Untitled - Electric Scotland

1863-68] THE SPEAKER S COMMENTARY 525
"I am free to he say," added, "that 1 it thought better not to
ask you, for you would have wished Stanley to be in the under
taking, and T could not have made the attempt with Stanley s
name upon our scheme. I need not say that in other respects I
value your candour and courage too much to think of slighting
you/
Further correspondence ensued, the most important
letter being as follows :-
TJie Bishop of London to the Speaker of tlie House of
Commons.
I ,1,AN FAIR I- IX HA\, NK. l>A\<;Ok,
Sept. 7///, 1863.
"Mv DEAR MR. SIM-.AKKR, ... I am afraid I have given
you some trouble already, and that this letter will give you more
in the reading of it ; but I must beg you to attribute this to the
right motive, viz., the very earnest desire which I have, that the
great work you have set in motion should be so conducted as to
be a real benefit to the Church. . . . Consulted as I had been
privately all through, it never occurred to me, till the idea was
forced upon me, that there was any intention of arranging every
thing so as to make my adhesion to the scheme a mere formality.
"
I do not know whether you can quite understand the
position in which I should be placed unless this matter is cleared
up.
"
I entirely concur in what the Dean of St. Paul s has said, that
this Commentary, to be of real service to the Church, ought to
be at once free and critical enough to satisfy inquiring minds, yet
so religious as not to disturb the more devotional. Ever since
the present unhappy phase of controversy began to disturb the
Church, I have felt most strongly that the only safety lay in the
growth of a liberal yet deeply religious party, and that, in handling
Scripture especially, the greatest care was needed that nothing
should be advanced which would not bear thorough sifting.
Now, in the Aids to Faith that answer to the Essays and
Reviews which the Archbishop of York edited, and to which Mr.
Cook was a contributor the chief writer, whom I find intrusted
with a very important share in this Commentary, has, as I under-