f^^^3

 
 OUR PLACE IN ENGLAND. 
 
 Rev. JOHN KENNEDY, D.D. 
 
 Chairman (1872) of the Congregational Union of England and Wales. 
 
 Address delivered at the Autumnal Meeting of the Union, 
 in Nottingham, October 15, 1872. 
 
 Eotttion: 
 
 HODDER AND STOUGHTON, 
 
 27, Paternoster Row. 
 
 MDCCCLXXII. 
 
 ^
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 
 Charles I. at Nottingham 3 
 
 New Times and Duties 5 
 
 Are we " English " ? 5 
 
 Claim to be English of the 
 
 English 6 
 
 The true Constitutionalists 7 
 
 The Church Establishment not 
 Essential to the Constitu- 
 tion II 
 
 The Measure of our Responsi- 
 bility for the Past 14 
 
 The Roman Catholic Church 
 
 responsible for all its past 15 
 What is involved in "Infalli- 
 bility"? 15 
 
 Persecution, the Creed of 
 
 Rome 17 
 
 jRome ' ' unconstitutional " 19 
 
 [The " Bennett " case 20 
 
 Page 
 How this concerns Congrega- 
 
 tionalists 24 
 
 * ' Declaration " by " Church 
 
 Association" 27 
 
 What is to be done? 31 
 
 Crisis in the Reign of Charles I. 33 
 New Dangers to our Liberties 37 
 
 We are not Iconoclasts 40 
 
 Preach the Gospel 41 
 
 Increase our Denominational 
 
 Efficiency 41 
 
 Spirituality of Membership ... 42 
 
 Let it be Practical 43 
 
 Dangers of our Position 44 
 
 Politics 45 
 
 Sudden Wealth 47 
 
 Not a selfish Nationalism 49 
 
 The Darkest Cloud 51 
 
 Our Hope is in God 52
 
 OUR PLACE IN ENGLAND. 
 
 Assembled as we are this day in Nottingham, we 
 cannot forget that it was on the Castle Hill of this 
 famous old town that Charles the First erected his 
 war-standard on the 22nd of August, 1642. His ene- 
 mies were his own subjects, and the great contention 
 between them was whether England should be ruled 
 by the personal will of the sovereign or according 
 to the laws and statutes of her ancient constitution. 
 Nothing would satisfy Charles but a '' plenary despot- 
 ism." He had already — to use the words of a 
 historian who is never carried away by feeling or 
 rhetoric — " snapped like bands of tow the ancient 
 statutes of the realm ;"* and he would now, if possible, 
 subdue all resistance to his will by force of arms. 
 We know how the conflict ended. That 22nd of 
 August was a stormy day, and the Royal banner was 
 blown down by the violence of the wind. Within 
 a few years the cause of which it was the symbol 
 was overthrown, and with it the monarch and the 
 monarchy. 
 
 * Hallam's Constitutional History, Vol. I. 388. 
 A 2
 
 OUR PLACE IN ENGLAND. 
 
 Two hundred and thirty years have passed since 
 the fatal day which inaugurated on the Castle Hill 
 of Nottingham the great civil war of the seventeenth 
 century ; and it is incumbent on us to contrast our 
 circumstances with those of our fathers, and consider 
 the place and function which Providence assigns to 
 us in the nineteenth century. How our fathers filled 
 their place, and discharged their function, has been 
 told and weighed by friend and foe. They were not 
 blameless. Sitting quietlyunder our vine and fig-tree, 
 it is an easy thing for us to discern and condemn their 
 excesses. But the quietness with which we sit here 
 and enjoy our hearths and altars, we owe in great 
 measure to the blood that was shed at Naseby and 
 on Marston Moor. Without caring to justify any 
 extremes which the constitutional historian may dis- 
 cern in the acts of the Long Parliament, and without 
 entering any pleas in defence of the sad tragedy of the 
 30th of January, 1649, we are bold to say that our 
 fathers were "high-minded men," who deserved well 
 of their country and of mankind. We are not ashamed 
 of the patriots whom we reckon in this number, 
 though not bearing the name of "Independent " — the 
 Hampdens and Vanes and Pyms, who long struggled 
 peacefully against the arbitrary proceedings of the 
 king — nor of those who, bearing the name of Inde- 
 pendent, with Cromwell and Milton in the foremost 
 place, were brought to the front, in the crisis of the 
 nation's life, by their high principle and extraordi- 
 nary capacity. We do not blush, in this good town 
 of Nottingham, to identify ourselves with these men 
 
 IP 
 
 , UIUC .
 
 ARE WE TRUE ENGLISHMEN? 5 
 
 and their compatriots, and to demand for them the 
 thanks of a grateful posterity. 
 
 With changed circumstances, and in the new 
 England which has arisen since the day of Charles 
 the First's memorable visit to Nottingham, what is 
 our place and function in the Commonwealth ? and 
 what the place and function of those other sections 
 of the community which are substantially one with 
 us in our ideas of ecclesiastical and national polity ? 
 
 There is a class of Churchmen who, as we saw in 
 May, will scarcely allow to us the name of Christian. 
 There are Englishmen who will scarcely allow to us 
 the name of English. We occupy a position of 
 extreme doubtfulness in their esteem. They may 
 disavow opinions which were held by their ancestors, 
 but they inherit the sentiment which these opinions 
 produced. We, not conforming to what they con- 
 sider the greatest institution in the land, the most 
 sacred, of which the Sovereign is the head, of which 
 the National Legislature is the ruler, which binds 
 high and low into one spiritual family, the inspirer 
 and purifier of our social life, whose attributes and 
 virtues it would be difficult for a tongue like mine 
 to describe, — we, voluntarily separating ourselves 
 from this great national institution, subject ourselves 
 to suspicion and doubt. Why stand we all the day, 
 all these many days, outside the great temple which 
 England has built for the worship of Almighty God, 
 which bears on its front the superscription of King, 
 Lords, and Commons, and, some would say, is in lineal 
 succession to the Church of the Apostles ? There must
 
 OUR PLACE IN ENGLAND. 
 
 be some flaw in our mental or moral constitution. 
 Our relation to the State must be of a bastard order. 
 At the best we are only step-children of England. 
 Not that those who think of us thus are prepared to 
 confess that England has acted toward us the part 
 of a step-mother, but that we yield to our mother 
 only a step-child's affection and submission, and are 
 entitled only to a step-child's portion. 
 
 That a feeling of this order exists in many influen- 
 tial classes cannot be doubted ; but we deny its 
 justness. We go farther, and claim to be not only 
 true but the truest Englishmen, the English of the 
 English. Listen, and you will hear on what we base 
 this claim and boast. 
 
 If blood constitutes a man an Englishman, wherein 
 do we differ from, or are inferior to, our neighbours ? 
 There may be but little Norman in the blood of 
 Nonconformists ; but in this respect Conformist and 
 Nonconformist commoners are one. This precious 
 fluid is supposed to flow purely in the veins of but 
 a very small number of English families, and it 
 seems rather paradoxical on their part to claim to be 
 more English than their neighbours because they 
 are more Norman. So far as the old Saxon, and the 
 older British or Keltic, and later Danish and Scandi- 
 navian mixtures are concerned, we are certainly not 
 one whit behind the chiefest of Churchmen. There 
 is no test known to modern science which could 
 discern a difference ; but morally, if not physically, 
 there is a difference, and it is on the ground of this 
 difference we claim to be the truest Englishmen.
 
 EFFECT OF THE REVOLUTION SETTLEMENT, 7 
 
 We are the representatives of those great princi- 
 ples, with the men who pled and suffered for them 
 in the days of old, which have made modern 
 England what it is, and which are now its most 
 marked and cherished features, — the principles of 
 Constitutional Government and Religious Freedom. 
 In the Revolution Settlement of 1688, these principles 
 gained, if not a complete victory, at least one that 
 was irrevocable, and whose '' effectual working" could 
 not cease until it was complete. "The Revolution," 
 I quote Hallam's words, " broke the spell that had 
 charmed the nation. It cut up by the roots all that 
 theory of indefeasible right, of paramount preroga- 
 tive, which had put the Crown in continual opposition 
 to the people. A contention had now subsisted for 
 five hundred years, but particularly during the last 
 four reigns [those of the four Stuarts] against the 
 aggressions of arbitrary power. The Sovereigns of 
 this country had never patiently endured the control 
 of Parhament ; . . . they had at their side the pliant 
 lawyers who held the prerogative to be uncontroU^-ble 
 by statutes. And they had the Churchmen, whose 
 casuistry denied that the most intolerable tyranny 
 could excuse resistance to a lawful government." 
 In these circumstances England, as Hallam puts it, 
 had no alternative but " a final submission to arbi- 
 trary power, unless by one great effort she could put 
 the monarchy for ever beneath the law, and reduce 
 it to an integrant portion, instead of the primary 
 source and principle of the Constitution." 
 
 The effort was made, and God prospered it. The
 
 OUR PLACE IN ENGLAND. 
 
 maxim which the Stuarts and their flatterers in 
 Church and State called Divine — " A Deo Rex, 
 a Rege Lex "* — was reversed ; and henceforward, 
 under a new dynasty, which, though allied by blood 
 with the old, and thereby possessing the advantage 
 of the traditions of seven centuries,- owed its acces- 
 sion to power to the Parliament and the people, the 
 fundamental principle of the English government 
 must be — "A Deo Lex, a Lege Rex."t The ac- 
 knowledgment of this principle was but the consum- 
 mation of the Charter which the Barons wrung from 
 the Norman John, at Runnymede. And from the 
 hour of its successful assertion in the Revolution of 
 1688, our English rights and liberties, not without 
 frequent conflict and peril, have advanced to the 
 ripeness in which we now find them. 
 
 We, Protestant Nonconformists, and those who, 
 although not numbered with us ecclesiastically, are 
 likeminded with us, are the nineteenth century repre- 
 sentatives of those principles which, through the 
 struggles of many centuries, distinguish our modern 
 England, and have made her at once great and free. 
 On this ground we claim to be the truest English- 
 men, and to be, or to belong to, the true Constitu- 
 tional party in the State. Those who so loudly 
 arrogate the title of Constitutionalists to themselves 
 
 ^' Note for the sake of the unlearjted. — Literally, " From God 
 the King, from the King the law ;" that is, the King derives 
 his authority from God, the law its authority from the King. 
 
 t Thus making the King to derive his authority from the 
 'law, not the law from the King.
 
 THE TRUE CONSTITUTIONALISTS. 
 
 in these days, are like the labourers in our Lord's 
 parable, who began their work only at the eleventh 
 hour. And if they get a whole day's wage for their 
 one hour's work, it will assuredly be of grace and not 
 of merit. Let them have it, if you will. Only let 
 them not boast themselves against those who have 
 toiled from the very dawn of our English freedom, 
 and have borne the heat and burden of a long day. 
 Still less let them attempt to supplant those who 
 toiled long, not only without their aid, but in the 
 face of their most persistent opposition, and claim an 
 exclusive, or even an equal, right to their titles and 
 honours. 
 
 A more complete misnomer cannot be imagined 
 than the title "Constitutional" claimed by those 
 who are the historical representatives of that party 
 in the State which, both before the Revolution of 
 1688 and since that era, have, maintained to the 
 uttermost the principles which have been cast out of 
 the Constitution in these later times as incongruous 
 and evil. We are the historical representatives of 
 the party in the State which has made the Constitu- 
 tion what it is, which struggled against the arbitrary 
 claims of the Stuarts, which wrested England from 
 the last of them when he was labouring to reduce it 
 to a condition of civil and spiritual vassalage, which 
 set William of Orange on the throne, which secured 
 the succession after Queen Anne to the Elector of 
 Hanover, the ancestor of Queen Victoria, — the party 
 which secured to the nation the benefits of the Act 
 of Toleration in 1689, and which has laboured con-
 
 I o OUR PL A CE IN ENGLAND. 
 
 sistently to enlarge the benefits of that Act by purging 
 from our statutes all remnants of intolerance and 
 inequality. 
 
 If the civil freedom, whose seed was sown in the 
 Magna Charta of the thirteenth century, be an essen- 
 tial element of our Constitution — we are staunch 
 Constitutionalists. If that religious freedom for 
 which Lollards, Reformers, Puritans, Independents 
 struggled and bled, be an essential element of our 
 Constitution — we are staunch Constitutionalists. If 
 a limited monarchy, not an absolute, be essential to 
 our Constitution— we are staunch Constitutionalists. 
 (For, we may remark parenthetically, it was not a 
 limited, but an absolute, or a would-be absolute, 
 monarchy, that was overthrown in the great civil war. 
 The Great Rebellion, as some call it, was not a rebel- 
 lion of theoretic republicanism against monarchy, but 
 that of a people whose faith had been abused and 
 whose patience had been exhausted by the reigning 
 Sovereign.) If the Hanoverian dynasty forms a part 
 of the Constitution, we are staunch Constitutional- 
 ists. If King, Lords, and Commons are essential to 
 our Constitution, we are Constitutionalists still ; for 
 if we object to the spiritual part of the Peerage, we 
 believe it to be not of the essence of a House of Peers, 
 but one of those incongruities which must be purged 
 out before our Constitution can be pure and homoge- 
 neous. 
 
 If the establishment and support of religion by the 
 State is a fundamental part of the English Constitu- 
 tion, we cannot claim a place among Constitutional-
 
 POSSIBLE EVENTUALITIES. ii 
 
 ists. But if in this point we fail in loyalty to the 
 sacred idea which many ignorantly worship, our 
 failure is shared in principle by those who are most 
 forward to cast the first stone at us. There is only 
 one party in the Church of England, the Broad 
 Church, and only a portion of that party, which does 
 not contemplate the separation of the Church from 
 the State as an eventuality which not only may 
 occur, but which, under certain circumstances, they 
 would themselves desire and promote. Our Evange- 
 lical brethren, tenaciously as they cling to the 
 connection of the Church with the State, and much 
 as they are willing to endure for the sake of it, have 
 sometimes ventured to hint that, in the event of 
 certain judicial decisions being given, they must 
 secede. Let a new Gorham case arise, and let the 
 decision be that the Anglo-Catholic interpretation of 
 Baptismal Regeneration must be accepted, pure and 
 simple, and we shall not do our brethren the wrong 
 of imagining that they could contemplate the possi- 
 bility of remaining in the communion of the Church. 
 We should have another St. Bartholomew's. They 
 must secede, and must hold, in seceding, that the 
 Church, in the event supposed, has forfeited its 
 right to the advantages of connection with the State, 
 and, by plain consequence, that the connection should 
 cease. The Anglo-Catholics, in certain other contin- 
 gencies, would be equally forward to secede, and to 
 maintain that the ground of their secession would be 
 a lawful ground of disestablishment. Dr. Pusey at 
 this moment threatens terrible consequences in the
 
 12 OUR PLACE IN ENGLAND. 
 
 event of the Athanasian creed being cancelled from the 
 public services of the Church, or even of its use being 
 made optional. The Church, in such a case, would, 
 he believes, be a "new Church," fundamentally 
 changed, and he is concerned that England should 
 be forewarned of the inevitable consequence, seces- 
 sion. In fact, the portion of the Church to which he 
 belongs do not believe in a connection of the Church 
 with the State at all, properly so called, a connection 
 involving control as well as support by the State. 
 They regard* the State as only ministering to the 
 wants of the Church, and giving to the Church a 
 certain measure of power and prestige. And when 
 the State goes beyond this, they regard it as invading 
 the sanctities and liberties of the Church. 
 
 Both these parties, then, comprehending the great 
 bulk of English Churchmen, approve of the connec- 
 tion of the Church with the State, only so long as 
 the Church, and the form of connection, are such as 
 their conscience can accept. A fundamental change 
 in the Church, or any serious modification of its 
 relation to the State, would justify their secession, 
 and justify thereupon a demand for separation. 
 Shall we charge them with disloyalty to the civil 
 Constitution of their country, in rendering thus only 
 a conditional allegiance to the great " Church and 
 State " Institution ? Shall we hold that they are 
 standing, and that consciously, on the very verge of 
 Revolution, in that they are ready, at any moment, 
 on the occurrence of certain eventualities, to abandon 
 this institution, and ev«n to demand that it shall
 
 CLAIM TO BE THE TRUEST ENGLISHMEN. 13 
 
 cease to be? If not, neither may we be held dis- 
 loyal and revolutionary, in that, with a calm, clear 
 judgment, founded on many reasons, we believe that 
 the connection between the Church of England and 
 the State should now cease and determine. 
 
 We go farther. We are not content merely to be 
 absolved from a positive charge of unconstitutional 
 beliefs and practices. We claim to be even in this 
 matter the truest Englishmen. From the day when 
 the law of England ceased to require uniformity in 
 religion as a condition of English citizenship, the civil 
 establishment of one form of worship has been an 
 anomaly and an anachronism. Such establishment 
 has been in the highest sense unconstitutional. 
 True, it has struck its roots, far and deep, into the 
 whole fabric of our social existence. But these roots 
 are like those which I saw the other day in the 
 Highlands, penetrating into the clefts of the rocks, 
 finding nourishment where you would suppose no 
 living thing could exist, for a time binding together 
 or seeming to bind together the rocks on which they 
 grow, and very picturesque to look upon, but, treach- 
 erous to the rocks which nurse and shelter them, 
 gradually widening the clefts in which they have 
 grown, and in the end rending the mightiest rocks in 
 pieces. Like these, the roots of our Establishment 
 no longer bind together but disintegrate society ; 
 they widen the clefts which separate section from 
 section, cause endless bitternesses and jealousies, 
 and are a source of weakness and danger to the 
 common weal.
 
 14 OUR PLACE IN ENGLAND. 
 
 Claiming thus to hold tenaciously and to repre- 
 sent fully every portion of our Constitution, and 
 most especially all its highest and noblest and 
 most characteristic features, we claim to be par 
 excellence the Constitutionalists of England. And 
 on this ground we claim to be English of the 
 English. There is no stain on our escutcheon. 
 We are not step-children — yielding but a cold love 
 and a reluctant homage to our mother. We love 
 her with a love which is born not of sentiment 
 merely, but of conscience likewise, which has al- 
 ready resisted and survived many a shock and trial, 
 and which many waters will not quench. 
 
 This, we think, is our rightful place in the Com- 
 monwealth of England. But let us not be misunder- 
 stood. We do not assert for ourselves the possession 
 of the heroism, and devotion, and self-sacrifice of out 
 historical ancestors, nor do we hold ourselves respon- 
 sible for any of their errors. In fact, we do not 
 hold any party in the State now responsible, except 
 so far as they voluntarily accept the responsibility, 
 for the doings and sayings of their historical ances- 
 tors. It would be unjust to those from whom we are 
 politically most alien — I forbear the use of any 
 party name — to ascribe to them the principles on 
 which the two Jameses and the two Charleses claimed 
 to govern England — or to ascribe to them any want 
 of loyalty to the dynasty which their fathers would 
 have prevented ascending the English throne. There 
 is only one party in these times which deliberately 
 makes itself responsible for the deeds and misdeeds
 
 WHA T ''INFALLIBILITY'' IN VOL VES. i j 
 
 of its ancestry ; and that is more than a party — it 
 is the Church of Rome. This great corporation 
 accepts openly and avowedly the responsibility of 
 all the more than slavish principles of its past 
 history, — a fact of deep significance in relation to 
 our present theme. 
 
 The Infallibility which in our own day has been 
 placed among the unchangeable dogmas of Rome, 
 means that the Pope possesses, by right, all the au- 
 thority which was claimed by his predecessors over all 
 the monarchies and kingdoms of the world, — authority 
 to set up and pull down whom he wills of the kings 
 of the earth, authority to commission foreign armies 
 to stamp out the heroism and liberties of a free 
 people, authority to order the cruellest work of the 
 Inquisition, and to light the fires of Smithfield. The 
 actual exercise of all this authority must depend, it 
 is admitted, on circumstances — which means that 
 the Pope will use it when he can and won't use it 
 when he cannot. A Capuchin monk put the Roman 
 doctrine into a simple and popular form the other day, 
 when he roused the souls of 2,000 Swiss Catholics by 
 saying — " Luther is the father of modern Liberalism 
 and impiety, and one of his most devoted disciples, 
 Guizot, has followed in his style by insisting that the 
 Church should only speak to the heart and the in- 
 tellect, and discard altogether any appeal to physical 
 force. Now, I unhesitatingly tell you that, in my 
 opinion, the State is the true father of the family. The 
 Liberals want us to bring up children by kind words
 
 1 6 OUR PLACE IN ENGLAND. 
 
 and persuasion ; the Holy Scriptures, on the con- 
 trary, tell us to chastise them. St. Francis de Sales 
 was well whipped by his father for his first and last 
 fault, and so effectual was the correction that he 
 never forgot it. The State, in the same way, ought 
 to employ not argument but the rod." Archbishop 
 Manning believes this as well as the Swiss monk — 
 only that both of them would object to Protestant 
 States applying the rod to naughty Catholics. 
 
 The Archbishop pled for the proclamation of 
 Infallibility by the Vatican Council, on the ground 
 that for three hundred years the Pontiffs had elabo- 
 rately and expressly condemned a long series of 
 propositions in Theology and Philosophy, and the 
 Church should know whether their words rested on 
 the Divine authority, or were only venerable utter- 
 ances. And among the condemned propositions was 
 this, not raked up from a forgotten past, but sent 
 forth by the present Pontiff — "" That the Roman 
 Pontiffs and CEcumenical Councils have exceeded the 
 limits of their power, have usurped the rights of 
 Princes, and have even committed errors in defining 
 matters of faith and morals. That the Church has 
 not the power of availing herself of force, or of any 
 direct or indirect temporal power." This being the 
 error condemned, the opposite truth is that the 
 Roman Pontiffs have never exceeded the limits of 
 their power, and have never usurped the rights of 
 Princes, and that the Church ha^ power to compel 
 obedience to her mandates. Take another thesis 
 damnata : — ** That in the present day it is no longer
 
 AN EXCL US I VE CA THOLICISM. 1 7 
 
 necessary that the Catholic religion be held as the 
 only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all 
 other modes of worship ; whence it has been wisely 
 provided by the law, in some countries called 
 Catholic, that persons coming to reside therein shall 
 enjoy the free exercise of their own worship." This 
 theory being condemned, the truth, according to the 
 Pope, is, that the Catholic religion shall be the only 
 religion of the state, to the exclusion of all others, and 
 that even foreigners residing in Catholic countries 
 should not be allowed to enjoy the free exercise of 
 their religion. 
 
 But how shall this theory of an exclusive Catholi- 
 cism be realised ? History answers the question. 
 By imprisonment, by exile, by the Inquisition, by the 
 stake ! There is no misunderstanding here. This 
 is the meaning, and it is known to be. Arch- 
 bishop Manning is as much master of popular speech 
 as the Capuchin monk, and might say to his English 
 fellow-countrymen — " You may read your Bibles, and 
 think for yourselves, and worship as you please, for 
 the present ; but this is an abnormal state of things, 
 we are working to change it, and when the Pope has 
 the power you shall worship only as he pleases." 
 The Archbishop knows that all this is meant by the 
 authority which the Pope claims. He urged the 
 Council to take the words in which such authority is 
 asserted out of the category of mere ''venerable 
 utterances," and to stamp them with the seal of 
 a divine infallibility. He and his Church are now 
 fastened immovably to a brazen pillar, on which are 
 
 B
 
 1 8 OUR PLACE IN ENGLAND. 
 
 inscribed all the persecutions of the mid-ages. And 
 they glory in their position. They invite all the 
 world to contemplate their immutability, and to take 
 heed that they are the same yesterday, to-day, and 
 for ever ; and that it is only through lack of power, 
 not of will, that the children of England are not 
 whipped — to use the homely words of the monk at Fri- 
 burg — even to death, to constrain them to believe in 
 Transubstantiation and the Pope. No assertions of 
 individuals to the contrary of all this are of any avail, 
 in the face of the decisions of the Vatican Council. 
 
 In saying all this, I do not forget that Protestant 
 Churches have been guilty of persecution. Episco- 
 palians, having power, have persecuted ; Presbyte- 
 rians, having power, have persecuted ; Congregation- 
 alists, with a strange inconsistency, having power, 
 have persecuted ; — a fact which sufficiently demon- 
 strates the danger of putting power into the hands 
 of any ecclesiastical body. It is a temptation too great 
 for human nature. But the difference lies here : 
 persecution is not the creed of any Protestant church; 
 it is the creed of the Church of Rome. The most 
 loyal members of the Church of England may repu- 
 diate all the crimes against liberty committed by 
 their ancestors. We, Congregationalists, could weep 
 tears of blood over the story of the persecution of the 
 Quakers and others, by the new England Churches 
 in Massachusetts and elsewhere. But the Church of 
 Rome has, before God and in the face of Europe, in 
 this nineteenth century, deliberately accepted the re- 
 sponsibility of all the blood in which her steps may be
 
 THE ENGLISH THRONE AND THE POPk. 19 
 
 tracked in the ages that are past. Archbishop 
 Manning is bound by his faith to beb'eve, with Pope 
 Paul IV., that the Inquisition was an especial inspi- 
 ration of the Holy Ghost ; and the saddest proof of 
 the degeneracy of the evil days on which we have 
 fallen is that the sword has been taken out of the 
 Pope's hand, and that he can slay the nations 
 no more ! 
 
 All this may seem a digression from my subject, 
 but it is not. I have a two-fold object in saying 
 these things. First, you will understand our place 
 in England the better by its contrast with the place 
 voluntarily assumed by the Roman Catholic Church. 
 We claim to represent and embody the most sacred 
 principles of our English Constitution. They repu- 
 diate these principles, not on political grounds, but 
 on the authority and by the constraint of their 
 religious faith. By an " infallible " act of the Pope, 
 in 1571, Queen Elizabeth lost her right to the 
 English throne, and the disability thereby created 
 rests on Queen Victoria to this day. There is no 
 principle more fundamental to the English Constitu- 
 tion than the right of every man to worship God 
 according to the light of his own conscience. But 
 this principle is fundamentally wrong, according \o 
 infallible Rome, and all who accept her teaching 
 are bound to overthrow it. In view of this contrast, 
 may I not repeat the claim on the part of the 
 Protestant Nonconformists of England that they are 
 .the truest Englishmen, very English of the English ? 
 
 B 2
 
 20 OUR PLACE IN ENGLAND. 
 
 But this is not my only reason, nor my chief, for 
 referring to the Roman Church on this occasion. 
 Since we assembled in May, England has reached — 
 shall I say passed through ? — a crisis which, though 
 much talked of, has not excited an interest at all 
 equal to its magnitude. On Saturday, the 8th day 
 of June, 1872 — the date is memorable — there was an 
 assembly, small in number, in an obscure chamber 
 in Downing-street, to which was addressed a verdict 
 which contains the seed of unmeasured good or ill to 
 our native land. At the head of a long table there 
 was a vacant chair, occupied in theory, but not in 
 person, by the Queen. On the one side of this chair 
 sat the Lord Chancellor, and on the other the Arch- 
 bishop of York. The Bishop of London and six 
 judges had seats on either side of the table. They 
 were all plainly dressed — no wigs, no ermine, no' 
 gorgeous robes, the absence of show and of all ideality 
 setting forth all the more significantly the intense 
 reality of the occasion. The Rev. W. J. E. Bennett, 
 rector of Frome-Selwood, had been charged with 
 publishing doctrines contrary to those of the Church 
 of England : (i) As to the presence of Christ in the 
 Holy Communion ; (2) as to sacrifice in the Holy 
 Communion ; and (3) as to adoration of Christ in the 
 Holy Communion.* In the first edition of the work 
 
 * The judges summed up the errors charged upon Mr. Bennett 
 in the following propositions : — 
 
 " I. That in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper there is an 
 actual presence of the true Body and Blood of our Lord in the 
 consecrated bread and wine, by virtue of and upon the conse-
 
 THE JUDICIAL COMMITTEE. 21 
 
 on which the charges were founded, Mr. Bennett 
 had described the presence of Christ on the altar as 
 " real, actual, and visible y In a later edition, in 
 deference to the counsel of friends — Dr. Pusey espe- 
 cially — he substituted for these the words " real, 
 actual, and objective,''' avowing that he intended 
 thereby no change of meaning.t 
 
 For many months the country and the Church 
 
 cration, without or external to the communicant, and irrespective 
 of the faith and worthiness of the communicant, and separately 
 tfrom the act of reception by the communicant, and it was con- 
 tended by counsel under this head that the true Body of Christ 
 meant the natural Body. 
 
 " 2. That the communion-table is an altar of sacrifice, at which 
 the Priest appears in a sacerdotal position at the celebration of 
 the Holy Communion, and that at such celebration there is 
 a great sacrifice or offering of our Lord by the ministering Priest, 
 in which the mediation of our Lord ascends from the altar to 
 plead for the sins of men. 
 
 " 3. That adoration is due to Christ present upon the altars 
 or communion-tables of the churches, in the Sacrament, under 
 the form of bread and wine, on the ground that under thei^^veil 
 is the Body and Blood of our Lord. 
 
 f As to the adoration due to Christ present on the altar under 
 the form of bread and wine, Mr. Bennett had written : — " I do 
 not know what others of my brethren in the Priesthood may 
 think — I do not wish to compromise them by anything that I say 
 or do ; but seeing that I am one of those who burn lighted 
 candles at the altar in the day-time ; who use incense at the 
 Holy Sacrifice ; who use the Eucharistic vestments ; who 
 elevate the Blessed Sacrament ; who myself adore, and teach 
 the people to adore, Christ present in the Sacrament, under the 
 form of bread and wine ; believing that under their veil is the 
 sacred Body and Blood of my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ : — 
 seeing all this," &c.
 
 22 OUR PLACE IN ENGLAND. 
 
 waited anxiously for the decision of the Judicial 
 Committee of the Privy Council, on the question 
 whether such teachings as these were lawful within 
 the pale of the Church of England. When the suit 
 began, the strong words used by High Churchmen 
 on the one side, and by Low Churchmen on the 
 other, were such that the secession of one or the 
 other from the Church seemed a probable if not an 
 inevitable result of the verdict that should be given. 
 But now that the verdict has been given, the tide of 
 Church affairs seems to flow on smoothly and calmly. 
 There is indeed a slight ruffling of the waters — how 
 deep it is, time will show; — but there is no such 
 tempest as Church prophets had foretold. And yet, 
 with all this calm, the verdict is one which will 
 henceforth practically give a secure standing within 
 the Church of England to a teaching which, it is 
 confessed, nothing but the utmost subtlety can dis- 
 tinguish from the doctrines of the Church of Rome. 
 The Judicial Committee speak of Mr. Bennett's 
 words touching the presence of Christ on the altar as 
 *' rash and ill-judged, and perilously near a violation 
 of law ;" but " yet not so plainly repugnant to the 
 Articles and Formularies as to call for judicial con- 
 demnation." The Judgment read by the Archbishop 
 of York on the 8th of June, makes a distinction be- 
 tween what the form^ularies of the Church definitively 
 teach and what they exclude.* Mr. Bennett's doc- 
 
 * " Any presence which is not a presence to the soul of the 
 faithful receiver, the Church does not by her Articles and 
 Formularies affirm or require her ministers to accept. This
 
 ANGLICAN POPER V PRO TECTED. 23 
 
 trines are not taught by these formularies, but are 
 they excluded by them? Her Majesty, as the head 
 of the Church, speaking through her representatives, 
 the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, thinks 
 they are not, and consequently that Mr. Bennett 
 may teach them without subjecting himself to the 
 penalty of deposition from his office. The vicar of 
 Frome may now say — "Henceforth let no man trouble 
 me. I adore, and teach the, people to adore, Christ 
 present in the Sacrament, under the form of bread 
 and wine, believing that under their veil is the sacred 
 body and blood of my Lord and Saviour Jesus 
 Christ." And under the shield which protects him 
 thus teaching, his brethren are protected like- 
 wise. 
 
 cannot be stated too plainly. The question is, however, not what 
 the Articles and Formularies affirm, but what they exclude. . . . 
 The assertion of a ' real, actual, objective ' presence introduces 
 indeed terms not found in the Articles or Formularies ; but it 
 does not appear to assert expressly, or by necessary implication, 
 a presence other than spiritual, nor to be necessarily contra- 
 dictory to the twenty-eighth Article of Religion." These are the 
 terms of the "Judgment." It is perhaps not quite correct to 
 say that they give even a negative legal sanction to the opinions 
 which all the world believes Mr. Bennett to hold, and which he 
 glories in holding ; they rather assume that these opinions are 
 not "necessarily" involved in his words. He is acquitted, not 
 as holding Romish doctrine, but as using words which, though 
 they go dangerously near such doctrine, may possibly mean 
 something else. But though the decision does not give Mr. 
 Bennett's opinions legal sanction, its practical effect is that 
 these opinions, cautiously expressed, cannot be legally con- 
 demned.
 
 24 OUR PLACE IN ENGLAND. 
 
 Brethren of the Congregational Union, this matter 
 poncerns us deeply. It concerns us as Christians and 
 as Englishmen, and we should be unfaithful to our 
 iplace and function in this land if we did not give it 
 our most solemn attention. The doctrines taught 
 by the vicar of Frome are not the fancies of an isolated 
 and erratic individual, but of an immense and rapidly 
 growing party in the Established Church. And it is 
 not a matter of concealment, but of boast, that they 
 are essentially the peculiar doctrines of the Church 
 of Rome. The peculiar doctrines; for so far as the 
 fundamental doctrines of the Trinity and the God- 
 head of the Saviour and the sacrifice of the cross are 
 concerned, we, who are not of Rome, nor in sympathy 
 with Rome, hold them as our very life. The peculiar 
 doctrines of Rome — the priesthood of the Christian 
 minister, the actual presence of the body and blood 
 of our Lord in the bread and wine of the Lord's 
 Supper after due priestly consecration, and the doc- 
 trine that the Eucharist is a real sacrificial offering 
 of our Lord by the ministering priest — these are the 
 peculiar teachings of Rome and of the great party of 
 which Mr. Bennett is but a type. Dr. Pusey labours 
 hard in his " Eirenicon " to prove that the differences 
 between the Council of Trent and the Anglican 
 Church are verbal and not real. " The doctrine of 
 the Eucharistic sacrifice," he says, *' depends upon 
 the doctrine of the real objective presence. Where 
 there is the Apostolic succession and a consecration 
 in our Lord's words, there, it is held by Roman 
 authorities, is the Eucharistic sacrifice." " I am
 
 ''CHRISTIAN LATITUDINARIANISM:' 25 
 
 persuaded," he says, "that on this point (" the Holy- 
 Eucharist ") the two Churches might be reconciled 
 by explanation of the terms used." 
 
 But I need not occupy your time in proving what 
 is universally admitted. The House of Commons 
 heard the boast the other day from a foremost 
 defender of the Church of England, that doctrines 
 ranging " from Romanist to Rationalist" may now 
 be legally held and preached within her pale. The 
 decision on the Gorham case gave protection to 
 Evangelical teaching, that on the " Essays and 
 Reviews " to Rationalism, and now the decision on 
 the Bennett case gives protection, practically at least, 
 to a form of doctrine which, as I have said, can be 
 distinguished from that of Rome only by the utmost 
 subtlety. " It is," according to a well-known Dean, 
 "the last and crowning triumph of the Christian 
 Latitudinarianism of the Church of England." 
 
 I do not pause at present to controvert the opi- 
 nions of those who regard these judgments with 
 satisfaction, and who glory in the comprehensiveness 
 which embraces " from Romanist to Rationalist," as 
 the very ideal of a Christian Cuurch, or at least of a 
 National Church. But this I say — and it is this that 
 concerns us now as Englishmen — that if it be the 
 ideal, it is an ideal which was not contemplated by 
 the rulers or the people of England at any epoch of 
 the Church's history from which you may choose to 
 date her Constitution ; and it is an ideal which, if 
 submitted now to the suffrage of the people, would 
 be rejected by an overwhelming majority. If the
 
 26 OUR PLACE IN ENGLAND. 
 
 present Church of England claims identity with the 
 ancient, the reformed with the unreformed, need I 
 demonstrate that its historical continuity requires 
 that its doctrines should be homogeneous, and that 
 they should be essentially Roman. If the essence of 
 the present Church of England, usually called Pro- 
 testant, be dated from the Reformation, it is equally 
 certain that its doctrines must be anti-Roman, 
 exclusively anti-Roman,, those for which Cranmer 
 and Latimer and Ridley and other martyrs gave up 
 their lives, to the exclusion of those for the denial of 
 which they suffered. If we date the Constitution of 
 the Church from its restoration under Charles the 
 Second, and the Act of Uniformity, it is equally 
 certain, notwithstanding the incongruity between 
 the teaching of the Articles and the teaching of some 
 of the forms and offices then adapted^ that the Church 
 was designed to be exclusive and not comprehensive. 
 The Judges may be right — and we do not challenge 
 their decision — when, interpreting the words of sta- 
 tutes and formularies,, they declare that the doctrines 
 of Mr. Bennett, as taught in his words, are not so 
 clearly excluded as to incur legal penalty. But 
 their decision, taken in connection writh former deci- 
 sions, gives practical security to a comprehensive- 
 ness which no enacting power, either before or 
 after the Reformation, contemplated. And it is 
 for the nation now to say whether it will continue 
 its national sanction and support to a Church which 
 no longer teaches a consistent system of doctrines, 
 but all yarieties of doctrine, according to the
 
 THE CHURCH ASSOCIATION. 27 
 
 opinions of individual clergymen, '' from Romanist 
 to Rationalist." 
 
 The " Church Association," at whose instance Mr. 
 Bennett was prosecuted, has adopted a "Declaration" 
 which contains certain propositions- that command 
 our entire assent. Such as. these : — i. That ''the 
 Martyrs laid down their lives rather than accept the 
 grievous errors of the Church of Rome, now sub- 
 stantially affirmed by Mr. Bennett," a proposition 
 on which I need make no comment. 2. That " since 
 the Reformation, the main condition of the Church 
 of England's existence, as the Established Church of 
 this nation, has been its. essentially Protestant cha- 
 racter." A condition, let me say,, which is no longer 
 fulfilled. It is as '' Protestant," the Church of 
 England enjoys the revenues formerly possessed by 
 the Church of Rome. But our Anglo-Catholics hate 
 Protestantism, name and thing. They say, "The 
 unfortunate word ' Prote&tant,' which so often occurs 
 in Acts of Parliament, is employed solely in the 
 sense of non-Roman. It does not connote any reli- 
 gious belief, any particular creed or form of Church 
 government. It only means that which does not 
 acknowledge the Papal political supremacy."* 
 
 But is this a true reading of the history of the 
 Reformation ? Did England seek and gain nothing 
 but relief from the autocratic rule of the Roman 
 
 " The Church and the World," first series, page 200. See 
 also '' Dissent in relation to the Church of England,— the 
 Bampton Lecture for 1871, by G. H. Curteis," page 138.
 
 28 OUR PLACE IN ENGLAND. 
 
 Bishop, when she separated herself from Rome ? The 
 question is not as to the aim and motive of 
 Henry VIII. when he renounced allegiance to the 
 Pope, but, What was in the heart of the nation, and 
 of the nation's leaders and teachers, in the great 
 struggle of the Reformation period ? You will find 
 that the testing question, the final and conclusive 
 question, put to both the learned and unlearned, 
 at the bar of the Bishops in the reign of Henry's 
 daughter, Mary, was not. Do you believe in the Pope ? 
 but. Do you believe in Transubstantiation ? do you 
 believe that the very body and blood of Christ are in 
 the Eucharistic elements ? It was felt on both sides 
 that this was the pivot on which the question of the 
 old and new faith turned. And they judged rightly. 
 On this depends the whole system of priesthood and 
 sacrifice in the Christian Church. The martyrs of 
 Smithfield were charged with what were called 
 heresies which struck at the very root of the Roman 
 doctrine. And if they could have renounced these 
 *' heresies," they would have found it an easy thing 
 to submit to the Pope. Their Protestantism was of 
 the heart. It was an inward and intelligent renun- 
 ciation of those very doctrines which, in substance, 
 and almost in form, are held by the vicar of Frome, 
 and which now, alas ! need only to be stated with 
 caution to escape legal condemnation. Hear Cranmer, 
 who may certainly be accepted as an interpreter of 
 the '* Protestantism " of our law : — " What availeth 
 it to take away beads, pardons, pilgrimages, and such 
 other like Popery, so long as the chief roots remain
 
 THE ESTABLISHMEA T UNFAITHFUL. 29 
 
 unpulled up ? whereof, so long as they remain, will 
 spring again all former impediments of the Lord's 
 harvest, and corruption of His flock. The rest is but 
 branches and leaves, the cutting away whereof is but 
 like topping and lopping of a tree, or cutting down of 
 weeds, leaving the body standing, and the roots in 
 the ground ; but the very body of the tree, or rather 
 the roots of the weeds, is the Popish doctrine of 
 Transuhstantiation, of the real presence of Christ's 
 flesh and blood in the sacrament of the altar (as they 
 call it), and of the sacrifice and oblation of Christ 
 made by the priest for the salvation of the quick and 
 the dead. Which roots, if they be suffered to grow 
 in the Lord's vineyard, they will overspread all the 
 ground again with the old errors and superstitions. 
 These injuries to Christ be so intolerable, that no 
 Christian heart can willingly bear them."* 
 
 It is then perfectly true — and the truth is well put 
 in the document which I have quoted, that " the 
 main condition of the Church of England's existence 
 as the Established Church of this nation has been 
 its essentially Protestant character." But now that 
 the condition is fidfilled no longer, it follows, by both 
 logical and moral necessity, that the Church of 
 England has forfeited her right to existence " as the 
 Established Church of this nation," and that her 
 existence as such should henceforth cease and deter- 
 mine, unless the nation should be pleased to re-estab- 
 
 * "A Defence of the True and Catholick Doctrine of the 
 Sacrament of the Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ." 
 Page 4 of Preface of Edition by the Rev. H. J. Todd, M.A.
 
 30 OUR PLACE IN ENGLAND. 
 
 lish her by, new statutes on the new condition that 
 she may preach all manner of doctrine " from 
 Romanist to Rationalist." 
 
 The " Declaration " further contains these words, 
 " Now we, the undersigned, feeling constrained to 
 contend earnestly for the truth, and to avoid all com- 
 plicity with false doctrine " — two important duties 
 these — to contend earnestly for the truth and to avoid 
 complicity with the false teaching which has now 
 gained a firm foothold within the pale of their Church. 
 But how may this be done? In either of two ways. 
 First, the " Declarers " may demand of the State 
 to let the Church go free, in order that" she may 
 exercise her own discipline and restore the Protes- 
 tant character that has hitherto been the main con- 
 dition of her existence as a National Establishment; 
 or despairing of such an issue, they may avoid com- 
 plicity with the neo-Popery of the Anglican Church 
 by voluntarily relinquishing her fellowship. Either 
 course will require courage, and will involve sacrifice. 
 But what avails our faith, what avails the example 
 cff* ancestors whom we almost canonise, if we have 
 not sufficient courage for such a crisis as this, or 
 shrink from the sacrifice which it requires ? "If 
 thou hast run with the footmen, and they have 
 wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with 
 horses ; and if in the land of peace, then how wilt 
 thou do in the swelling of Jordan ? " 
 
 Are our brethren prepared for either of these 
 courses ? Some are — all honour to them — but the 
 greater part are not. They contemplate a third
 
 WHAT IS TO BE DONE? 3f 
 
 course, — a " DECLARATION ! " — ^ declaration 
 that the Church cannot effectually maintain her 
 Protestant doctrines while certain of her clergy use 
 with impunity language which ordinary intelligence 
 cannot distinguish from the erroneous teaching of 
 the Church of Rome, and that only by the exclusive 
 teaching of Scripture doctrine can the Church of 
 England continue to deserve confidence as the 
 National Church of this Protestant country.''' 
 
 But what avails siich a Declaration ? What do 
 you propose to do ? Parodying the famous saying 
 untruly ascribed to Augustine, — *' Roma locuta est, 
 causa finita est," we say — *' The law has spoken, 
 the cause is concluded." There is no appeal from 
 the verdict of the Eighth of June. You cannot hope 
 for a Parliamentary enactment to purge your ser- 
 vices of the evil leaven which is now working so 
 
 * The following are the words of the Declaration : — " We do 
 most solemnly declare our conviction that the Church of Eng- 
 land cannot effectually maintain the doctrines affirmatively 
 asserted in the Judgment, while certain of the clergy use with 
 impunity language which ordinary inteUigence is unable to 
 distinguish from the erroneous teaching of the Church of Rome. 
 And we hereby further declare our conviction that such teach- 
 ing is contrary to the word of God, and therefore dishonouring 
 to our Master, the Lord Jesus Christ ; and that only by the ex- 
 clusive maintenance of pure and Scriptural doctrine can the 
 Church of England vindicate its character as a pillar and 
 ground of the truth, and continue to deserve confidence as the 
 National Church of this Protestant country." Whether this 
 Declaration is ever presented to the country for signature or 
 not, it may be accepted as containing the matured judgment 
 of the Council of the " Church Association."
 
 32 OUR PLACE IN ENGLAND, 
 
 disastrously, and to give you new rubrics that will 
 not admit of the wide interpretation which allows 
 Popery to be preached in your pulpits. How then 
 can you secure that " exclusive maintenance of 
 Scripture doctrine," without which you say the 
 Church of England will no longer " deserve con- 
 fidence as the National Church of this Protestant 
 country ? " 
 
 Oh ! for a Chalmers and a Candlish to throw open 
 the door before you, and to lead you forth to a posi- 
 tion in which you can shake off the dust of all 
 complicity with the heresies of Rome ! Such a 
 decision as that on the Bennett case would have 
 convulsed Scotland from Tweed to John o' Groats, 
 and the perfervidum ingenium Scotorum would have 
 seized, not the Covenanter's claymore — let that rust 
 in the mosses of Dumfries and Galloway — but the 
 constitutional power which in these happier times 
 suffices to effect revolutions. Let Englishmen arise 
 and say that their National Church, reformed and 
 instituted to be the teacher of a reformed faith, 
 shall not, through virtue of legal technicalities, be- 
 come the teacher of those errors which it was meant 
 to destroy? Let the anti-Romanist party in the 
 Church understand that only by one of two courses 
 — secession, or the separation of the Church from the 
 State with a view to self-reform — can they avoid 
 complicity with the new condition of their Church ? 
 Let them secede, and we shall have stronger reason 
 than ever to demand that the then Residuary Church 
 shall cease to enjoy State patronage and support.
 
 A CRISIS IM THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 33 
 
 Let them remain where they are, but honestly de- 
 mand separation, and freedom, that they may reform 
 themselves, and we shall help them right heartily 
 in their demand. I can appreciate the hesitancy 
 with which they shrink from either, and the painful 
 forebodings with which they ask — *'What next?" 
 But there are times when consequences must not be 
 reckoned, crises in which men must act by faith and 
 not by sight. It is God's prerogative to bring light 
 out of darkness and order out of confusion. It is 
 our part to commit our souls to Him in YJtW-doing, 
 as unto a faithful God, who leadeth men and churches 
 by a way that they know not. 
 
 In the beginning of the reign of the first Charles, 
 there was a crisis which historians have failed to 
 notice, more real and momentous than may be found 
 in any battle of his later life. There were two men 
 in his court, the very embodiment of the antagonistic 
 principles which afterwards came into deadly con- 
 flict, and which, with only formal differences, divi'de 
 England to-day into opposing camps. William Laud 
 had been clerk of the closet to King James, and had 
 already shown what manner of man he was. Henry 
 Burton had been clerk of the closet to the King's 
 eldest son. Prince Henry, and on his death dis- 
 charged the same office to Prince Charles. His 
 character was as marked and clearly defined as 
 Laud's. When tutor some years before to the sons 
 of a noble knight, a religious matron, who took notice 
 of his spirit, and of his "zeal against the Prelates' 
 
 c
 
 34 OUR PLACE IN ENGLAND. 
 
 pride and practices," remarked, " This young man 
 will one day be the overthrow of the Bishops." 
 When Charles ascended the throne of his father, 
 William Laud became clerk of the closet to the 
 new sovereign as he had been to the former — thus 
 separating Henry Burton, for whom some other office 
 was designed, from his prince. The young Puritan, 
 observing that Laud and another like-minded, Bishop 
 Neale, would henceforth be continually with the 
 King, felt that there would be no abiding for him 
 in court any longer. The royal house could not be 
 the home of such contraries. But in his simplicity 
 he believed that the young king, for whom he had a 
 most unfeigned affection and regard, could not be 
 aware of the real character of his servants ; and he 
 felt bound in conscience, '' by virtue of his place," to 
 inform the King " how Popishly affected they were," 
 and to set forth "the dangerous consequences of 
 entertaining such persons so near about him." This 
 he did in a long letter, which he presented to the 
 King with his own hand, standing before him while 
 he read it. Mark the crisis. 
 
 There is a house on an eminence of the Rocky 
 Mountains, so situated that the rain which drops 
 from one side of its roof flows eastward to the Atlantic, 
 and that which drops from the other side flows west- 
 ward to the Pacific. A casual breath of wind, as the 
 rain descends on that house, determines whether its 
 destiny shall be the Atlantic or the Pacific. In the 
 Grampians and other mountain regions you will find 
 rivulets, the beginnings of great rivers, so small
 
 SUBJECT FOR A PICTURE. 35 
 
 that a child's foot may so turn their course as to 
 determine on which of opposite shores they shall 
 fall into the ocean. Even so is it in the history of 
 individuals and of nations. 
 
 On the effect of Henry Burton's letter on the 
 young king's mind, it depends whether England 
 shall pass into a great sea of storm and trouble, in 
 which many precious things shall be wrecked, and 
 in which neither sun nor stars shall appear for many 
 days, or whether her future shall be one of peace and 
 progress and freedom. The confusions of the great 
 civil strife are now waiting for the King's word to 
 let them loose. And the angel of truth and liberty 
 is there, pleading with the King's heart and con- 
 science to refrain from those men whose counsels 
 will be his and his country's ruin. How is it that 
 no great painter has seized this critical moment in 
 English history to expend on it the strength of his 
 genius and art ? There stands the King in the fore- 
 ground, anxiously scanning the letter of his faithful 
 servant. At a respectful distance you have the 
 Puritan, with a mingling of boldness and fear, 
 watching the expression of his Sovereign's face. 
 Poetry will allow us to put William Laud and 
 Richard Neale into the background, confident of 
 speedy victory, and yet with some expression of 
 wonder as to "whereunto this will grow." The 
 issues are momentous, but the hour of decision is not 
 long delayed. The King reads a " good part " of the 
 letter, perceives its scope, hands it back to its author, 
 and calmly bids him forbear attendance in his office, 
 
 C2
 
 36 OUR PLACE IN ENGLAND. 
 
 until he is sent for. The die is cast; Popery and 
 despotism — we say Popery advisedly — have won the 
 day ; England must go into the Star Chamber and 
 the High Court of Commission, until mortal endur- 
 ance is exhausted ; and then will come a convulsion 
 in which Henry Burton, after being the victim of 
 the pillory, shall become the hero of the day; and 
 William Laud, the successful wrong-doer, shall 
 perish by the earthquake which his own tyranny has 
 caused. 
 
 England, in the person of its rulers, did not know 
 the day of its visitation. Let England know it now, 
 and determine whether the Eighth of June, 1872, shall 
 be a black or red-letter day in her calendar. If others 
 do not see its possible consequences for good or ill, 
 let not us be blind. If others do not see in the late 
 decision of the Judicial Committee a reason for the 
 separation of the Church from the State, we do. 
 With our principles we must demand separation, 
 even if the pulpits of the Church preached the purest 
 Protestantism. But now that the pulpits of the 
 Establishment may, without effectual challenge, 
 preach substantial and all but nominal Popery, we 
 have double reason for demanding separation. The 
 Establishment is no longer distinctively Protestant, 
 distinctively that for which it was established. Its 
 title to the revenues of the State is morally forfeited ; 
 ■and we dare not be parties to the treason which 
 would allow our nominally Protestant Establishment 
 to be the means of re-converting England to the
 
 DANGER OF A POPISH ASCENDENCY. 37 
 
 Romanism from which she was delivered in the 
 sixteenth century. 
 
 All this we urge in the interests of truth, and of the 
 spiritual life which depends on truth. We urge it 
 likewise in the interests of the future freedom of the 
 land. The political ascendency of Popery would be 
 death to our religious liberties. I do not say this 
 from prejudice, but on grounds which I trust I have 
 already made sufficiently clear, and which I will not 
 repeat. I do not overlook the difference between 
 the doctrinal Popery of our Anglo-Catholics and the 
 ecclesiastical Popery which recognises the infallible 
 headship of the Bishop of Rome ; nor do I charge 
 our Anglo-Catholics with any conscious conspiracy 
 against our liberties, such as that which may be 
 charged against those whose avowed creed is that 
 force may be lawfully used to repress error ; but 
 I cannot hide from myself the fact that our Anglo- 
 Catholics look on union with Rome as a consum- 
 mation most devoutly to be wished, and that, in their 
 discussion of the. difficulties in the way of union, -they 
 make little of the fact that the garments of Rome 
 are steeped in the blood of God's saints, and that the 
 blood-shedding of the past is approved unto this day. 
 Dr. Pusey, indeed, in relating instances in which 
 Infallibility is claimed for the Pope, mentions the 
 doctrine that "corrective force" — a strange euphem- 
 ism for persecution unto death such as was perpetrated 
 in the days of Queen Mary — is essential to the 
 maintenance of the Catholic faith. And in another 
 place he says incidentally : " Probably, too, there is
 
 38 OUR PLACE IN ENGLAND. 
 
 an hereditary dread [in England] of the renewal 
 of the fires of Smithfield, the sinfulness of which 
 has never been disavowed." But the most zealous 
 advocates of re-union with Rome do not think it 
 worth their while to refer to this matter. They 
 labour hard to "get over" the difficulties which 
 the Thirty-nine Articles raise in the way, but the 
 unchangeably intolerant and persecuting spirit of 
 Rome seems no difficulty at all. 
 
 Are our liberties safe in the keeping of such 
 men ? Personally they may be unconscious of any 
 desire to see the fires of Smithfield rekindled ; 
 but they have, with their eyes open, entered, and 
 are urging forward on, a path which will end in 
 union with or absorption in a Church which holds 
 the kindling of such fires to be a right and re- 
 ligious thing.* And let this Church but have the 
 power, and all the science and civilisation and man- 
 hood of the nineteenth century will be only as 
 cobwebs to be swept out of the way of her dominion 
 over the lives and consciences of men. 
 
 * In the Edinburgh Review for January, 1872, p. 179, will be 
 found the following quotation, descriptive of the Marian perse- 
 cution, from a History of England used in the Roman Catholic 
 schools of this country : — " The whole country was diseased with 
 heresy, and it was impossible to stop it by gentle means. In 
 this case, you know, when men are determined to destroy not 
 only their own souls but the souls of many others, they have to 
 be treated as malefactors, and are given over by the Church to 
 the law to be punished. It is very shocking that people should 
 be burnt, but it is much more shocking that they should be 
 eading so many more people to be burnt in the flames of hell 
 for ever."
 
 THE INTERESTS OF PROTESTANTISM. 39 
 
 We are thus brought by another circle of thought 
 to the conclusion to which we were led in vindicating 
 our position as Englishmen. Disestablishment, we 
 saw then, instead of being unconstitutional and revo- 
 lutionary, is a normal and legitimate development 
 of the Constitution, a casting out of incongruous 
 elements. Disestablishment, we see now, is equally 
 necessary in the interests of that Protestant truth 
 and freedom to which Popery is the irreconcilable 
 foe. If Englishmen are not content to be carried 
 back to Rome by the very institution which they 
 have endowed for the defence of Protestantism, they 
 must demand that the State shall withdraw from it 
 all that it has given it, all that makes it — at least in 
 a legal sense — national ; and if other Englishmen do 
 not understand this great necessity of our times and 
 of our country, we do. For this end were we born 
 as a people, for this end, though not this alone, we 
 exist as a community, that we, with others like- 
 minded, may bear witness to the truth of God con- 
 cerning his own kingdom, and be the means of giving 
 that truth form and body in the institutions of 
 England. 
 
 Let me not be misunderstood. I am no Iconoclast, 
 nor is our function that of Iconoclasts. The end of 
 my argument is not to summon you to a new war or 
 to new forms of war, but to assert for our separation 
 and our antagonism to the connection of Church and 
 State, that it is not un-English, nor a thing of vio- 
 lence, but the outgrowth of principles which, being 
 true, and being at least germinally recognised in our
 
 40 OUR PLACE IN ENGLAND. 
 
 civil Constitution, are sure, sooner or later, to find 
 their consummation in — " a Free Church in a Free 
 State." We are not apolitical party, however much 
 our affinities may draw us to one party rather than 
 another ; and we cannot predict which of ' our 
 two great parties it is that will formally effect the 
 separation of the Church from the State. Great 
 changes, towards which progress has long been 
 making, are often consummated in the end by what 
 we call accidents, events that are out of all reckon- 
 ing, unforeseen and sudden. If I may revert to my 
 Highland figure, the rock is finally torn asunder, 
 not by the mere growth of the roots which have 
 struck into its fissures, but by forces for which these 
 roots, in their beginnings feeble and harmless, made 
 preparation — the forces of frost and storm. *' He 
 that believeth shall not make haste." We are quite 
 content to wait in patience until the fulness of the 
 time shall come. And we shall not shrink from 
 then inscribing on our banner, in all sincerity, 
 as we do now, the very legend that was inscribed 
 on the unfortunate banner of Charles the First, 
 on the Castle Hill of Nottingham, " Give Caesar 
 his due." 
 
 Meantime — and at all times — would we discharge 
 our duty to our country, we must labour to do prac- 
 tical justice to our own principles, and to see that 
 they be developed into the highest possible efficiency. 
 
 Our first duty is to preach Christ's Holy Gospel — 
 in the pulpit, in the Sabbath School, and at the
 
 PRACTICAL EFFICIENCY. 41 
 
 fireside — a duty, however, on which I will not en- 
 large, because it is one common to all Churches and 
 all Christian societies. Only this — that, so far as 
 denominational growth, and, what is infinitely more 
 important, the salvation of the souls of men, are 
 concerned, it is by the faithful preaching of the 
 Gospel, accompanied by the Spirit of God, not by 
 polemical discussions, that these ends are to be accom- 
 plished. And this I may add, that those who asso- 
 ciate our name only with politics and debate would 
 be astonished, if they entered our places of worship, 
 to find how exclusively our ministers occupy them- 
 selves with spiritual truth and duty. Rarely, most 
 rarely, would they hear a word from our pulpits that 
 should remind them of our ecclesiastical or social 
 divisions. They would find that whatever import- 
 ance we attach to these, there are other things to 
 which we attach an importance that is measureless 
 and absorbing. 
 
 We glory in our Catholicity and in the Catholicity 
 of Congregationalism. When we lead the devotions 
 of our people in public worship, we have no idea that 
 the ear of Our Father in Heaven is turned more 
 lovingly towards our prayers and praises, than towards 
 those which ascend from Churches of other names 
 around us. It is our joy, in the very act of wor- 
 ship, to think of our common Father and common 
 Saviour as bending His loving regards towards our 
 neighbours as well as ourselves, and thus by His love 
 binding them and us into a closer fellowship than our- 
 selves recognise, in the great commonwealth of God.
 
 42 OUR PLACE IN ENGLAND. 
 
 But there are things peculiar to our polity which it 
 concerns us so to practise that they shall not be evil 
 spoken of, but shall rather contribute to the common 
 good. And if your time permitted, which it does 
 not, it would have been a satisfaction to me to utter 
 some long-cherished sentiments on these subjects. 
 But I forbear. On only one point would I venture 
 to remark — our oft-avowed principle of spirituality in 
 our membership. I offer no defence of the principle 
 against those who think that the Church should be 
 co-extensive with the nation, or with the baptised 
 portion of it, or against those who demand at most 
 only a moral and honourable life. But assuming 
 that we regard the possession of a spiritual life as 
 the true qualification for membership in our Churches, 
 let us be true to ourselves that we may be true to our 
 country. If we discontinue or relax some modes of 
 testing the existence of the spiritual life which were 
 once common, let it not be to render it easier for 
 unconverted men to enter our Churches. And above 
 all, professing to be spiritual, let our spirituality be 
 practical, pure, enlightened, intense. It may be 
 questioned whether, as ministers, we study sufficiently 
 the means of building up our people in all goodness, 
 and of guarding them against the dangers which 
 beset their Christian path. I know the grandeur of 
 the work of those who labour for the conversion of 
 souls, and no word shall be heard from my lips which 
 can be construed into a questioning of its importance 
 and urgency. But there are other things which 
 should not be left undone. '' This also we wish,
 
 OUR PROFESSED SPIRITUALITY. 43 
 
 even your perfection," Apostles said to their con- 
 verts. And they did not leave the wish to fulfil 
 itself, or even to be fulfilled by the spontaneous 
 growth of inward principle. " I would that ye knew 
 what great conflict I have for you," said the chiefest 
 of the Apostles. He warned every man and taught 
 every man in all wisdom, striving up to the measure 
 of that Divine energy which was working in him 
 mightily, that he might present every man perfect in 
 Christ Jesus. He was deeply impressed with the 
 great powers of evil which opposed the spiritual 
 growth and perfecting of the^ saints ; the corruption 
 of morals which made it almost impossible for a man 
 to breathe the atmosphere of Corinth and be pure ; 
 the chaotic thinking, and the false philosophising, 
 which made it very hard for a man to live in Colosse 
 and retain the truth as it is in Jesus in uncorrupted 
 simplicity ; and with the same zeal with which he 
 laboured to turn idolaters from idols to the living 
 God, he laboured to build up the saints in all truth 
 and godly living, even unto a perfect manhood, 
 unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of 
 Christ. 
 
 This work is as needful as ever. Influences for 
 evil, not quite so offensive perhaps as those which 
 prevailed of old in the great cities of the heathen 
 world, but scarcely less injurious to spiritual health, 
 are rife to-day in our Christian England. You feel 
 them not in the great city alone, but in the village 
 and hamlet. They seem to permeate the atmosphere 
 we breathe. And how to resist them, how to defend
 
 44 OUR PLACE IN ENGLAND. 
 
 -. ^ . — — . % 
 
 ourselves and our Churches against them, how to 
 build up a pure Christlike Church in the midst of 
 them, is a problem which should send us in trembling 
 anxiety to our great Master for wisdom and strength. 
 We dare not yield to the paralysis and despair which 
 a sense of our own weakness might produce, for we 
 have sufficiency in God. 
 
 In addition to the spiritual dangers common to all, 
 it appears to me that there are some which, if not 
 peculiar to us, yet beset us in larger measure than 
 they do some others. Our congregations belong for 
 the most part to the middle middle class. There are 
 many in them of the very poorest of the land — in 
 which we greatly rejoice. And there are a few of the 
 richest. But as compared with others, we at least 
 approximate the truth when we say that for the 
 greater part our people belong to a stratum of society 
 which may be described as the middle middle class. 
 And herein I see a danger. This class has always 
 been, and is likely always to be, very active in the 
 current politics of the day. We dare not chide their 
 activity, we would not restrain it. They are exer- 
 cising a privilege, and they are discharging a duty. 
 
 It has become a fashion to applaud those who in 
 the ages of the decline of the Roman Empire and in 
 the ages which followed, ages of rude violence and 
 rude morals, cultivated the Godward side of their 
 nature in cloisters and desert places. But making 
 all allowance for the difficulties which drove them 
 and the aspirations which drew them • away from 
 society, and not withholding our admiration from
 
 MONASTICISM FALSE TO CHRIST. 45 
 
 what of purity and devoutness they attained, we 
 must hold that their solitude and asceticism were 
 not of faith, but of unbelief. It was not the strength 
 of their faith, but its weakness, that separated them 
 from mankind. " I pray not that thou shouldest 
 take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest 
 keep them from the evil." They were traitors to the 
 place which Christ assigned them. Lest the salt 
 should lose its saltness, they withdrew it from the 
 mass which it should season. Lest their light should 
 go out, they placed it under a bushel. Their conduct 
 is not an example, but a beacon. 
 
 Our people do right when they take part in the 
 politics, that is, in the government, of their parishes 
 and towns, and in the general politics of the country. 
 But let them take heed how they do it. There are 
 practices, not those grosser practices of which the 
 law takes cognizance, but practices less flagrantly 
 evil than these, that are offensive to a mind that is 
 instinct with Christian rectitude and honour, but 
 which are shielded from the reprobation they deserve 
 by the plea of necessity. " All things are lawful in 
 war," we are told. " You cannot accomplish your 
 end if you are too nice as to the means." Brethren, 
 nothing can be necessary that is not right. The 
 Christian law, which requires of Christians what- 
 soever things are true, honourable, just, pure and 
 lovely, admitsof no exceptions ; and Christian men 
 will add greatly both to their personal moral strength 
 and to their social influence, by obeying it in the face 
 of every disadvantage and sacrifice. Even the en-
 
 46 OUR PLACE IN ENGLAND. 
 
 grossment of mind and heart which active political 
 life involves is perilous to our spirituality, as ig 
 indeed engrossment of mind and heart in any form 
 or from any cause. And we and our Churches need 
 much w^atchfulness and prayer that our spiritual' 
 strength be not lost, and our spiritual sensibilities 
 be not blunted, through the very duties to which 
 Providence calls us. 
 
 Closely connected with this is another form of 
 social danger. Even in our army men sometimes 
 rise from the ranks to be commanders. But in our 
 social life it is far more common. In our great 
 centres of manufacture and commerce you will find, 
 not solitary instances, but crowds of instances, of 
 workmen becoming masters, and not masters merely, 
 but possessors of immense wealth. The romance 
 which in other days gathered around moated towers 
 and castles, with their Percies and Douglases of 
 ballad-memory, now gathers around great piles of 
 brick filled with cotton and jute and alpaca, and 
 around names more worthy of honour than the 
 swordsmen of the days of yore. In the towns and 
 vales of the northern counties, you will hear tales of 
 rich men and their fathers, truer but not less interest- 
 ing than the legend of Richard Whittington. We 
 thank God for it. Our classes are not stereotyped.. 
 There is no gulf separating one from another. The 
 transition, the ascent, is frequent, sometimes rapid, 
 sometimes effected at a bound. But it is very diffe- 
 rent from the changes of which we read in the days 
 of the decline of Rome. " Overgrown fortunes were
 
 DANGERS OF SUDDEN WEALTH. 47 
 
 often acquired in those days by wretches of the 
 meanest stamp, by slaves brought from over the sea, 
 who had to conceal the holes bored in their ears ; or 
 even by malefactors who had to obliterate, by artifi- 
 cial means, the three letters (' fur ') which had been 
 branded by the executioner on their foreheads." 
 " The people of the greatest influence were the freed- 
 men of the Emperors — men who had been slaves, 
 Egyptians and Bithynians who had come to Rome 
 with chalk on their feet to show that they were for 
 sale — who had acquired enormous wealth by means 
 often the most unscrupulous and the most degraded, 
 and whose insolence and baseness had kept pace with 
 their rise to power." Thank God ! the tales we have 
 to tell of the " rise and progress" of our rich men 
 are of another order. Not by their vices, and their 
 subserviency to the vices of others, have they risen 
 from the ranks, but by their virtues, — by enterprise 
 and industry and tact — by understanding of the times 
 to know what merchants ought to do. Could we 
 trace the story of their upward struggles as we do 
 the history of great campaigns in war, we should 
 find equal reason to admire skill and energy and 
 high qualities of soul, and equal reason to wonder 
 at what we call the surprises and caprices of 
 fortune. 
 
 But this great good of our times is not without a 
 dark shadow. We have the highest authority for 
 regarding riches as a great temptation. The pos- 
 session of wealth is not a sin, but, through the 
 weakness of our nature, it is apt to gender sin, the
 
 48 OUR PLACE IN ENGLAND. 
 
 sin of selfishness and luxury, of pride and idolatry. 
 When suddenly acquired the danger is all the greater. 
 The men who are thus favoured — in some cases it 
 would be more correct to say, who are thus cursed — 
 are not prepared by education, by gradually acquired 
 habits, by moral discipline, for the new position in 
 which they are placed. And instead of passing severe 
 censures on the foibles, and worse than foibles, in 
 which satire delights to revel, we owe to these men 
 our most humane indulgence, and our deepest com- 
 passion. Happily it is possible for those who rise 
 to princely fortunes to be princely in spirit, as we 
 see by illustrious examples which are known and 
 read of all men. And that it is possible to retain 
 Christian simplicity and piety, amid the temptations 
 of suddenly acquired wealth, may be proved by the 
 lives of not a few. And yet it may be feared that 
 the princely spirit and the Christian simplicity are 
 the exception and not the rule. The luxuriousness 
 and costliness and extravagance of the living and 
 of the palaces, — I can scarcely call them homes, — of 
 many of our " self made men," absorb an amount of 
 wealth and of thought which, if devoted to the public 
 good, would, so far as external appliance could do it, 
 regenerate the land. 
 
 Are we clear in this matter ? Do our Churches 
 and congregations furnish no examples of the selfish 
 and self-indulgent, who, if they pay tithes at all to 
 the service of God or man, tithe only their mint and 
 anise and cummin ? men who, while they profess to 
 be born of God and bought with the blood of His
 
 AN UNSELFISH NATIONALISM. 49 
 
 dear Son, are scarcely ruffled by the wail of dying 
 nations, and are as self-complacent in the display of 
 their wealth as the merest worldling ? Brethren, 
 our Churches can occupy the place which God has 
 given them in England, and fulfil its duties, only in 
 so far as they acquire a spirituality and a devotion 
 which will lay their wealth and social influence on 
 the altar of our common weal. 
 
 It is not in the spirit of a selfish nationalism that 
 I plead for our common weal. Humanity is like the 
 Church in this, that, though it be one body, it has 
 many members, and God hath set the members, 
 every one of them, in the body as it hath pleased Him. 
 Rivalries and enmities, wars and fightings, between 
 the members of this great body, are as unnatural as 
 they are unchristian. But every member hath not 
 the same office. It is not of chance, but by a Divine 
 ordaining, that the climes of the world differ, and 
 that their productions differ. Nor is it of chance, 
 but by the same Divine ordaining, that one i"ace 
 differs from another. Their very differences are an 
 indication that they were meant to be helpers one of 
 another, supplying each other's need, and contributing 
 each its share to the common stock. The Teuton 
 cannot say to the Kelt, I have no need of thee ; 
 nor can the Kelt say to the Latin, I have no need of 
 thee. England cannot say to France, I have no need 
 of thee ; nor can France say even to Germany, I 
 have no need of thee. And we believe in a time 
 coming when each nation will bring its own gift, 
 
 D
 
 so OUR PLACE IN ENGLAND. 
 
 whether it be strength or refinement, intellect or 
 imagination, courage or tenderness, the fruit of the 
 field or the fruit of the loom, the work of the hand or 
 the work of the brain, and ask every other nation in 
 the name of the God of nations, the Father of all, to 
 partake of the common joy. 
 
 Meanwhile it is ours, not selfishly, but with a view 
 to the good of all nations, to labour and pray for the 
 cleansing of our land from all defilement, and its 
 ennobling with every grace and virtue. We do not 
 speculate of the future. The history of the fall of 
 empires in the past forbids us to indulge in a proud 
 security. From the banks of the Nile and of the 
 Euphrates and of the Tigris, we hear the voice 
 which says, "Be not high-minded but fear." The 
 common sequence of virtue and wealth, wealth and 
 luxury, luxury and corruption, corruption and decay, 
 may be recited in an after-age as summing up the 
 history of Great Britain. But we trust that a better 
 destiny awaits us. We have no fear of international 
 strife. Thank God that we have learnt in these last 
 days that reason is a better arbitrament than the 
 sword — may the lesson never be forgotten ! Nor 
 have we any fear of those great discoveries of 
 mineral wealth in many lands, which to some are 
 ominous of a time when our mineral wealth shall 
 be exhausted, and when the eminence which it 
 creates shall be transferred to others; the rise of 
 other lands does not necessitate the depression of 
 ours. 
 
 The darkest cloud in our horizon is the war
 
 OUR INDUSTRIAL CONTENTIONS. 51 
 
 of class with class in our industrial community — 
 now so wide-spread and intense. It is not for 
 me to attempt any balancing of the merits or 
 demerits of the questions at issue between what 
 is called Capital and Labour. Still less can I 
 attempt to prescribe the means by which, either 
 through the legislature or otherwise, these ques- 
 tions may be settled. But this I know, that there 
 are principles in our Bible which, if they be but 
 accepted and cordially acted on, will bring our 
 social wars to an end, and unite class to class in an 
 industrial confederacy that shall be brotherly and 
 permanent. There is not only the principle of recti- 
 tude in the dealings of man with man, not as the 
 best policy, which it is, but as the will of the Most 
 High God which no one may violate with impunity ; 
 there is also the principle of love, as sacred as the 
 principle of rectitude, the principle which is em- 
 bodied in such sayings as these — " Let no man seek 
 his own, but every man another's well-being," "Look 
 not every man on his own things, but every man al^o 
 on the things of others," " Whatsoever ye would 
 that men should do to you, do ye even so to them 
 likewise." Get these principles into the heart of the 
 community — and surely this is not impossible — and 
 misunderstandings may arise, but they will be healed 
 without difficulty and without danger. Masters and 
 men together, concerned only for the things that are 
 justa nd equal, not selfishly and to the death strugg- 
 ling to gain the uttermost advantage, but imbued 
 with an honest and religious desire to promote the
 
 52 OUR PLACE IN ENGLAND. 
 
 common interest, — capital and labour, employers and 
 employed, will cease from jealousy and strife, and 
 recognise the duty, under the eye of God, of work- 
 ing in harmony and peace. Whatever others do let 
 us do our duty. Are we masters or are we ser- 
 vants ? Let us be Christians in either capacity, 
 and show that we are subject to that higher law 
 which demands that we love our neighbours as 
 ourselves. 
 
 Our hope for England is in our God. The age of 
 miracles is past, but the age of Providence is not. We 
 would fain see in our geographical position, our com- 
 posite race, our ripened history, our constitutional 
 liberties, our commercial communion with all na- 
 tions, signs that God wills to use us more than ever 
 for the good of mankind. But our hope is in God 
 Himself, in the power of His gospel to sanctify our 
 people, and in the faithfulness of His Church to her 
 mission. And, God helping us, we will not cease 
 from holy toil and fervent prayer till the English 
 nation shall be, in the words of Milton, "as one huge 
 Christian personage, one mighty growth and stature 
 of an honest man, as big and compact in virtue as 
 in body." 
 
 UNWIN BROTHERS, OLD STYLE HUNTERS, LONDON AND CHILWORTH,
 
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