in comparison with a historic Church like | states or tendencies of thought, has arisen, the Church of England, set up for Christi- with few exceptions, within the public open anity in all its breadth and fulness, and not sphere of the Church. Nonconformist for a special view of it; set up for the na- theological literature is very considerable; tion as a whole, and not for a set of men Nonconformists have written much, earnestparticularly minded on a point of order and ly, carefully, ably. But, with the exception government; drawing its ideas and life of Baxter-Bunyan and Milton belong to a from all the wide sources furnished in an old different class-what Nonconformist name and universal religion, and taking its chance rises above the level, if up to the level, of with what comes of these ideas in the pro- great Anglicans of the second ordergress of time. And this difference has grave Bramhall, Thomas Jackson, Andrewes, Lesand visible consequences, in thought, and in lie: who of these is on a line with Hooker, spirit, moral temper, and practice. The Taylor, Barrow, Butler, Waterland? The greater movement of thought in the Church, fruitful men of English Puritans and Nonthe variety and originality of the attempts conformists, as Mr. Arnold has said, are in it to unfold and apply, and give increased men who were trained within the pale of the body and meaning to the original and inex- Establishment-Milton, Baxter, Wesley. A haustible ideas of Christianity-for ideas, generation or two outside the Establishment, without changing, may vary indefinitely in and Puritanism produces men of national adequacy of expression-the freedom, and mark no longer.' The reason why the Nonboldness, and spontaneous play of inquiry conformists,' with all their zeal and courage, and opinion, the latitude claimed and won, with their industry and ability, and somethe unexpected modifications of received times with genius, have failed to do the doctrines arrived at, all this has been some-like is, that they are confined within the narthing to which, by the witness of friends and enemies, there has been no parallel whatever in the Nonconformist ranks. We all know it is an easy and stock form of reproach to the Church. But, whatever be thought of it, the fact is there; and the reason of it is plain. A member of the Church thinks and judges, and follows out his train of ideas, in the presence not only of a larger body, a larger world, than the Nonconformist, but of a public world. His limitations are public ones; his liberties are public ones, liable to be sharply brought up by public authority; if he overpasses the one, the others leave him, in feeling as well as legally, to go as deeply and as boldly as he will or can into the questions of his time. To be reared a member of an Establishment,' as Mr. Arnold has well said, 'is in itself a lesson of religious moderation, and a help towards culture and harmonious perfection. Instead of battling for his own private forms for expressing the inexpressible and defining the undefinable, a man takes those which have commended themselves most to the religious life of his nation; and while he may be sure that within those forms the religious side of his own nature may find its satisfaction, he has leisure and composure to satisfy other sides of his nature as well.' And whatever estimate we may form of English theology, it is, we suppose, beyond dispute, that all that gives it its special character and interest, all that has a perceptible hold on the general mind of the nation, all that, successfully or unsuccessfully, has accompanied the changes of society, and tried to adapt itself to new

row lines of their original basis; it is inevitable, as Mr. Arnold says-and his remark is as true of cliques and parties in the Church as of sects without it-that 'sects of men are apt to be shut up in sectarian ideas of their own, and to be less open to new general ideas than the main body of men ;' they discuss the greatest of questions from a point of view which interests themselves, but interests no one else. And so they have been left behind in the great movement of thought which tells on our age. In order to do themselves justice on such a subject as religion, men need that consciousness of connection with what is public and greater than anything of their own, which in all things, often obscurely realized, yet like so many of our obscure feelings, not the less operative, favours simplicity and checks littleness, which enlarges, elevates, and refines; which corrects the aberrations, and makes up for the wants and poverty of what is private and isolated and self-centred. Call it what you please, 'progress,' or 'growth,' or 'development,' or 'innovation,' or 'corruption,' it is in the Church, and not in the sects, that it has gone on; it is in the Church, with the one ambiguous exception of Methodism, that there has been power and freedom to generate and support the great religious impulses which affect the general ideas of the country.

made her avoid, on these three favourite tenets of Puritanism, the stringency of definition which Puritanism tried to force upon her, always made her leave herself room for growth in regard to them-so, if we look for the posi

'And as the instinct of the Church always

tive beginnings and first signs of growth, of disengagement from the stock notions of popular theology about predestination, original sin, and justification, it is among Churchmen and not among Puritans that we shall find them. Few will deny that as to the doctrines of predestination and original sin, at any rate, the mind of religious men is no longer what it was in the seventeenth century or in the eighteenth; there has been evident growth and emancipation. Puritanism itself no longer holds these doctrines in the rigid way it once did. To whom is this change owing? Who were the beginners of it? They were men using that comparative openness of mind and accessibility to ideas which was fostered by the Church.'

-p. 20.

seems one of those things about which it is surprising that there should be any doubt: but it is enough for our present line of reflection that its advantages should be at least equal to those of private associations. Why, when both exist, should one be taken from us? Why should it be made part of the policyit is professed, even of the religion-of the friends of the principle of private religious association, to wage implacable hostility on that which others value so highly-a Church which is public and not private? Of course, if it is public, an ancient historic institution, it must have attributes which cannot, in the nature of things, belong to what is both recent and private. Of course those who do Perhaps with Mr. Arnold's understanding not like it, will not like its privileges; will of St. Paul's doctrine of justification we call it a monopoly. It is a pretty wide moshould find it as difficult to agree as with the nopoly; but every Church, public or private, popular Evangelical theory of it. But the must have some organization; and, as no orfact remains, on which he lays stress. The ganization will please everybody, to those Nonconformist Churches were founded on an who are not pleased, if it is a public organiabsolute theory, and a corresponding techni-zation, it will seem a monopoly. Changing cal phraseology, which religious thought and reflection are outgrowing; and now those Churches suffer from it. The historic Church of England 'avoided the error, to which there was so much to draw her, and into which all the other reformed Churches fell, of making improved speculative doctrinal opinions the main ground of the separation;' she did not invent a new Church order, or single out two or three speculative dogmas as the essence of Christianity, and fight for her new inventions, but 'set herself to carry forward, and as much as possible on the old lines, the old practical work and design of the Christian Church;' and now, whatever there is to regret and be ashamed of in her history, whatever her mistakes of policy and failures in achievement, whatever her defects of tone and sentiment, whatever, as some say, her degradation of servitude, or, as others say, her extravagances of liberty, she is the Church in which religion is conceived of more broadly and comprehensively, in which variety of opinion has more latitude and tolerance, in which men can think more independently and speak more boldly, in which the slow growth and revision of religious thought, keeping at the same time ever obstinately to its roots in the past, is more evident, than in that great body of private religious associations which boasts more freedom, and owns no account of men or their laws.

The infinite superiority for a religious position, both in respect to thought and to feeling and life, of a public Church, where our own self-importance is merged in something much wider and greater, while our liberty is far less in danger from arbitrary invasion,

it would not help, for it would only change the malcontents. Simple equality, there cannot be between what is public and what is private: but the question for reasonable men is, whether the inequality is so great, mischievous, oppressive, derogatory, dishonouring, that the Nonconformist associations have a right to demand the proscription and extinction of a public Church: whether, with whatever abatements, there are not such great positive and characteristic benefits in a public organization of religion as to entitle those who prefer it to ask why others, just as free as themselves, should take it from them.

Surely Mr. Arnold is not wrong when he warns the Nonconformists that there are many ugly features, judged of from a religious point of view, in the temper which some of their leaders announce as that in which they are pursuing their aim of destroying the oldest and certainly not the least popular organization of religion in England, and refusing us henceforth the choice between a public Church and one of a number of private ones. The danger and the misery of the growth and pretensions of 'petites églises' are never absent even in a public Church; but after having been bred up in the comparative largeness and liberty of a public body, and known its chastening and sobering influences, its help in drawing up thought and delivering from the selfishness and pettiness which earnest singlemindedness cannot always deliver from, henceforth to be condemned for the rest of one's life to descend to the cramping and narrowness of a private religious body, is a dreary reverse of fortune to look forward to. In a passage of

great truth and force,* which our limits will not allow us to transcribe, Mr. Arnold sets out what is the real state of the case: that what requires this change is simply the jealousy' of those who like private association best, and may have it as much as they please, with nothing to hamper or molest them; but who will not any longer let their brethren have, what Englishmen have had so long, the alternative form of religious life, that is, a great historic public Church.

'Put an end to all this jealousy and antagonism,' say the enemies of the Church, by destroying inequality, by pulling down the "dominant sect" from its position of preeminence. Then, when it stands on common ground with the rest, there will not be this bitterness and spirit of attack.' Can any one who knows, even superficially, the condition of English society believe that this will be the result? With Mr. Miall proclaiming for his motto, the dissidence of Dissent,' can any one expect that that which the Church now gives to any one who wishes for it, the peace and calm and composure of an understood position, the tranquil security of a system long settled on recognised bases, which a man has not to fight for from day to day, will any longer be anywhere within their reach? Will there be nothing for the zeal of sects to compete for: will there be nothing to irritate them and animate their hostility in what will still remain of the pretensions even of the disestablished Church? Will the temptations to religious leaders be less-temptations to self-assertion, extremes of doctrine, violence of means? Will religious leaders, when the checks and weights of a great public body are taken off, help to make religious society more peaceable? And, whatever else results, will tranquillity and mutual forbearance be promoted when that becomes universal in which the Church,-and it is a matter of complaint against her as often as it is of praise,-is in notorious contrast with the Nonconformist bodies, the concentration of a man's thoughts and interest on the affairs of his particular connexion? Will English religion gain by the extension of a state of things such as Mr. Arnold presents to us, a state of things which, apart from his judgment on it, no one we suppose denies as a fact, and of which, it is worth observing, the English Roman Catholics, though they belong to an ancient and world-wide Church, are just as much an example as any other Nonconformists ?

'It is hardly to be believed, how much larger a space the mere affairs of his denomination fill in the time and thoughts of a Dissenter, than

* Pp. xviii-xxiv.

in the time and thoughts of a Churchman. In fact, what is it that the every-day, middle-class Philistine-not the rare flower of the Dissenin Dissent? Is it not, as to discipline, that his ters but the common staple-finds so attractive self-importance is fomented by the fuss, bustle, and partisanship of a private sect, instead of being lost in the greatness of a public body? As to worship, is it not that his taste is pleased by usages and words that come down to him, instead of drawing him up to them? by services which reflect, instead of the culture of great men of religious genius, the crude culture of is it not that his mind is pleased at hearing no himself and his fellows? And as to doctrine, opinion but its own, by having all disputed points taken for granted in its own favour, by being urged to no return upon itself, no development? And what is all this but the very feeding and stimulating of our ordinary self, instead of the annulling of it? No doubt it is natural: to indulge our ordinary self is the most is not natural; and if the flower of Christianinatural thing in the world. But Christianity nulling our ordinary self, then to this flower it ty be the grace and peace which comes of anis fatal.'—p. xxix.

Mr. Arnold surely has reason with him, reason of the widest and soberest kind, when he doubts whether such a change would raise the general level of religion. The existence, the free, flourishing, vigorous life of Nonconformity, with whatever shortcomings it has, is a benefit to the religion of England. The victory of Nonconformity would be, we do not say fatal to it, but a damage from which it would be long in recovering. In the ideas which Nonconformity rests upon and makes prominent, and in the ideas which with acrimonious intolerhatred of what is public and general, and in ance it proscribes and denounces; in its its contempt for unity and its sophistries to excuse disunion, it does distinct mischief to what is of supreme importance in religion. And by giving the weight which, in most of its forms, it does, to the opinions of the least taught and the most ignorant, by weakening the independence of teachers, by encouraging the belief that zeal is a substitute for light, its direct and visible tendency, in spite of some better efforts, especially among the Congregationalists, is to promote a its triumph, that is, the exclusive prevalence coarse and vulgarized type of religion. Can of the conditions of Nonconformist religion, by cutting off and annihilating these other conditions which existed with it and before it, really do anything to secure for English Christianity greater purity, greater beauty, greater calm and repose, greater light, greater largeness? 'Oh!' say the enthusiasts for Nonconformity,' set the Church free as the Sects, give us a clear stage, appeal to our