THE

GENERAL BAPTIST

MAGAZINE.

The Education of the National Conscience.

BY THE HON. AND REV. W. H. FREEMANTLE, M.A., VICAR OF ST. MARY'S, BRYANSTON SQUARE, W.

MR. GLADSTONE, in his work on Church and State, which contains many fruitful thoughts as to the moral functions of the National Government, speaks of the State, or nation organized for public action, as endued with personality, and therefore with conscience and moral responsibility. Whether or not these words can with strictness be applied, they may be taken as expressing an important fact, namely, that the nation is not merely an aggregate of individuals, nor does it merely express the united sentiment of those individuals acting simultaneously, but that it is an organized structure, of which the leaders of opinion and action form the head, which has institutions which cannot be changed in a moment, traditions which can with difficulty be contravened, which is formed by many forces other than the individual wills of its present members, above all which has a type of its own, a character which stamps all its actions. We all help to form the nation; but still more we are formed by it. Marcus Aurelius swayed for twenty years the sceptre of the world; but his own life was swayed by the fact that he said to himself every morning, "Remember that thou art a Roman.' We want every one who says to himself I am an Englishman to mean by it that he is swayed by Christian righteousness, coloured only by the special circumstances of the English race.

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The whole of mankind is, in a very true sense, one, though we are more sensible of the unity of our own country. The same customs, the same stories, appear in different nations far removed from each other. It would be an interesting study to trace out the means whereby ideas pass from mind to mind. Each striking expression becomes part of the language, and is translated everywhere: each action produces its impression each argument leaves its trace. We say that an opinion is in the air. Mr. Lecky adopts an expression from Glanvill that there are climates of opinion through which the world passes. It is said that in India, before the telegraph existed, émeutes were known with such rapidity as to suggest that some strange unearthly agency was at work. But deeper ideas travel also. A thought injected into the mind by an expression used, it may be, in the most casual intercourse, becomes part of the mind's furniture, and is reproduced on some other occasion, perhaps in complete forgetfulness of its source or its original connections. GENERAL BAPTIST MAGAZINE, JANUARY, 1882.-VOL. LXXXIV.-N. S. No. 145.