["Copious extracts", as a leading article put it, were
reproduced from the Bishop of Zanzibar's letter, hitherto mentioned
with "strict reserve", and whose publication the Editor regretted.
The extracts were introduced thus:]
THIS week is published by Longmans the "Open Letter" which the
Bishop of Zanzibar [Frank Weston] has addressed to the Bishop of St
Albans [Edgar Jacob]. His thesis is that at the present time,
"having regard to her exceeding chaotic system of Truth," the
Ecclesia Anglicana is entirely unfit to send missionaries
to heathen or Mohammedan lands. She "is content to have lost her
power of self-expression, so that we out here can no longer appeal
to her Voice or rest upon her Witness. She has no Voice; she offers
no single Witness."
Three incidents that date within the past year are given by way
of illustration. First, the publication of "Foundations", the chief
value of which "is not in its theology nor its philosophy; but
rather in the revelation it affords of the official attitude of the
Bishops implicated towards heresy and unorthodox speculation".
The second incident is the Conference of Protestant Missions
with the Church Missionary Society at Kikuyu, British East Africa,
in June, 1913. The third incident is a comparison of the treatment
meted out by the Bishop of St Albans to his chaplain as Editor of
"Foundations", and his public inhibition from ministering in his
diocese "a priest who had invoked our Lady and two other Saints, in
one of your churches . . .". . .