAGE, B.D., ON AUTHORITY. 



Another question arose here, could any organisation now on earth 

 claim the position held by the Church as first founded ^ They 

 rejected the figment of an historic sequence, save a sequence in guilt ; 

 and adopted the position of the Reformers, that the Holy Catholic 

 Church is the whole company of Christian people dispersed through- 

 out the whole world — the people of God scattered over the earth. 

 Their study of the past history and present condition of Christendom 

 would thus lead them back to the conclusion that the ouly authority 

 they could acknowledge in the religious sphere was the Bible. 

 Everything else was superstition or worse. 



Rev. A. Irving, D.Sc, B.A., regretted that he had not had the 

 opportunity of following the paper as a whole, but so far as he could 

 speak of it he thoroughly appreciated the line that the Dean of 

 Canterbury had taken. He was glad to find that the author of the 

 paper had come to realise the fact that there is no finality in Science, 

 and therefore no room for dogmatism, even on the part of those who 

 were most qualified to speak in the name of Science. He was the 

 more interested in the paper, as, most opportunely, it had much in 

 common with the ground taken by Dr. James Gairdner, C.B., the 

 distinguished historian, in a correspondence on " Disestablishment " 

 in the Guardian during the last few weeks. The speaker had him- 

 self taken a subordinate part in the controversy, and had been led to 

 quote what he himself put into print some twenty years ago, to the 

 effect that the Royal Supremacy properly understood implied no 

 dictatorial powers on the part of the State towards the Church, but 

 was rather the expression on the part of the English nation of its 

 consciousness of the continuity of its national life on the religious 

 side. 



With regard to Sir Robert Anderson's remarks, which were not 

 easy to follow, he held that it was in the continuity of the life of the 

 Church that we recognised its teaching authority ; and that this had 

 been embodied for all time in the Greek Testament Scriptures, 

 which had come to us on the authority of the Church and on that 

 alone ; while those Scriptures carried their own inherent evidence 

 to a sympathetic faith. He was thankful that the New Testament had 

 had to run the fires of criticism and had survived the ordeal ; since 

 it now stood before the world on surer ground than it did previously 

 as a sufficient record and guarantee of what Christ instructed His 

 Spirit-taught Church to deliver to the world for its regeneration ; 



