of England to consider seriously whether the nation, and the Church itself, would gain or lose by such changes.

In the periodical literature of last month we have had the opportunity of reading two statements of the argument in favour of Church independence, one in the Nineteenth Century by Canon Carter, the other in the Fortnightly Review by Mr. F. Harrison. Mr. Carter writes as the spokesman of the discontented High Church party; Mr. Harrison prints a lecture which he has delivered at the request of the Liberation Society. Mr. Carter's article is grave, temperate, sincere, worthy of his high character; Mr. Harrison's bears the usual marks of his trenchant and rhetorical style, and suggests the impression that the elaboration of telling phrases diverts his mind somewhat from the accurate and consistent presentation of facts.

In Mr. Harrison's view, the Church of England has great privileges and immense endowments, in return for which it has to submit to be directly governed by State officials; and, as a consequence, it is wholly secularized, and has become a home and reservoir of hypocrisy. An unpleasing picture! See it in the artist's own colours. He tells of "religious life vulgarized by a compact which forces devotion into the attitude of a parasite, and turns the voice of the preacher into the grating tone of a State official." He thinks that even Churchmen "must feel sometimes the stir of something within them," as they contemplate

"this privileged, political, combative bureaucracy, saturated with lay interests and surfeited with temporal possessions, governed by the secular nominees of a secular Parliament, and preaching, for good and sufficient consideration, the religion of Christ at the orders of an assembly, in which very many are not Churchmen and some are not Christians." "Its spiritual life is paralyzed, . .. . the action of it forced to be sinister, and the language of it tending by a law of nature to cant." "A State-Church has Insincerity for the marrow of its bones, and Self-assertion for the breath of its nostrils." "Unity in faith ever vanishes into space before the hide-bound and strident formulas of Acts of Parliament.' "The last word of the governing classes of this country is, that the official Church shall be an official subordinate." "We have raised it as a monument to record that we have buried our spiritual hopes, and must limit the function of religion into. decent routine and political usefulness."

Was there ever a more terrible indictment? But, I am compelled to ask, was Mr. Harrison really speaking seriously? What, in the first place, are the wonderful dignities and privileges of which the Church of England would be deprived by a Disestablishment Act? "We should all agree," says Mr. Harrison, “that -given an Established Church with its privileges, its ascendency, and enormous possessions-it is far better that it should be in bondage to any civil authority rather than exercising such powers without lay control." It is desirable that we should know with some precision what these "powers" are which it is proposed to

take away from the Church. The Bishops would lose their places in the House of Lords, whatever these may be worth. A portion of the possessions of the Church, and a portion only-which the laity of the Church, if they learnt to give like Free Churchmen, could quickly replace-would be taken from it. What other powers of any importance would be withdrawn from the Church? It is more clear that the State would be resigning control than that it would be taking away power. And what is the bureaucratic discipline which Mr. Harrison supposes the secular nominees of a secular Parliament to exercise over the clergy? The Government of the day is absolutely powerless over bishop or priest. The fact of most importance in the actual condition of the English Church is that the beneficed clergyman is too independent. No priest of any communion in the world is so free to say what he likes and do what he likes. No secular authority can touch him, except on the ground of his violating some law of the realm; and he is similarly independent both of his bishop and of his parishioners. It is this excessive freedom of the priest which has led to what is pathetically called "the present distress." From Mr. Harrison's being so wide of the mark in this respect, I take courage to protest the more confidently against the charges of spiritual deadness and hypocrisy which he has brought against us. It is not for us to boast of our own honesty or fervour. But I may ask, who else perceives in the voice of the English clergyman the grating tone of the State official? Is it heard in the voices of those Crown nominees, Dean Stanley and Canon Farrar at Westminster, or Dean Church and Canon Liddon at St. Paul's? In denouncing the State Church, Mr. Harrison by implication commends the "Free Churches;" but I venture to say it never occurs to his Dissenting clients to look first at themselves and then at the Church of England, and to call the Church spiritually dead. They try to shame us by talking of our golden fetters; but when it is a question of actual freedom of utterance and fervour and productive spiritual energy, I do not think that they are in the habit of claiming all such signs of life for themselves and denying all to the Church of England. On this question Mr. Dale could speak with more knowledge than Mr. Harrison. We have much reason, indeed, to wish that the Church were more like an ideal Christian Church than it is. I admit with sorrow that the clergy are too ready to identify themselves with the political and social interests of the upper classes. But even in this respect there are symptoms of a change for the better; and I believe that the general testimony of outside observers would be favourable to the Church of England, if its clergy were compared as to courage and sincerity and earnestness with the ministers of any other large communion in the world.

It is the cue of Mr. Harrison in this paper to make the secular power exceeding secular, and to draw the line very sharply between the sphere of the State and the sphere of moral influence. Having before his eyes that mysterious image of the hide-bound and strident formulas of Acts of Parliament driving unity in faith into space, he is bent on penning these disagreeable agents rigidly within their own domain.

"The State," he says, "can act only in material ways, by preventing deeds it cannot act in moral ways, by inducing convictions or forming qualities. . . The most just judge and the most energetic minister are utterly powerless within the sphere of morality, except so far as it can come into the four corners of the statute-book. They can enforce legal agreements, and punish statutory crimes, but beyond the sphere of the life, property, reputation, and convenience of the citizens, they have less power over the thoughts and the characters of their countrymen than a village schoolmaster or a hedge-preacher."

Again I cannot help asking, is Mr. Harrison serious? When he goes on to degrade politics into a department of life which necessarily excludes high moral aims and the religious temperament, I seem to hear an altogether different voice from that of a school which has honourably distinguished itself by maintaining the very opposite doctrine. In general, Mr. Harrison and his friends glory in affirming that politics are subject to the laws of morality. With what they define as the religious temperament, and what seems to many the temperament of fanatics, they contend that on religious grounds Gibraltar should be surrendered to Spain, and China be relieved from all pressure and coercion. I remember an impassioned appeal in which Englishmen were entreated to send an army to the support of France against Germany, because Paris was the Holy City. I appeal from Mr. Harrison holding the brief of the Liberation Society to Mr. Harrison as a disciple of the Religion of Humanity. I know it is a Comtist principle that the function of the teacher should be kept separate from the function of the administrator; but Mr. Harrison has gone far beyond this. He has denied to the affairs of State all moral character and influence, in terms so extravagant that I think I may claim them as a reductio ad absurdum of the theory which separates Church and State. I contend that, because it is practically and evidently impossible to set up any barrier between religious instincts and convictions on the one hand, and affairs of State on the other,because Mr. Harrison's statements about the necessary existence of this barrier are so patently untrue, there is a presumption against the principle which would divorce the Church from the State.

We ought perhaps to remember that Mr. Harrison is pledged to a warm admiration of medieval Catholicism. In this respect, as well as in some others, his views, and perhaps his hopes, are

unlike those of the Dissenting Liberationists. But that sentiment might create a certain sympathy between him and the party of High Church malcontents whose case is so well stated by Canon Carter. Like them, Mr. Harrison has a predilection for discipline, dogma, and ritual. Laxity he condemns and despises.

Let us learn from Mr. Carter's paper what the views of his school are on "The Present Crisis in the Church of England." He holds that there is an essential distinction between the ideas of the temporal and the spiritual, and that the two powers ought to be kept broadly separate. He contends that this separation was made a constitutional principle in the age of the Reformation, though he admits that the principle has not been consistently observed. In the following passage he sums up the complaints of those who with him are now demanding the independence of the spiritual power in spiritual things:

"We must now change the scene, and review the relations existing at the present day between Church and State. All the main features we have been contemplating in the past are changed. We have Parliament exercising the powers of the Crown. Instead of a Parliament composed of Churchmen, oftentimes of High Churchmen, we have Parliament composed of men of all creeds, and representing a people of whom a very large portion is separated from the Church, and a considerable number openly opposed to it-no less than one hundred and five members being returned from Ireland, and sixty from Scotland, in both which countries the religion of the electors is at variance with that of the Church of England. Instead of an appeal-court composed, mainly at least, of bishops and civilians, we have one of judges of common law, and of which only a single member, the Lord Chancellor, need be a member of the Church of England. Instead of Convocation watching the course of things, and recognized as the legitimate legislative chamber, constantly in action, receiving appeals, and judging books, &c., we have a Convocation which, after a long suppression and great discouragements, is slowly struggling into life, and without any real recognition by the State. Instead of commissions of bishops and Convocation dogmatically defining the distinctions and lines of doctrine, we have a series of judgments of the Supreme Court, which have shaken the Church to its very foundations, and jeopardised its claims to be a teacher of truth, a keeper and witness of Holy Writ, though again and again, through the infinite mercy of God, truth has avenged itself, and spread far and wide with renewed strength, springing afresh out of its very denial, as though true life would seek new and irregular channels when its legitimate organs of expression were paralyzed or out of joint" (p. 427).

It is clear that the practical offences, which have stimulated the controversy on these constitutional questions, lie in the "series of judgments" to which Mr. Carter refers. They are the judgments in the Gorham case, in the "Essays and Reviews" case, in the Purchas case, and in some others that have gone against the High Church party. Of the judgments condemning Mr. Heath and Mr. Voysey, and acquitting Mr. Bennett, Mr. Carter of course would not complain. The grievance is that freedom has been allowed to

clergymen to use language other than High Church on the subject. of baptism, and to hold such views as those of Dr. Williams and Mr. Wilson on the subjects of the inspiration of Scripture and future punishment; and that the eastward position and the eucharistic vestments have been disallowed. Mr. Carter dissociates himself therefore from those Ritualists who use the ad captandum argument that they want nothing but liberty for all alike. He also abstains as might be expected, from such attacks as those of the Church Times and Mr. MacColl on the integrity of the judges. But he would have securities taken that "the mind of the Church" should be able to impose itself on the utterances of the clergy. The securities he suggests are two :—

"Some spiritual persons representing the Church ought to act as a body of referees or experts, to declare what its doctrine or usage, in any case brought before the court, is, as a guide to the judges hearing an appeal; and, secondly, Convocation ought to be in living action, with power at need to explain or amend documents which may not with sufficient clearness express the mind of the Church" (p. 430).

In some way or other dogmatic High Church views on the subjects I have named, which are to Mr. Carter "the truth," ought to be enforced upon the clergy of the Church of England. The present relations of the temporal to the spiritual power are in fault, because they stand in the way of such enforcement.

That is what the controversy comes to. The party which is now in "distress"-the Catholic or mediævalizing party-like other parties, has its eyes on its own ends. If all the judgments of the final Court of Appeal had taken its side, we should not have heard these complaints. I do not say this in the way of accusation; it is the natural right of any party, political or ecclesiastical, to seek such an adjustment of the powers that be as will favour its objects. At this moment the advanced High Churchmen are more anxious that Catholic priests should be let alone than that lax views on Biblical inspiration, or baptismal regeneration, or future punishment should be repressed; and their obvious policy is to use all possible arguments to discredit the existing discipline, and to threaten what they will do if it is enforced against their unauthorized practices, rather than to aim at any special reform. It does not appear that the party of discontent has yet formulated the points of its charter, either as to the constitution of the Court of Appeal, or as to the composition and prerogatives of a representative synod.

It was an inevitable result of the collision between the new "Catholic" movement and the existing authority that the question of the relations of the Church and the State should be stirred once more. This troublesome question will never be laid to rest, the