followed him; his 'Principles of Church Reform' (1883) lays down the lines on which the Church, if she is to remain national and established, must move. Unfortunately his removal to Rugby and his premature death (1842) left the field open to men of a different spirit-with the results that we see.

In spite, however, of the opposition which Liberalism encountered-an opposition which, though the forms that it took were often unworthy, was the expression of genuine religious feeling the future lay with the Liberals. The intellect and conscience of the country were with them. It was impossible for the more intelligent among the younger men not to be in sympathy with the movement, which moulded the views of many who could not be described as Liberals-of scholars like Lightfoot and Westcott at Cambridge, of the authors of 'Lux 'Mundi': the positions, though, unfortunately, not the temper, of Maurice and Kingsley find general acceptance to-day. Poets like Tennyson and Browning, men of letters like Matthew Arnold and Seeley, exercised a wider influence than professional theologians. Jowett taught Oxford to think; his Essay on the Interpretation of Scripture'* and the too little read Dissertations on St. Paul's Epistles' † made exegesis living, and prepared the way for a scientific theology. Colenso criticised the Mosaic records, and his assailants found it easier to denounce the writer than to refute his book. It is probable that the best work of Liberalism is done by way of permeation; it creates an atmosphere in which certain forms of life die out and others thrive. As a school, it has never been, and is never likely to be, popular in the sense in which Evangelicalism and Ritualism have been popular. It is academic, and, to those who are not scholars, a little uninspiring; it makes no appeal to the senses; a certain aridity is perhaps its besetting sin. No one ever lived on negations. A Liberalism, if there be one, which is content to stand at the parting of the ways and to write 'No thorough'fare' on all of them has, and deserves to have, no future: piety and a social programme are conditions of its retaining its hold on men. It lives on, and in virtue of, the Christianity which it expresses; if it ceases to express Christianity, its sufficient reason is gone. And it has the promise of the future

* Essays and Reviews, 1861.

† 1855.

The Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua critically examined, 1862.

because, and in so far as, it expresses Christianity more adequately than its rivals. Its distinctive function is the removal of certain difficulties, moral as well as intellectual, which stand in the way of religion. There is no reason why a Christian as such-particularly an uneducated Christian-should be a Liberal. But Liberalism enables many a man to be a Christian who, but for it, would find Christianity impossible; and supplies that principle of growth without which Christianity would have neither place in nor meaning for a growing world. This is its justification. Freedom of thought and speech have, no doubt, their drawbacks; an individual at issue with an institution civil or religious seldom appears at his best. Renan contrasts the outspokenness of Colenso with what he calls the angelic silences' of many of the Catholic priesthood, who devour their hearts and stifle their convictions in silence. Such silence, is Stanley's comment, may be necessary in the Church of France and Italy. But may we be long ' preserved from it; for it is the silence of death.' *

We have been told on high authority that the years immediately before us will be critical for the Church. The settlement of the Education controversy cannot be long delayed; it will be possible to estimate the success of the efforts now being made to attract the masses; the Revision of the Prayer Book will have been either taken in hand or definitely abandoned; the question of Disestablishment may have revived. Most important of all, the colonial Churches will either have overtaken or been outstripped by the growing population, native born and immigrant, and the work of missions will have either advanced or retreated materially. The age is one of increasing movement; for Churches, as well as for nations and individuals, the one impossible thing is to stand still. It is easier to state the position than to suggest a policy by which it can be met. The bishops differ among themselves; the circumstances in which they are placed are difficult; it is not surprising that, as at the recent Lambeth Conference, their official utterances are expressed in general terms. But the drawback to generalities, however unexceptionable, is that they miss the particular issue; it is in the minor premiss that the gist of the matter lies.

It cannot be said that either the Church or Dissent has shown to advantage in the education controversy. On each side secondary considerations have been made paramount; and the interests both of religion and of education subordinated to those of sect. The denominational question appeals rather

Essays on Church and State, p. 269.

to the clergy than to the parents, who generally speaking know little about it and care less; and the principle of neutrality, on which the Government necessarily acts, works inevitably, though by no intention either of the legislature or the executive, in favour of the less dogmatic bodies. Here is the key to the situation. It is not that the Department favours Dissenters, but that Dissenters are, and Churchmen of a certain type are not, satisfied with the only religious instruction which it is in the power of the Department to give. No better advice could have been offered to the clergy and their supporters than that given them by the Archbishop of Canterbury when the last Education Bill was before Parliament; and his opinion, he has told us since, is unchanged. But 'they would none of his counsel'; and the longer the settlement is deferred the less favourable to them it is likely to be. Should the country be driven against its will to fall back upon the secular solution, it will be with the so-called 'Church' party that the responsibility for what we are bold to call that national calamity will rest.

It is probable that the attitude of the masses to religion will not in the long run differ materially from that of the upper and middle classes; the community is one. Nor, however this attitude may shape itself, is it probable that the balance between the Church and Dissent will be greatly disturbed. The democratic government and informal worship of the Free Churches suit one section of the nation; the spacious and historic atmosphere of the Prayer Book another. The difference is one of form rather than of substance; there is no sharp dividing line between what have been called conforming and nonconforming members of the National Church. An increase of occasional conformity-and of occasional nonconformityis to be desired. It is to be wished that such an interchange of pulpits as exists between the Established and the United Free Churches of Scotland were recognised, and that greater facilities for non-liturgical services were afforded. If, in addition to this, Nonconformists were encouraged to communicate in their parish churches at Easter, the separation would be nominal and the separatist temper near its end. The step in this direction recently taken by the Bishop of Hereford is one of the happiest signs of the time. Convocation, however, acted with regard to it more suo: and the Primate, of whom better things might have been expected, missed a great opportunity by coming down-not, it seems, without hesitationon the wrong side of the fence. The Bishops are intimidated by the extremists, and hypnotised by the medieval idea,

Roman Catholic, or Latin, This is not because of her Oriental Churches, with which

It is to be regretted that nothing in the shape of a better understanding with the Church is to be looked for. teaching as such-that of the a certain modus vivendi may possibly be reached, is very similar-but because she has stereotyped herself and so arrested life. The only union which she can admit is that of submission; and the dead only can join themselves to the dead. A foolish and undignified attempt was made to obtain from Leo XIII. a recognition of Anglican Orders, a question which—though it seems impossible to convince Anglicans that it is so-Rome regards from a purely political point of view. The result was the Bull 'Apostolicae Curae' (1906), in which these Orders were declared 'irritas prorsus fuisse et esse, omninoque 'nullas.' Since then the Modernist movement might have brought the English Church into relation with the more progressive elements of Latin Christianity. Its nature, however, was curiously misconceived in this country. High Churchmen imagined that the position was that of a non-papal Catholicism, such as they desire to see taken up by their own Church. When it dawned upon them that it was an effort towards the construction of a scientific theology, and fell into line not with the so-called Catholic revival but with the onward sweep of the Reformation and the Illumination, their zeal cooled. In 1907 the bishops might probably have spoken with effect, if not to the English Romanists as a body, at least to the converts, many of whom, taught by experience, look back wistfully to the Church which they have left. A courageous and faithful word, opportunely spoken, might even have found an echo beyond our own shores. But-'Episcopi Angliae 'semper pavidi.' They were silent; the opportunity passed, and will not return.

To the lay mind it seems strange that there should be two opinions with regard to Prayer Book revision. The mind of the twentieth century is not, and cannot be, that of the sixteenth it is difficult to take seriously the contention that the Athanasian Creed is suitable for public recitation, or that the Lectionary is satisfactory. So with regard to other burning questions. Divorce is an evil; the question is whether under certain circumstances it is not the lesser of two evils: marriage with a deceased wife's sister may be undesirable and is unlikely to become general; but a doctrine of affinity, so rigorous that Roman canonists are driven to escape from it by a legal fiction, prejudices rather than safeguards family life. While as to confessions of faith-and the same may be said of

ceremonial-a form, whether of sound words or of observance, is useful only in so far as it is a vehicle of spiritual life. When this runs in other directions, the outworn symbol impedes its course. To take too seriously things not in themselves serious is to lose our sense of proportion, and to become ridiculous; and in religion, more perhaps than elsewhere, ridicule kills.

There is at present little active agitation against Church Establishments: the question with regard to Wales affects not so much the principle as its application to a particular case. A spark however might rekindle the controversy; and in this case the Liberationists would have not a few Churchmen of the extreme type as allies. No greater misfortune could befall English religion than their success. It is certain that, as things stand, Disestablishment, or, short of this, any loosening of the ties between Church and State, would play into the hands of a party whose ascendency is already a menace, penalise sober Churchmen, alienate still further the intelligence of the country, and sow the seeds of a religious conflict the end of which it is impossible to foresee. Those Nonconformistsand they are the great majority-with whom national interests count for more than the temporary and fallacious gain of a sect or party, will not, we believe, fall short of the patriotism of their ancestors, who refused in 1688 to purchase exemption from the oppressive disabilities to which they were subject at the risk of the larger liberties of the nation (in which their own were included); and stood side by side with Churchmen in defence of the fundamental laws of the realm.* The battle of Disestablishment, if it comes-it may not and ought not to come-should be fought not between Churchmen and Dissenters, but between the progressive and the retrograde forces in religion; between the men who look forward and the men who look back. The expansion of the colonial Churches makes the maintenance of the connexion of the Home Church with the State more important. Their hardier climate is unfavourable to religious dilettantism; the condition of Christianity striking root in Greater Britain is that it shall be rational, free, and sane.

The Oos of the English Church is perhaps her finest feature. Quietness is still its note, but the age of 'quiet 'worldliness' is over; the modern clergy approximate less to the squire type than to that of the parish minister. A shrewd and not over friendly Roman Catholic observer once commented to the writer on their quiet virtue,' which he contrasted with

* Macaulay, 'History of England,' I. viii.