what Nonconformists have strenuously resisted at each of the three last census periods, doubtless for sound reasons of policy. And if that census did not startlingly contradict all procurable statistics of other kinds, it would show that professing members of the Church of England constitute about seventytwo per cent. of the nation, and consequently that the Church was still entitled to retain three-fourths or so of its present temporalities. The jealousy and bad feeling that such a result would engender amongst the disappointed sects would alone go far to break up the rickety combination; but even if it failed to do so, it is certain that Churchmen, unless forcibly barred from such action by disabling statutes, would employ their resources in the creation of a number of private trusts for the erection of new churches and the endowment of new benefices outside the control of the new State establishment, whereby they could enjoy their traditional tenets and usages free from interference and admixture. Supposing this road of escape to be blocked up by statute, another result could scarcely fail to ensue: that of an enormous financial deficit. For it is notorious that, whatever be the wealth of the Church of England, even assessing it at the most extravagantly exaggerated estimate, large annual subventions. are needed to carry on its ordinary work, without making allowance for the cost of expansion in any direction. To strip the Church of the whole, or any large fraction, of its possessions would not only at once paralyse much of the religious work now doing for the benefit of the nation, but would also dry up the stream of voluntary contributions, simply because men would no longer give as they now do, since the new society would entirely fail to awake their interest, not to say their enthusiasm. And failure of this kind, which could not be concealed, would soon ensure the repeal and abandonment of the whole disastrous measure.

So much will suffice to have said on the feasibility of the scheme as a proposal for the unification of English religion. It remains to consider whether the object, at any rate as now put forward, is in itself so desirable and salutary as to make effort for even its partial realization commendable and expedient.

The first question which a clear-headed, impartial observer would naturally put if appealed to in the present case is, What is the extent and character of the demand for this particular solution of the problem? Is there sufficient desire for it expressed by any considerable or representative number of persons, on either the Church or the Nonconformist side, to justify

a sustained effort to carry it out, as likely to settle the question on a satisfactory and permanent basis?

The answer is that as yet the demand has been confined on the Church side to the members of one small sub-section, notoriously out of sympathy with the great majority of their fellows; while on the Nonconformist part it has been taken up by a mere handful of ministers, belonging to one or two of the smaller denominations, and has been treated by the bulk of Dissenting pastors either with total neglect, or with such emphatic repudiation of the whole scheme as that which has been uttered by one of the most eminent amongst them, Dr. R. W. Dale of Birmingham. The disestablishment and disendowment of the Church of England, and that rather from motives of political feud and social jealousy than from the doctrinal prejudices of an earlier time, not any scheme of federation in a new State Church, nor even one for concurrent endowment of the sects, is the policy which at present commands the adhesion of Nonconformists collectively. There is thus no analogy to the settlement at which the Burials Act of 1880 professed to aim, for in that case there was an old and troublesome agitation existing, backed by a sufficiently loud and sustained demand from the Nonconformist side, with a plausible show of practical grievance as its justification, which made Parliament anxious to get rid of the worry, even at the price of a cynically inequitable arrangement, which violates the principles of true religious equality, and of course has not laid the controversy to rest after all.

The second question which would be put by one desirous of getting at the rights of the matter would probably be, What direct benefits, otherwise unattainable, are to be anticipated from the proposed changes? For if existing arrangements are such as to permit the enjoyment of all, or even some of, the alleged benefits without any revolutionary measure, the case for changing at all is either destroyed or at least seriously weakened. But this is plainly true of one of the main parts of the scheme, that which provides for the

1 Nevertheless, it is an interesting historical fact that these two distinct lines of policy were once simultaneously struck out and acted on. Two measures were enacted one for giving all sectaries equal status with the members of the Church, and for annulling all ecclesiastical sentences against clergymen for depravation of the formularies; the other for the repeal of all immunities and privileges of the Church, and for the confiscation of its revenues. Their author was Julian the Apostate, and his object in both cases was the destruction of Christianity and the revival of Paganism. See Ammianus Marcellinus, xxii. 5, and Sozomen, Hist. Eccl. v. 5.

admission of Nonconformists to conduct worship and to preach in the parish churches. The alleged aim in this case is to give the English public the advantage of having the whole range of contemporary Christian thought made accessible to it, instead of restricting that part of the public which attends Church ministrations to the necessarily imperfect and limited teaching of a single denomination, though the largest in the country. Without doing more than parenthetically remark that unless Nonconformist meetings and pulpits are similarly thrown open, the ordinary Dissenter will be left even more markedly under a like disadvantage, it may be pointed out that as there is no civil statute which interferes with the liberty of any man to preach who can get a place to preach in and a congregation to listen, and as there is no restraint, whether by ecclesiastical discipline or by public opinion, to deter any Churchman from attending Nonconformist preaching if he so desires, the matter needs no legislative interference whatever, such as might be conceivably called for if the law imposed disabilities on either party. As things now stand, the position of Churchmen is exactly analogous to that which they occupy in relation to the use of Nonconformist hymns. They are glad to take the best of them, to include them in Church hymnals, to sing them lustily in Church services. But they claim the right of selection, to reject as well as to choose, and would not accept even the best if the grant were hampered with the condition of using all, nay, of adopting with the hymns the type of worship with which they were originally associated. So it is one thing to go voluntarily to hear an eminent Nonconformist preacher in his proper place of assembly, and quite another to be compelied to listen to him in a Church pulpit, with no alternative save that of stopping away; for under the scheme before us no Church preacher in rural parishes with but one church at hand would be available on such occasions, though in towns his customary hearers could betake themselves to some neighbouring church where, for that turn, a minister of their own communion might be accessible. Accordingly, this half of the programme of the Church Reform Union serves no useful end, and may be dismissed peremptorily. Another end, which it is more probably intended to serve, will be discussed further on.

There remains the other half of the programme, the abolition of subscription to creeds, formularies, and doctrinal or liturgical standards, as a condition of ministering or holding preferment and office in the Church. Here, too, it is necessary

to prove a serious grievance resulting from the existing restrictions, and a proportional benefit to be hoped from their repeal, before reasonably calling for so considerable a change. And so far, no adequate case has even been stated, not to say made out. Sir George Cox has dealt only in generalities on this head; Dr. Martineau, while a little more explicit, has added only this much, that there are some persons who would make useful ministers in the Church, but are deterred from undertaking the office by the pledges they must give; while there are others, of exceptional merit, who have been forced to surrender their position as Church officers by reason of conscientious dissent from propositions officially binding upon them, but which they have ceased to believe. There is no reason to doubt the correctness of Dr. Martineau's information on these heads, but its practical bearing on the point at issue remains open to question. For the weak point of his case is that he argues, not against this or that kind of subscription, this or that standard formulary, but against all subscription and all formularies. Consequently he has not thought it necessary to define the nature and extent of the objections entertained severally by the two classes he describes against the system of the Church of England, and it is thus not open to anyone to allege from that side that there is a genuine grievance at all, or that abolition of subscription would prove a remedy. For the divergence may have been so great in some, if not all, of the cases, from the whole aim and purport of the ministerial office, as well as from the special standards of the Church, as to make reconciliation impossible on any terms short of entire surrender of religion itself. When a clergyman has become an avowed atheist, or a disbeliever in a fundamental distinction between moral right and wrong, as with some of those to whom Dr. Martineau refers, how would it advantage him or the public to abolish subscription with the aim of retaining his ministerial services? Indeed, the terms in which Dr. Martineau describes the ex-ministers of the Church for whom he demands commiseration clearly denote that they are all but universally in lay positions; whence it is reasonable to assume that their quarrel has gone much beyond dislike of this or that proposition in a formulary, since otherwise they might be looked for in the pastorate of societies (say Dr. Martineau's own) which do not hold the improbated tenets concerned. Similarly, no clue is afforded to the views of those who are alleged to be looking wistfully into an Eden whence a needless barrier excludes them, and it is thus not shown that their adhesion would be a gain so great as to be

worth the price demanded for it. As for a third class interested in the matter, those clergymen actually holding office in the Church while disbelieving its doctrines, the hearty scorn with which Dr. Martineau speaks of them disposes of their claim for relief, which would in any case be immoral to grant, as rewarding persistent fraud and meanness with retrospective impunity. A fallacy, common to Sir George Cox and Dr. Martineau, underlies and vitiates their argument in favour of co-ordinating all Christian bodies in England within the reconstructed Establishment. It is that, just as the individual members of the several denominations make up in their totality the sum of English Christians, so too the doctrines of the same denominations make up in their totality the sum of English Christianity. Add all the people together, and there is the constituency of the new Establishment; add all the doctrines together, and there is its creed. But this does not hold, because the two groups thus compared are not in pari materiâ. Every unit amongst the persons contributes appreciably to the aggregate total, and is positive; but many items amongst the tenets are negative only, and diminish the total of credenda very seriously, since all contradictory propositions cancel each other when combined. But if all such contradictory propositions be eliminated from the new creed, it will not merely be reduced to minute, if not vanishing, dimensions (which the innovators would not regret nor consider an objection), but it will entirely cease to represent the religious beliefs of the great majority of English Christians, and so must needs fail as an instrument of reconciliation, and as a national profession of faith. Contrariwise, if the rival propositions are to be simultaneously included, and given equal footing and status, in the reformed ecclesiastical system, then, as there is fundamental disagreement on almost every conceivable question of faith and morals between the competing bodies thus inharmoniously yoked together, the necessary inference is that the new Church of England would be based on the principle that in religion there is no such thing as positive truth, absolute or even relative, but that all opinions are pretty much on a level, so that it cannot possibly matter what particular doctrines are being preached at any time or place. But with the advocacy, explicit or virtual, of such a thesis, the entire case for setting up any religion or any Church is gone; there ceases to be an adequate motive for the project under discussion; the common sense of rational mankind must condemn it as a patent fraud, a sorry jest, and refuse it even