WE RECENTLY called attention to Mr Vale Owen’s outrageous theory that our Lord depended for His Resurrection appearances to the Twelve and others upon darkened rooms and such like. It appears that the Bishop of Liverpool [Francis Chavasse] had rather tied his own hands by asking Mr Owen to promise that, whatever his opinions about spiritualism might be, he would not preach them from the pulpit or teach them to his Bible class or to his Confirmation candidates. The terms of such a promise might quite reasonably be interpreted by Mr Owen as tacit permission to promulgate his theories in every other way open to him. He has, however, been rebuked by the Bishop, not for the newspaper articles which are so offensive to Christian people, but for having permitted a layman known as a protagonist of spiritualism to address the congregation at Orford. This gentleman told his hearers that he regarded Orford church as a lighthouse to light them to higher and purer realms, and Mr Owen has been called to account for having ever permitted a layman to speak in the church without his bishop’s leave. His action has, says the Bishop, caused great distress in many directions, and is likely, if suffered to pass unnoticed, to do real harm to the Church in which he is an ordained minister. In our view, infinitely more harm is done by Mr Owen’s regular newspaper articles, and we cannot admit that by extracting such a promise as that referred to the Bishop escapes responsibility. His duty is to banish erroneous and strange doctrines, and no amount of promises given or received can override that first duty.

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