The motion, on being put to the meeting, was carried with one dissentient. The rider was also carried by a majority.
It amounts, then, to this, that a rule of limited liability is to be observed in the investigation of early Christianity. You may be critical, but not up to the point of calling in question the Virgin Birth or physical resurrection of Christ. The Bishop of Croydon opines that the free discussion of such questions in University circles intimidates young men from taking orders. If he lived in Oxford, he would know that it is the other way about. [54] If Mr. Thompson had been allowed to say what he thought, unmolested; if the Bishops of Winchester and of Oxford had not at once taken steps to silence and drive him out of the Church, students would have been better encouraged to enter the Anglican ministry, and the more intellectual of our young men would not avoid it as a profession hard to reconcile with truth and honesty and self-respect.
In the next number of the same journal (June 2, 1911) is recorded another example of how little our bishops are inclined to face a plain issue. It is contained in a paragraph headed thus:--
The Bishop of Birmingham on the Second Coming.
Preaching to a large congregation in Birmingham Cathedral ... the Bishop of Birmingham said that people had found difficulty in modern times about the Ascension, because, they said, "God's heaven is no more above our heads than under our feet." That was perfectly true. But there were certain ways of expressing moral ideas rooted in human thought, and we did not the less speak continually of the above and the below as expressing what was morally high and morally low, and we should go on doing so to the end. The ascension of Jesus Christ and his concealment in the clouds was a symbolical act, like all the acts after his Resurrection; it was to impress their minds with the truth of his mounting to the glory of God. Symbols were the best means of expressing the truth about things which lay outside their experience; and the Ascension symbolized Christ's mounting to the supreme state of power and glory, to the perfect vision of God, to the throne of all the world.... The Kingdom was coming--had to come at last--"on earth as it is in heaven"; and one day, just as his disciples saw him passing away out of their experience and sight, would they see him coming back into their experience and their sight, and into his perfected Kingdom of Humanity.
