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 A LETTEPi 
 
 THE RIGHT REV. WILLIAM SKINNER, D.D., 
 
 BISHOP OF ABERDEEN, AND PRIMUS, 
 
 FUNCTIONS OF LAYMEN IN THE CHURCH. 
 
 BY THE RIGHT HOK W. E. GLADSTONE, 
 
 M.P. FOR THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. 
 
 THIBD EDITION. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 JOHN MUERAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 
 
 EDINBURGH : OLIVER & BOYD. 
 
 1852. 
 
 Price One Shilling.
 
 tOSOOM ! PKINrKD BV WILLIAM CLOWES AND SOSS, STi.MPORD STREKT.
 
 ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 The Letter to the Bishop of Aberdeen is published in confoniiity with the 
 wish expressed, as will be seen below, by the Bishop hiruself. 
 
 Aberdeen, 9th Jan. 1852. 
 Dear Mr. Gladstone, 
 
 The Letter which you have addressed to me officially, 
 and to my Episcopal Brethren, has been perused in manuscript 
 by my brother Bishop of Moray, &c., Clerk to the Episcopal 
 Synod, and myself. 
 
 The important subject of the introduction of the Lay 
 Element into our Synods has been already brought under 
 notice of our Bishops more than once, as well as of some of 
 our Diocesan Synods, and earnestly recommended to the most 
 serious consideration of their several members. 
 
 We solicit the publication of your Letter, without in so 
 doing necessarily concurring perhaps in all its views and reason- 
 ings, but from a wish that the subject itself should be venti- 
 lated and discussed, so as to enable us the better to judge what 
 course we ought to pursue, under the Divine guidance, towards 
 the safe carrying out of a measure of such vital interest to the 
 
 Church. 
 
 I remain, with most sincere esteem, 
 
 Faithfully yours, 
 W. SKINNER, D.D., Bp. and Primus. 
 
 Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone. 
 
 B 2
 
 UIUC 
 
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 A L E T T B R, 
 
 RiGUT Reverend and dear Sir, 
 
 While the times in which we live add greatly to the 
 cares and responsibihties of the Fathers of the Church, most of 
 all if they are set and determined, as their office requires, upon 
 facing unbelief in its insidious beginnings, and upon a jea- 
 lous watch and ward for the precious deposit committed to their 
 charge, they seem herewith to present th'is peculiar feature, 
 that, as in civil, so in spiritual matters, they tend to devolve 
 upon the governed a portion of the work of government. It is 
 that tendency, when working without method or control, that 
 makes the period revolutionary ; but which, when kept within 
 due bounds, and trained to act according to stable and well- 
 adjusted laws, seems capable of being so used as to give in- 
 creased vigour to legitimate authority, along with increased 
 scope to reasonable freedom. On this account, and from the 
 experimental evidence afforded by the recent history of several 
 states, it would seem that what is called a constitutional system, 
 though not always easy to realise, is, when it can be attained, 
 for the present period of human destinies, the great Providen- 
 tial instrument for effective resistance to anarchical designs. 
 
 But the Church may, it is probable, have a double danger 
 to encounter. In common with States, she has to fear the con- 
 sequences, which may be wrought upon her established order 
 by an unregulated appetite among her own members for the 
 exercise of power. But she has in some countries a further 
 danger to apprehend, from the side of the State itself: the exer- 
 cise, namely, of State influence and of State power, not only by 
 way of due check and control over her movements, but by way 
 of assuming (whether professedly or not is not now the question, 
 and, if it is to be at all, it were far better that it should be
 
 6 ON THE FUNCTIONS OF 
 
 professedly) the privilege or function of ultimately deciding 
 both her doctrine and her discipline. 
 
 I do not indeed say that this is a fact already palpable to all. 
 On the contrary, many are still blind to it : so blind, that they 
 recklessly precipitate the danger : so blind, that we have only 
 to wish their day of vision may not come too late. But I speak 
 of it as a fact plain enough to those who watch for the signs of 
 the times, and who, in the moral hemisphere, can portend foul 
 weather when " the sky is red and lowering." 
 
 Now, this assumption may make its advances in more ways 
 than one. It may be under direct legislative provisions. It 
 may be through the exercise of patronage and what is termed 
 the power of the purse. It may be, and that almost ex necessi- 
 tate rei, through the administration of the judicial office. The 
 first of these modes must be mainly applicable to an Established 
 religion, and has no application worth naming to that Episco- 
 pal Communion over which you. Right Reverend Sir, and your 
 Brethren, preside with the universal reverence of its members. 
 Neither is the second felt, if it be understood with regard to 
 secular influence from the State, as contradistinguished from 
 other secular influences. But from the third you neither are 
 nor can you be exempt. The mere establishment by law of 
 religious freedom, it should be well recollected by all, but 
 especially by the members of unestablished communities, cannot 
 of itself secure their liberty of conscience from practical inva- 
 sion and curtailment by the judicial power. As bodies, they 
 must have rules. As bodies of human beings, they must occa- 
 sionally have refractory or dissentient members, perhaps dis- 
 honestly seeking to evade the operation of those rules, perhaps 
 honestly but erroneously, nay, perhaps in given cases, both 
 honestly and correctly, desirous to fix upon them a construc- 
 tion different from that attached to them by the general sense of 
 the religious community to which they belong. And lastly, 
 as bodies regularly organised, they must usually have paid 
 officers, and very commonly also piirchaseable privileges ; so that 
 the sheer laws of their existence necessarily carry us to a point 
 where spiritual rights come to intermix with temporal. When, 
 therefore, any minority or any individuals go into a court 
 and raise there a question relating to these paid offices or en- 
 dowments, or these purchaseable privileges, they raise a question
 
 LAYMEN IN THE CHURCH. 7 
 
 of temporal and civil riglits, which does not cease to be such 
 because some other question of spiritual rights runs upon a 
 parallel line with it ; and I apprehend it will be found very 
 difficult so to frame the contracts (for such are our canons, 
 and the rules of other unestablished bodies) between the mem- 
 bers of a religious society, as to exonerate the courts from the 
 duty of entertaining, indirectly indeed, but in supposable cases 
 most substantially, questions upon the vital construction of our 
 ecclesiastical laws ; not perhaps with the same frequency, or 
 the same directness, or the same breadth of scope, as in the 
 case of an Establiijhed Church ; but yet sufficiently to remind 
 us that, if we wish to be wholly free from meddling, we must 
 not rely implicitly on any written document, but must have 
 arms in our hands for self-defence. 
 
 The very last imputation I should think of casting on the 
 time-honoured courts of this country would be that of a desire 
 to trespass upon the sphere of religious liberty. It is their 
 conscientiousness, not their want of conscience, which has led, 
 and may again lead, them into it. In the celebrated case of 
 Lady Hewley's charity. Sir Lancelot Shadwell, the late highly 
 respected Vice-Chancel lor of England, delivered from the 
 bench something very like a dogmatic treatise, and concluded 
 with a judgment that alienated dissenting endowments from 
 purposes to which they had theretofore been applied, upon 
 grounds avowedly dogmatic. Now, though, as I have said, 
 there may be no undue disposition to enter the sphere of reli- 
 gion and of the rights of conscience, and though, when a judge 
 has entered it, there will be no conscious deviation from strict 
 equity, yet I for one frankly own that I view the temporal 
 judge, when he has once got there, with the greatest jealousy ; 
 partly because he has to try a subject matter with which he is 
 not competently acquainted, while his lack of competence is 
 not supplied by fixed rules of reference to experts, as it some- 
 times is when non-legal issues are indirectly raised ; partly 
 because in countries where, as in Scotland, there is an esta- 
 blished religion, whose laws have a thousand points of contact 
 with those of the State, a habit of mind may very naturally, 
 nay, must ordinarily, be formed more or less in judges, which 
 may lead them, unconsciously to themselves, to make the ideas 
 belonging to the State religion the measure and standard for
 
 8 ON THE FUNCTIONS OF 
 
 the corresponding subjects in other systems, and to claim more 
 than properly belongs to them, upon occasions when they have 
 to deal with the interpretation of the canons or rules of an 
 unestablished community. 
 
 Ecclesiastical discipline, together with theology, representing 
 organized and historic systems, are full of technical terms, which 
 are to be learned only like the technical terms of other sciences 
 or arts ; and lawyers have no greater inborn or spontaneous 
 knowledge of these terms than they have of the differential 
 calculus. Neither have they, in virtue of their being lawyers, 
 the theological habit of mind, without which these technical 
 terms are in many cases ill to be apprehended. We may fre- 
 quently observe that, when they get into people's mouths, they 
 are, because misunderstood, only instruments of delusion to 
 those who use and those who hear them. For example, many 
 men, and even occasionally a judge or two, will talk about 
 an opus operatum, meaning thereby a perfunctory or cere- 
 monial act — a sense, I need not say, wholly different from the 
 true one. In short. Right Reverend Sir, to lay aside cir- 
 cumlocution, and utter outright the word which solicits me, 
 there is great fear lest judges, dragged pro re natd into 
 theology, should, and of course to the detriment of somebody 
 or other, talk nonsense. 
 
 Now, this danger is not of the fatal kind to us, of which it 
 would be, if any such judgment of the civil courts involved an 
 obligation upon conscience beyond the limit of the temporalities 
 concerned. Up to that limit of course they do, even for a 
 voluntary society, involve such an obligation ; but when they 
 pass beyond it, they are waste paper. Yet still this is a danger 
 that might lead to very formidable evils — a danger (which is 
 my present point) that ought to be guarded against. Perhaps 
 we are not justified in excluding wholly from our view the 
 further fact, that more direct interference with your religious 
 freedom, which is also ours, may not be wholly out of the ques- 
 tion ; inasmuch as, during the present year, your Reverences 
 have rather narrowly escaped the proscription by statute of 
 your regular, and your only regular, ecclesiastical designations. 
 True, this was owing to singular and unexampled causes ; 
 but yet, what has happened may, as a general rule, happen 
 again.
 
 LAYMEN IN THE CHURCH. 9 
 
 Mere law, then, as I have said, is not of itself a sufficient 
 guarantee for religious freedom. But God forbid I should 
 underrate its importance. The time has been when, as I think, 
 it was the duty of a good citizen to look with utter aversion on 
 whatever seemed to impair strictness of religious character and 
 profession in the State. With that religious character, consis- 
 tently and rigidly maintained, it is hard, as we must admit, to 
 reconcile full liberty of conscience ; but in maintaining it, for 
 the times of which I speak, the greater good was preserved, 
 and the lesser sacrificed. It is not so now. It is now so utter 
 an impossibility to uphold a consistent religious profession in 
 the State, that we must be satisfied with an inconsistent one, 
 and thankful if it do not shock the common reason and sense of 
 justice planted in mankind, by affecting a bastard and deceptive 
 consistency. I am jealous of all attempts at consistency in this 
 matter, most of all because I am convinced that they would 
 and must result in the greatest of civil calamities — the mutila- 
 tion, under the seal of civil authority, of the Christian religion 
 itself. The garment will not fit the wearer ; and if it is to be 
 put on, as his figure cannot change to suit it, it therefore must 
 change to suit him ; must stretch here, and draggle there, and 
 tear everywhere. If such would be the necessary result of 
 aiming at consistency, we may well be content to forego the 
 effort for attaining it. But then this inconsistency of profession, 
 being radical and systematic, palpably and greatly alters the 
 qualifications and authority of the State in respect to religion, 
 and reduces it more and more to the character, although circa 
 sacra, of a temporal agency and influence. The wave of 
 Christianity may indeed be receding from the summits of 
 society, which it took centuries to reach. AVe have now had 
 before us for many years the undeniable and singular fact that, 
 while the tone and amount of personal religion have been 
 rising in general society, the religious character of the State, 
 as such, has progressively declined. But the provision made 
 by the Almighty for the everlasting maintenance of His truth 
 can never fail, if and where His Church is true to herself. 
 What, then, we (I mean the members of all independent reli- 
 gious bodies, in which capacity only, and as one connected with 
 Scotland, I now write) have to desire, is, generally to be let
 
 10 ON THE FUNCTIONS OF 
 
 alone, and specially not to be put upon the bed of Procrustes, a 
 mode of accommodation by no means out of favour in some 
 quarters. 
 
 The duties of Christian and citizen now, as ever, coincide. 
 The religious peace, which the latter must desire, can only be 
 had by the maintenance of the religious freedom, which nothing 
 should induce the former to compromise. I do not indeed 
 think that our religious freedom in Scotland is impaired by a 
 cordial and thorough observance of the legal rights and privi- 
 leges of the Church Establishment. I say frankly, I view 
 those privileges as constituting no infringement whatever of 
 what is essential in religious freedom. That cordial observance 
 I trust we are all prepared to pay. But, on the other hand, 
 I am sure the clergy and members of the Establishment 
 generally are too wise to follow the ridiculous example set by 
 a handful among them, who last year petitioned Parliament 
 to proscribe the appellations belonging to our Diocesan Epis- 
 copacy. Against all such encroachments I for one will steadily 
 set my face, and will labour to the uttermost, whether it be 
 ostensibly on our own behalf or on behalf of others, whether for 
 the sake of common justice, or of religious peace, or of Divine 
 truth itself, to assert the principle, vital to us all, of a full re- 
 ligious freedom. That principle, I contend, when the State 
 has ceased to bear a definite and full religious character, it is 
 no less our interest than our duty to maintain. Away with the 
 servile doctrine, that religion cannot live but by the aid of Par- 
 liaments. That aid is a greater or a lesser good, according to 
 circumstances ; but conditions are also supposable, under which 
 it would be a great evil. 'Hie security of religion lies first in 
 the Providence of God and the promise of Christ : next in the 
 religious character, and strong sentiment of personal duty and 
 responsibility, so deeply graven on this country and its people. 
 But if that character and sentiment be the mainstay of our 
 reliance here on earth, our first duty must be to see that full 
 scope is given to it ; that the development of conscientious con- 
 victions, in whatever quarter, is not artificially impeded by 
 legislative meddling ; that however wary and patient we may 
 be as to any question of moving forwards, above all we be care- 
 ful not to move backwards, nor for one moment acquiesce in
 
 LAYMEN IN THE CHURCH. 1 1 
 
 any kind of tampering with the existing liberty of conscience in 
 the ])ersons either of ourselves or of others. 
 
 But if, as I have thus far striven to show, the simple assertion 
 of this freedom by law, positively or negatively, be not of itself, 
 especially in a country having a national establishment of religion, 
 enough for the reasonable security of conscience, the question 
 arises, by what further and other means can it be defended ? 
 I answer, by the creation of a vigorous and watchful public 
 opinion, both in the different religious communions and among 
 the people at large, in its favour. 
 
 Now this public opinion, so far as it is extrinsic to the 
 religious bodies themselves, will thrive in proportion as it shall 
 be seen, by the community at large, that the energies of 
 these bodies are effectively exerted for the promotion of social 
 peace, order, and morality. The next inquiry, then, must 
 obviously be, how are they to make themselves conducive to 
 these purposes in the highest attainable degree ? My answer 
 is, by the full and free development of their energies from 
 within : that full and free development, which can only be 
 realised through a regular constitutional organization. 
 
 Nor let it be apprehended that this organization, and this 
 increase of spiritual vitality and strength, will be regarded 
 with jealousy even by the most ardent among the rational and 
 consistent lovers of civil freedom. This good, at least, our 
 religious divisions have brought to us, along with their many 
 evils, that, where they prevail so extensively as among us, no 
 fears need be entertained of the effective or general use of 
 ecclesiastical influences in a manner hostile to public liberty. 
 I say public liberty, because that private and inward freedom 
 which depends upon the will, no laws can uphold where the will 
 itself fails or flags in its office ; and law ought not to aim at 
 defending individuals against the faulty working of systems not 
 under the cognizance of law, but which they have themselves 
 chosen and contrived, or to which they have voluntarily attached 
 themselves. 
 
 The time has been, when the power of the Church was so 
 great and unruly, that it threatened to absorb the co-ordinate 
 and independent power of civil authority. But in order to 
 carry on such a struggle with a prospect of success, the Church 
 must be, if not wholly, yet nearly co-extensive with the State.
 
 12 ON THE FUNCTIONS OF 
 
 Where the nation is split, as in Scotland, into so very great a 
 variety of religious communions, with no one of them absolutely 
 preponderating in numbers and influence, we have, I should 
 say, much more than the needful assurances, that no such 
 danger can recur, unless, indeed, by encroachments on religious 
 freedom in general, the State should compel all sects and 
 churches that value their respective liberties, to unite against a 
 common danger. Plenary religious freedom, on the other hand, 
 brings out into full vigour, and also into fair and impartial 
 rivalry, the internal energies of each communion, so that they 
 stand simply upon their merits before the world : and should 
 any one of them attempt to trespass on the civil power, all the 
 rest will combine with that power against it. And while 
 freedom of conscience, impartially granted to a variety of 
 communions, is thus the best security against collisions between 
 civil and spiritual authority, it likewise directly serves the 
 social purposes for which States exist ; because these diverse, 
 and to a considerable extent competing, bodies do in many 
 ways, through the Divine mercy constraining evil to be the 
 minister of good, provoke one another to love and to good 
 works, and are, generally speaking, effective, in something near 
 the ratio of the free development of their energies, towards the 
 maintenance of order and of external or public morality. 
 
 In proof of the soundness of this reasoning, I would appeal 
 to the United States of America. There surely, of all countries 
 in the Christian world, the peril of encroachment by eccle- 
 siastical on civil authority is the least ; and there, also, religious 
 freedom is the most full and unrestrained, and the most uni- 
 versally and dearly valued, both by those who deem it an 
 indispensable safeguard to the revelation of the Gospel, and by 
 those who witness the effect which, at least for a country where 
 it has started with a clear and open field, it produces, in keep- 
 ing the peace between Church and State, and in applying the 
 energies of all communions in the manner most favourable to 
 the elementary purposes of civil society. I quote this case 
 only to show, that full religious fi'eedom, while it is the object 
 to which, of all in the political hemisphere, an unestablished 
 body of Christians must naturally look with the most profound 
 interest, is likewise highly beneficial to public order and 
 morality, and need entail no danger whatever to political bar-
 
 LAYMEN IN THE CHURCH. 13 
 
 mony and the well-being of the State. Let a minister adopt 
 this for the principle of his ecclesiastical police ; to deal libe- 
 rally with religious communities, and give them all fair play ; 
 and to let them stand sentry upon one another. The laws will 
 be all the more respected, the peace all the better kept. 
 
 We have reached, then, this point in the argument, that, in 
 a country like Scotland, where religious influence and profession 
 are so much divided, a thorough and regular organization for 
 ecclesiastical purposes, being among the legitimate means of 
 raising to its maximum the proper activity of the several re- 
 ligious communions, will likewise be a means of enlisting public 
 opinion, so far as it is extrinsic to religious bodies, in favour 
 of their freedom. 
 
 But the remaining part, and a very important one, of the 
 public opinion of the country, is that which may be called the 
 public opinion of religious bodies themselves : the opinion of 
 those who are either primarily, or at least definitely and deeply 
 interested in their welfare, and who act with a direct and sys- 
 tematic view to it. Now this portion of public opinion is 
 already in favour of religious freedom in a very great and an 
 evidently growing degree ; and this among all bodies of Scot- 
 tish religionists, although with various distinctions of amount 
 and kind. But I may observe that in one point we all are 
 pretty much agreed ; we are all, without any exception what- 
 ever, in favour of religious freedom for ourselves. Even those, 
 who would seat the civil power upon the altar of God, are so 
 minded because there is nothing in their views of doctrine or of 
 discipline, with which they think the State is likely to interfere. 
 But when I speak of a lover of religious freedom, I mean one 
 who, desiring the full enjoyment of it for his own communion, 
 is not willing only, but anxious, as he prizes the sacred principle 
 of justice, to accord to all other religious bodies precisely the 
 same measure, and to guard all alike against secular interfer- 
 ence in their concerns, so long as they do not trespass upon the 
 sphere of secular affairs. In this sense of religious freedom, it 
 is certainly a principle still but imperfectly apprehended ; a 
 principle more imperfectly apprehended, more darkened by 
 selfishness and sophistry now, than it was fifteen months ago. 
 But its future progress is absolutely certain. For as every 
 class is now with increasing boldness asking the boon on its own
 
 14 ON THE FUNCTIONS OF 
 
 behalf, only a little time and experience are requisite to show 
 to each that in religion, just as in matters of civil interest, what 
 he wants to get or keep himself, he must be ready to confer or 
 defend, on the same terms, for others. As with property, so with 
 religious freedom : the rights of each man are the rights of his 
 neighbour ; he that defends one is the defender of all ; and he 
 that trespasses on one assails all. And in these matters the 
 mass of the community will judge fairly, when once the facts 
 are fairly before them, however they may require time to clear 
 their view of the case, or however they may occasionally tread 
 awry. Given, I say, these two conditions : first, the principle 
 of civil equality before the law, and secondly, the general 
 desire in each man for his own religious freedom ; and then 
 the ultimate recognition of such freedom for all is as secure, 
 as the maintenance of such equality. But what I further 
 humbly propound is, that while the progress of the desire for 
 religious freedom within our religious communities is a cer- 
 tainty, those will most fully profit by its advantages who shall 
 have learned its lessons earliest ; and those best neutralize 
 its hazards, who shall have accepted it with cordiality and 
 grace. My earnest desire then is, that we should be early 
 learners in that school. It is on that subject, and with that 
 view, that I now lay my thoughts before your Reverence. 
 
 But assuredly the true mode of learning freedom is by its 
 practice. Not by a transition from one violent extreme to 
 another, but by the careful use and the steady extension of such 
 machinery and means as we possess, in the direction of the pur- 
 poses we have in view. 
 
 What I have hitherto said has been upon grounds and in 
 language common I think to the members of all religious com- 
 munities indiscriminately, other than those established by law. 
 I come now to speak as a member of a particular religious 
 body, and in the phraseology which belongs to it. 
 
 I venture to represent to your Reverence, and to your right 
 Reverend and highly esteemed Brethren of the Episcopal Col- 
 lege, that the means of extension and progress in this matter 
 are possessed in a high degree by the Episcopal communion of 
 Scotland. It is not practically galled, at least within Scotland, 
 by the smallest legislative restraint. It is in no way mixed up 
 with political party. It lives upon terms of perfect good will
 
 LAYMEN IN THE CHURCH. 15 
 
 with its numerous and variegated neighbours. It has a ruling- 
 body strong in the respect and attachment of its members, 
 strong in historical descent, strong in the remembrance of a 
 long period of depression and proscription not ignobly borne, 
 strong (I waive descanting on personal qualities) above all in 
 the conviction of the society that those, who bear rule within 
 its pale, bear rule according to the Word of Christ and the 
 tradition of the Apostles, It has the profession, and some at 
 least of the practice, of Church discipline It honestly pro- 
 fesses, and to a great degree realizes and enjoys, unity of 
 belief on all the Articles of the Christian Faith. It is in a 
 state of steady expansion, and where it strikes its roots, ap- 
 pears to strike them deeply and securely. It has escaped the 
 painful and scandalous differences and controversies upon mat- 
 ters of belief, which have so sorely torn the Church of Eng- 
 land ; which have been attended (wherever the blame may lie) 
 with the loss of many able and learned, and, what is more, 
 of many most zealous and devout men from among her clergy 
 and her members ; and which, under the handling they have 
 received within these last four or five years, have become pro- 
 gressively more menacing and angry. These controversies, I 
 say, it has escaped ; and the small portion of discord or dispute, 
 that has found its way here, would seem to have been imported 
 from beyond the border. Discussions without doubt we have 
 had among those of our own body, but commonly upon matters 
 of minor moment ; or if upon matters of moment, yet the 
 dispute has involved their form and order, rather than their 
 essence. Of course I do not apply the name of a dispute to 
 the exercise of legitimate authority, which has severed the link 
 of communion between our Church and some few gentlemen 
 who were once her ministers, but found themselves unable to 
 acquiesce in her laws. But there yet remains to be noticed the 
 advantage most relevant of all to the present purpose. We 
 have already a system of Church government in action, and the 
 only question can be, whether we should have an extension of 
 its basis, effected through the free choice, and the spontaneous 
 boon, of those in whom it now resides. It is not required to 
 create, but only to enlarge, and the field, in which the enlarge- 
 ment is to be made, is a clear and open field. 
 
 Miserable indeed would be the prospect of the coming
 
 16 ON THE FUNCTIONS OF 
 
 times, if we believed that authority and freedom were simply 
 conflicting and contradictory elements in the constitution of a 
 community, so that whatever is given to the one must be deducted 
 from the other. But no Briton, who has devoted any portion 
 of his thoughts to the history of his country, or the character of 
 its inhabitants, can for a moment be ensnared into that, for him, 
 false and degrading belief. It has been providentially allotted 
 to this favoured isle that it should show to all the world, how 
 freedom and authority, in their due and wise developments, not 
 only may co-exist in the same body, but may, instead of impair- 
 ing, sustain and strengthen one another. Among Britons, it is 
 the extent and security of freedom which renders it safe to 
 entrust large powers to Government, and it is the very large- 
 ness of those powers and the vigour of their exercise, which con- 
 stitute, to each individual of the comraimity, the great practi- 
 cal safeguard of his liberties in return. The free expression of 
 opinion, as our experience has taught us, is the safety-valve of 
 passion. That noise, when the steam escapes, alarms the timid ; 
 but it is the sign that we are safe. The concession of reason- 
 able privilege anticipates the growth of furious appetite. Re- 
 gularity, combination, and order, especially when joined with 
 publicity, have of themselves a marvellous virtue ; they tend to 
 subordinate the individual to the mass, they enlarge by healthy 
 exercise the better and nobler parts of our nature, and depress 
 the poorer and meaner; they make man more a creature of habits, 
 and less of mere impulse ; they weaken the relative influence 
 of the present, by strengthening his hold upon the future and 
 the past, and their hold upon him. By gathering, too, into 
 organised forms the various influences that bear sway in a mixed 
 community, and leaving them to work within prescribed chan- 
 nels, those which are good acquire the multiplied strength of 
 union, while the bad neutralise one another by reciprocal elimi- 
 nation. It is a great and noble secret, that of constitutional 
 freedom, which has given to us the largest liberties, with the stea- 
 diest throne, and the most vigorous executive, in Christendom. 
 I confess to my strong faith in the virtue of this principle. I have 
 lived now for many years in the midst of the hottest and noisiest 
 of its workshops, and have seen that amidst the clatter and the din 
 a ceaseless labour is going on ; stubborn matter is reduced to obe- 
 dience, and the brute powers of society, like the fire, air, water.
 
 LAYMEN m THE CHURCH. 17 
 
 and mineral of nature, are with clamour indeed, but also with 
 might, educated and shaped into the most refined and regular 
 forms of usefulness for man. I am deeply convinced, that among 
 us all systems, whether religious or political, which rest on a 
 principle of absolutism, must of necessity be, not indeed tyran- 
 nical, but feeble and ineffective systems ; and that methodi- 
 cally to enlist the members of a community, with due regard 
 to their several capacities, in the performance of its public duties, 
 is the way to make that community powerful and healthful, to 
 give a firm seat to its rulers, and to engender a warm and in- 
 telligent devotion in those beneath their sway. 
 
 Can it be thought that this, being true of civil, is false in 
 regard to ecclesiastical affairs ? To my mind there could be 
 no more monstrous paradox, than such a proposition would 
 involve. It seems to suppose that the office of Christianity is 
 not to regulate, but to derange and overset the structure, and to 
 reverse the processes, of human nature, or to place its powers in 
 abeyance. There are, indeed, systems of theology, which might 
 prepare us for eliminating in one way or another from that 
 nature the fundamental element of its freedom ; but they are 
 systems which on that account you, Right Reverend Father, 
 would regard as dangerous, or even as heretical. Now what I 
 cannot well conceive is this : how it can be maintained, not only 
 that man is metaphysically free, but likewise that each person 
 ought in his spiritual concerns to hold the reins over his own 
 being and conduct, and yet denied that the lay community of 
 the Church ought to have defined and recognised functions in 
 relation to her government. The habits of freedom and self- 
 direction, formed in the sphere of the personal life, will not well 
 brook total and systematic exclusion from the exercise of public 
 influence in the Church : and the result of such an arrangement 
 has too often been, as, indeed, were it not for the all-powerful 
 corrective influence of our religion it would ever be, either 
 unappeasable turbulence, or immovable supineness and in- 
 difference. 
 
 The prevailing policy of the Church of Rome is more con- 
 sistent. That policy is indeed proverbially most jealous of 
 admitting laymen to any share in ecclesiastical functions ; but 
 then it begins at the beginning, and takes away from the indi- 
 vidual (if he will suffer this to be done) the decision in the last 
 
 c
 
 18 ON THE FUNCTIONS OF 
 
 resort upon his own moral conduct, not only by rendering his 
 access to the Holy Sacraments dependent under all circum- 
 stances on the will of the priest, but by the modern and very 
 remarkable and ominous development of her discipline, in the 
 form of what is called Direction. 
 
 But I understand the Reformation, such as you receive it, to 
 have re-established a most important ethical and social prin- 
 ciple, in throwing upon each individual Christian the weighty 
 responsibility of being, except in the case of open and palpable 
 offences of whatever kind, his own spiritual director, and himself 
 the sole judge of his own need for help in that kind. Now I 
 do not believe that those who, in the sixteenth and seventeenth 
 centuries, gave statutory form to the religious changes in 
 England, intended or did anything so absurd, as to emancipate 
 the lay community of the Church in respect to their personal 
 action, and then utterly to exclude them, as a lay community, 
 from any regular share in the management of Church affairs, 
 any liberty of assenting to, or dissenting from, the laws ecclesi- 
 astical by which they were to be governed. No course could 
 have tended so powerfully as one of this kind to the ultimate 
 disorganization of the body. But the sanction of Parliament 
 to the laws ecclesiastical was, both historically and consti- 
 tutionally, the assent of the laity to those laws. I speak here 
 of England rather than of Scotland, where the relations of 
 Church and Sta,te remained, from the middle of the sixteenth 
 century down even to the last years of Anne and the Act of 
 Patronages, in almost constant vicissitude, convulsion, and 
 confusion. 
 
 If, therefore, I venture to open the question, whether the lay 
 element might not, at an early date, receive with great ad- 
 vantage, under the hands of the Right Reverend College of 
 Bishops, a regular organization, I beg to point out that this is 
 a principle not only recommended by abstract argument, but 
 deeply embedded in the Reformation, according to its actual 
 and historical development in English history. I cannot here do 
 better than invoke the authority of Hooker ; more especially 
 because his theories upon these questions of polity were mani- 
 festly formed in great part from, and therefore very much 
 reflect the sense and meaning of, our history. " Were it so 
 that the clergy alone might give laws unto all the rest, foras-
 
 LAYMEN IN THE CHURCH. 19 
 
 much as every estate doth desire to enlarge the bounds of their 
 own hberties, is it not easy to see how injurious this might 
 prove to men of other conditions ? Peace and justice are 
 maintained by preserving unto every order their right, and by 
 keeping all estates as it were in an even balance." * It is 
 sufficient for my purpose to quote this authority in general 
 terms, without going back to early precedent either in the 
 Acts of the Apostles or in the ordinary law or usages of the 
 Church. The facts, however, of our own Anglo-Saxon history 
 alone amply suffice to show that the principle for which I would 
 plead is no new-fangled invention, but one well known to a 
 period to which Englishmen are justly and wisely fond of 
 carrying back the origin of their system of jurisprudence. 
 
 Nor can we put aside, as superannuated, the precedents of 
 the Reformation. Antiquated, indeed, they are in one sense, 
 namely, as to the particular form in which the principle was 
 applied. That form depended on the close alliance, coming 
 near amalgamation, of the Church and the State in England ; 
 but the vitality of the principle itself has received recent — nay, 
 is receiving almost daily — testimony. The Episcopal Church 
 in the United States has given a distinct place and vote to the 
 lay order in its Ecclesiastical Assemblies. No doubt that 
 Church is far from presenting to us anything like a perfect 
 system ; but the whole weight of testimony from the most 
 competent and dispassionate authorities, quite irrespective of 
 particular leanings of opinion, is in favour of this lay repre- 
 sentation, as being not the cause but the corrective of passion 
 and disorder, as adding greatly to what may be called the 
 ballast of the Church, while it is likewise found to be an incal- 
 culable and an indispensable source of expansive strength. 
 
 Such, then, being the case of America, the Church in our 
 own colonies has, by a simultaneous movement at opposite 
 extremities of the world, borne signal testimony to the same 
 principle and need. In Canada, the Legislative Council of a 
 Colony with nearly two millions of inhabitants, as well as a 
 Synod or Assembly of five Bishops of British North America ; 
 and in Australasia a similar Synod of six Bishops, backed, I be- 
 lieve, in both instances, by the very general assent of laity and 
 
 * Hooker, Eccl. Pol., b. -viii. : Of the Authority of making Laws. 
 
 c 2
 
 20 ON THE FUNCTIONS OF 
 
 clergy, have declared in favour of an organized Church govern- 
 ment, on the footing of voluntary contract, and with some form 
 of lay representation. The very last arrivals from the Cape of 
 Good Hope have brought a similar declaration from the inde- 
 fatigable Bishop of that Colony. 
 
 If such be our case in regard, first, to facilities and induce- 
 ments, and secondly, to historical authority and precedent ; 
 on the other hand, there are circumstances in our condition, 
 which seem evidently to point out a need for doing Avhatever 
 can be done to strengthen and improve our ecclesiastical or- 
 ganization Our laws are too weak on all sides, and our dis- 
 cipline but defective. The laity, having no regular and con- 
 stitutional means of exercising an influence on the policy of 
 the Church, even by the expression of opinion, too often hang 
 loosely in their relation to it, and sometimes are led, from 
 want of defined and legitimate privilege, to the use of means 
 essentially anarchical as well as unecclesiastical, such as the 
 local and irresponsible exercise of the power of the purse. 
 
 Although we are in the happy condition of having only to 
 build upon foundations already laid, yet the need of building, 
 I must confess, seems to me to be as urgent as it well can be. 
 Not but that, if the Rulers of this Church were content to 
 close their eyes upon the broad field opening around them, 
 and to confine themselves to meeting inevitable calls, and dis- 
 charging the duties of routine within the present narrow limits 
 of their communion, it might be in their power to pursue such 
 a course. But it is easy to predict that, claiming to occupy 
 the ancient Sees of Scotland, and to represent her sainted 
 Missionaries and her earliest Episcopate, they will feel that 
 such a claim is one of responsibility even more than of dignity : 
 and their efforts to meet that responsibility will, without doubt, 
 be bounded only by the means and opportunities, which Provi- 
 dence is manifestly and rapidly enlarging. 
 
 If, Right Reverend Sir, there be any of our members who 
 doubt whether our ecclesiastical polity have enough of in- 
 trinsic vigour to bear the strain and pressure, with more or 
 less of which all effective government is carried on, I trust 
 they will ask themselves whether their faith in the power of 
 truth, and in the soundness and impregnability of their own 
 position, is altogether what it ought to be. For my own part.
 
 LAYMEN IN THE CHURCH. 21 
 
 I feel that the multitude of extraordinary lessons which the 
 Church history of England during these last years has con- 
 veyed, ought not to remain unimproved ; and that unimproved 
 they would remain, if they should leave behind them, either 
 here or there, any of that bias which existed in many quarters 
 antecedently to them, in favour of trusting to the force of 
 inertia, to the chapter of accidents, to the assistance of the 
 civil power, to the influence of property, to anything, in short, 
 and everything, except the full, free, and fearless reliance on 
 the Divine Mission and Doctrine of the Church, and the un- 
 hesitating resolution to stake and spend all upon that issue. 
 
 Still, a strain like this is not the sedative which I for one 
 would recommend to mitigate the alarms of the timid and 
 reluctant. To them I would presume to say, as the spirit of 
 wisdom will not permit the wilful acceleration of a crisis, so, 
 when the crisis has arrived, futile efforts at procrastination can 
 only purchase a miserable momentary respite at an unbounded 
 cost, and the path of safety lies only through a tempered and 
 (calculating boldness. Let us travel back once more to the case 
 of the United States. Every danger, which could attend the 
 attempt to organize the Church on an extended basis, was far 
 more menacing there than it is here. Every safeguard, to 
 which we might look for encountering such dangers, is far 
 stronger here than it was there. Let us for a moment consider 
 the deplorable condition of the Episcopalian body in America, 
 at the time when the Union commenced its wonderful career. 
 For generations they had laboured under the disabilities of 
 legal and political establishment, while they had sensibly shared 
 in none of its advantages. Their system was at once in- 
 flexible and feeble ; and the want of Bishops was not a want 
 only, it was the absolute and total inversion of the structure of 
 their polity, and it cut them off, in no small degree, not only 
 from the guarantees of order and discipline, but from the 
 sources of spiritual vitality. Weak in numbers, they were 
 weaker in spirits ; and, though their outward extension had 
 been so much curtailed, they were a mass as loose and pro- 
 miscuous as the fullest legal establishment and the swelling- 
 titles of nationality could have made them, while within their 
 narrow limits there was found room enough for the spirit of
 
 22 ON THE FUNCTIONS OF 
 
 dissension, sure to enter where the spirit of order and the 
 tempering hand of law do not bear sway. Lastly, their politi- 
 cal opinions, running parallel to their religion, had set their 
 sympathies on the side of the Power which for years had been 
 locked in a sanguinary struggle with their country, now exult- 
 ing in the proud consciousness of youth and triumph, and still 
 warm with the recollection of her wrongs, so that to be a 
 Churchman was of itself almost to be half a traitor. Thus the 
 American Episcopalians had, besides every imaginable exter- 
 nal obstacle to surmount, every imaginable source of weakness 
 within ; except, indeed, their one great but then disused and 
 secret source of strength, in the radical soundness of their 
 cause, and the promises of Christ on its behalf. What was 
 their course ? They obtained, at length (though not without 
 much difficulty, and through the kind intervention at the outset, 
 be it remarked, of our Scottish Bishops), their own Episco- 
 pate, and they established a regular government for their 
 Church, in which all orders took their several shares. When 
 they began, it is not too much to say of the vast majority among 
 them, clergy as well as laity, they had all their own principles 
 of polity to learn for themselves, and to work out into practical 
 forms for others. If insubordination, if indifference, if igno- 
 rance, if the pride of purse, if heat of temper, if worldly 
 minds intruding into the sanctuary, if self-love and egoism in 
 all their shapes are to be apprehended here, which one among 
 all these formidable foes was not, I ask, antecedently to ex- 
 perience, far more formidable there ? If with a clergy new to 
 the work of government, with an Episcopate just struggling 
 into existence, with a ritual and creed of necessity unfixed, 
 this free and extended scheme of ecclesiastical government, by 
 a mixed synod or convention, was the means at once of checking 
 dissension and disorder, and of developing life and vigour in 
 America, have we not less ground to dread the inconveniences, 
 and more title to anticipate the benefits in Scotland, where our 
 Synodical Government by the Clergy is already organized and 
 at work, where the Episcopate, strong in historical and personal 
 as well as in spiritual claims, enjoys the unanimous veneration 
 of our communion, where the standards of our ritual and creed 
 are fixed and no question raised about them, and where we
 
 LAYMEN IN THE CHURCH. 23 
 
 have nothing in the main to desire, but better, stronger, more 
 efficient modes of practical administration and development 
 " for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, 
 for the edifying of the body of Christ ? " * 
 
 I shall now endeavour to sketch, with a light and sparing 
 hand, and without any reference, direct or indirect, to any per- 
 sonal matter or particular case, some of the practical defects to 
 be removed, or advantages to be gained (though the terms are 
 of course correlative), by the invigoration of our Church govern- 
 ment through the enlargement of its basis. And I shall, as in 
 duty bound, confine myself to matters of polity and external 
 organisation, regarding all questions as from beneath and from 
 without, and with a layman's eye. I only premise, for the 
 satisfaction not of my own conscience alone, but of the con- 
 sciences of others, that of course the true end and aim of all 
 these measures, unless they be but sounding brass and a tink- 
 ling cymbal, is the greater glory of God in the mystical Body 
 of His Son, the gathering up of the souls of men from a trou- 
 bled and an evil world, and rearing and moulding them into 
 the likeness of that Head with Whom they are vitally incorpo- 
 rated, until the day come for their translation to the place of 
 their rest and peace. 
 
 I suppose the low tone of spiritual life to be the source of 
 our prevailing evils. Yet I do not mean, that the tone of per- 
 sonal religion is peculiarly low in our own body as compared 
 with the rest of the community, but that it is sadly low as com- 
 pared with the standard of doctrine, of duty, of grace and 
 privilege, to which our Church calls us to conform and offers 
 us the means of conforming. This spring of evil betrays itself 
 in many outward shapes and tokens. And indeed I must con- 
 fess it would seem that, whether individual piety among us will 
 or will not bear comparison with the fruits of other systems, the 
 spirit of corporate religion, the appreciation of Church polity as 
 a channel and an engine of spiritual good, is, among our laity 
 at any rate, or to speak plainly, among those of the more 
 powerful and opulent classes, with exceptions but too easy to 
 count up, lower than in other religious communions around us ; 
 especially, perhaps, than in the Free Kirk of Scotland, which I 
 
 * Eph. iv. 12.
 
 24 ON THE FUNCTIONS OF 
 
 must say has gained honour far beyond the bounds of this king- 
 dom, or this isle — honour with Christendom at large, for energy 
 and the spirit of self-sacrifice. 
 
 I must note, then, among the outward and material signs of 
 this low tone of life, the mean provision generally made among 
 us for the support of our Clergy, and especially our Bishops ; 
 for the fabrics and furniture of our Churches ; • and, lastly, for 
 the instruction of the children of our poor, an object to which 
 it is only within these latest years that any systeiuatic efforts 
 have been directed. I feel a strong conviction that every one 
 of these blots would be removed, and that speedily, from our 
 escutcheon, when a more intelligent and more active spirit of 
 Church-membership should have been matured among us by 
 the serious, regular, and authorised discharge of important 
 functions appertaining to us as the laity of the Church. 
 
 But further. In a thoroughly well constituted community, 
 every man, unless it be his own fault, has a clear and vivid, and 
 a tolerably accurate general knowledge of the duties, and of 
 the rights, belonging to his position ; whether they be personal 
 only, or whether they be official also. Now this knowledge is 
 an indispensable preliminary, and a powerful help, to willing and 
 prompt compliance with the first, and to confident, orderly, and 
 temperate assertion of the last. I humbly submit it to your 
 Reverence and your Right Reverend Brethren, as the result of 
 my own observation within the Episcopal Communion of Scot- 
 land, and of the impressions I have derived from other and 
 better qualified observers, that among us law, method, and 
 constituted order do not afford the aid which they might, and 
 ought to afford to the individual, in any one of our ecclesiastical 
 ranks, towards the knowledge of his duties or of his rights. 
 Not. most certainly, among the laity, whose ill-defined position 
 is our main source of weakness and of danger, the master evil 
 which I fondly long to see mitigated or removed : not, I believe, 
 among the Presbyters, nor even among the Bishops. I do not 
 mean that there is wide-spread ignorance or gross confusion of 
 ideas among us as to the general position and functions of the 
 Holy Ministry, or as to the governing power in the Episcopate : 
 but I do mean that we know of these things on paper rather 
 than in practice ; that authority, which is fully admitted in 
 theory, yet, through disuse, becomes strange and repulsive, and
 
 LAYMEN IN THE CHUECH. 25 
 
 even prompts misgiving and resistance ; that the machinery for 
 applying our principles to executory details is very weak and 
 very imperfect ; and that it cannot be made strong or complete 
 without careful definitions of relative rights and duties, upon 
 which definitions, by means of law or canon, the clergy could 
 not in prudence, and I am quite certain would not, enter, so 
 long as they remain an isolated body in respect to their legis- 
 lative powers ; but which might very well proceed from the 
 concurrent energies of all the orders of the Church, working 
 according to regular and duly constituted form. 
 
 My complaint, then, of our present state, is by no means a 
 complaint that the Bishops or the clergy possess too much power 
 among us ; although in theory they are absolute, because by 
 their sole decisions in General Synod, over which we of the 
 laity have not the smallest recognized control or influence of 
 any description whatsoever, we are nevertheless finally and 
 unconditionally bound. But this excess of central power in the 
 clergy is inconveniently, rudely, and dangerously balanced by 
 the dead weight of indifference and phlegm, and likewise by 
 another excess of power in the laity ; that, too, not in the 
 laity as such, as communicants of the Church, but in those 
 among them, who happen to exceed in the possession of worldly 
 goods and the advantages of social position. The distribution of 
 local power, as between clergyman and vestry, is the irregular, 
 disorderly, and hazardous compensation for the absorption of 
 central power in the clergy at large, as contradistinguished 
 from the laity at large. I do not say, then, that the exclusive 
 prerogative of legislation in the clergy makes them too much 
 our masters ; far from it ; but I say this : it exalts their power 
 at the expense of their influence ; it exalts the shadow at the 
 expense of the substance ; it exalts the name at the expense of 
 the thing ; it increases what they cannot use, and takes from 
 them what they could. It is by influence, and by influence 
 only, that our clergy can be really powerful. By influence 
 individuals of a class will be powerful here and there, under 
 any system, however cross and wry : but a class cannot uniformly 
 present the qualities by which such individuals acquire weight : 
 a class, as a class, can only have influence by virtue of some- 
 thing which belongs to it as a class, by virtue of office, or by 
 virtue of discipline and good organization. Now in order that
 
 26 ON THE FUNCTIONS OP 
 
 our clergy may gain the power which it is desirable for the 
 good of the whole body that they should possess, we seem 
 to require an elasticity of system, and a freedom of play 
 among its several parts, which is in entire contrast with our 
 rather stark and rigid methods. In like manner, I do not say 
 that the power of vestries is always too great— perhaps it may 
 not in all cases and points be great enough ; but that it is a 
 bad kind of power. It is a bad kind of power, because it 
 brings the pastor and his flock into contact upon grounds far 
 lower, to say the least, than those which properly belong to the 
 holy and exalted relation between them. It is a bad kind of 
 power, because it virtually determines who shall represent and 
 speak for the flock at large by qualifications which belong to 
 the kingdoms of this world, and not to the Kingdom of God. 
 It is a bad kind of power, because it tends directly to the 
 isolation of our several churches one from another, through the 
 want of a common law, or principle, or collection of precedents, 
 or controlling authority. If difiiculty or dispute arises in the 
 vestry itself, or with the clergyman, each local body has to find, 
 I should say rather to burrow, its own way ; to construe, and 
 often to make, the law for itself. The Bishop is the centre of 
 unity, and his interference will tend to preserve it : but the 
 limits of his power to interfere are by no means invariably clear : 
 and before he is appealed to, the humours may have grown too 
 acute and angi-y to be allayed by him. When the law is at 
 hand to aid men in self-guidance, we may fairly expect them to 
 keep their heats within due bounds ; but when there is a very 
 great want of determinate rules for the settlement of questions 
 likely to be differently viewed by different members of a con- 
 gregation, or upon which the clergyman may lean one way and 
 the flock another, there is no centripetal attraction to balance 
 the centrifugal impetus ; men having no guide before their 
 eyes but their own will and inclinations, naturally follow them, 
 and, mistaking vehemence of temper in themselves for weight 
 and moment in the subject of the contention, they will rush on, 
 and no wonder amidst such circumstances, aye even to schism, 
 from which, by the existence of definite and intelligible rules, 
 applicable to the management of the question in its beginnings, 
 both they and the Church might have been saved. 
 ■ So far, then, as relates to the power of the clergy, I say
 
 LAYMEN IN THE CHURCH. 27 
 
 that for useful purposes, and as a power working through the 
 medium of intelligent consent, it will be increased by the 
 measure I presume to suggest ; and while the legitimate 
 sphere of recognized privilege, and of recognized duty along 
 with it, will be enlarged for the laity, any opportunities for the 
 abusive employment of the power of wealth over poverty will 
 be diminished by the extension and consolidation of our repre- 
 sentative system. 
 
 At the same time, the main object which presents itself 
 to my view and desire is not in any sense that of strengthening 
 one class and weakening another, in this sense or in that — not 
 the shifting of the balance of power as between one portion of 
 the body and another ; but it is to have a strong Church in- 
 stead of a weak one ; a Church with her principles developed 
 in her organization and daily life, instead of a Church in the 
 state of a chrysalis, of a Church with her principles only 
 existing potentially, and to be found chiefly in dusty folios on 
 the shelves of her libraries ; a Church governed by law and 
 established in order, instead of one dependent mainly on 
 sufferance and good feeling, which are excellent auxiliaries to 
 well-defined and well-sustained authority, and no doubt the 
 best substitutes for it where it is not to be had, but which no 
 more afford an argument for declining to avail ourselves of its 
 advantages, than my happening to have an umbrella in a 
 storm of rain is a reason for determining to live day and night 
 under it. 
 
 Distinct, however, from the question how is power distri- 
 buted among the different classes in a body ? is the inquiry, 
 what is the power of the body as a whole over its members 
 individually or in classes ? 
 
 The exercise of discipline, as all are aware, was a note of 
 the Apostolic Church in its infancy ; and it seems hardly too 
 much to say that, without such exercise, it would not have 
 been Apostolic. The neglect and perversion of it were among 
 the very chiefest causes of the Reformation, and an anxiety for 
 its restoration was one of the most prominent, and also one of the 
 most honourable, characteristics of that immense and not yet 
 concluded movement. In Scotland it has never been absent 
 from either the Episcopal or the Presbyterian communions ; and 
 the shameful state of it in the Church of England is both a grief
 
 28 ON THE FUNCTIONS OF 
 
 and scandal to its zealous members, and a cause of })ainful 
 astonishment to foreigners interested in its welfare ; while it is 
 indignantly alleged by pious Dissenters as a main, in many 
 cases as the sole, cause for their separation. 
 
 The exercise of discipline may be considered as either over 
 Bishops, over Presbyters and Deacons, or over laymen. The 
 instruments may differ according as the person to be subjected 
 to discipline belongs to one or another of these classes ; but its 
 administration must always be under the authority of the 
 body. Now I venture to observe, that while a real and effective 
 discipline is essential to the sanctity and spiritual glory of the 
 Church, and while she would utterly betray her office as the 
 Witness of the Gospel if she failed (when the facts are clear) 
 to draw in practice those lines of severance between truth and 
 falsehood, between right and wrong, which she incessantly 
 professes to proclaim upon the authority of Christ, yet the 
 delicacy of this function is no less clear than its importance, 
 and the dangers of miscarriage are only less formidable than 
 those arising from systematic disregard of the duty. Two 
 things, then, appear to me essential to a good administration 
 of Church discipline. The first is, that the laws themselves 
 should be strongly based upon general consent ; the secojid is, 
 that the mode of their administration should be hedged in with 
 the best securities against abuse : such as strict regularity, 
 and, on every due occasion, publicity of procedure ; weight in 
 the tribunal adequate to the office it has to perform ; adequate 
 assistance from persons conversant with judicial principles and 
 processes ; ready recourse against tyranny ; and suitable pro- 
 visions for discouraging frivolous, vexatious, and impertinent 
 charges. 
 
 For all this, a full and a free Synodical Government is surely 
 requisite in a Church like ours. Not that I would contemplate 
 any visionary aims. My idea of discipline is simply this : first, 
 vigorous enforcement of the whole system of their public duties 
 upon the officers of the Church, clerical and lay ; and due pro- 
 vision, secondly, against the profanation of her ordinances by 
 any persons, clerical or lay, whose overt and flagrant acts should 
 ])rove them to be unworthy. But even for these moderate ends 
 a strong arm is re(|uired ; a stronger arm than authority is now 
 in a condition to wield among us. That strength, unless 1 am
 
 LAYMEN TN THE CHUECH. 29 
 
 grossly deceived, can from no possible source be obtained for 
 our system, except from general and solemn consent, embodied 
 in the form of law. 
 
 Furthermore, let us consider our present state, not with 
 reference to the imperfect securities it affords against abuse 
 of power, but with reference to the inadequate support it 
 secures for a bishop when engaged in its legitimate exercise. 
 In his dealings with a contumacious clergyman, he must pro- 
 ceed as he best can. He must construe the Church law for 
 himself, in the face of an antagonist on the alert to detect his 
 accidental slips, and perhaps supported by a knot of persons 
 vigilantly hostile to his authority. Having no prescribed forms 
 to follow, whatever course he takes may be imputed at every 
 step to his arbitrary disposition, and each item of his procedure 
 enveloped in a separate cloud of debate, of suspicion, and of 
 passion. Now, a Bishop cannot ex officio have the legal mind. 
 It is not desirable that he always should. The aid of his 
 Synod cannot be certainly relied on to supply the deficiency. 
 But as the intervention of the legal mind is, in the long run, 
 absolutely essential to distributive justice, we ought to have 
 provisions for securing to our Bishops such aid of this kind as 
 might according to circumstances be requisite. The law should 
 likewise assist them by defining more carefully and largely 
 their course of procedure, and thus at once strengthen their 
 hands, lighten their responsibility, diminish the temptation they 
 must now often feel to flinch from their duty on account of those 
 difficulties and uncertainties attending its performance, which 
 they are called upon to encounter virtually single-handed, and 
 insure to them more uniformly, and in more active and lively 
 forms, that sympathising support from the members of their 
 communion generally, which the public and authoritative acts 
 of our Spiritual Fathers ought obviously to receive. 
 
 And it should be observed that in this point the need of the 
 Episcopal Communion in Scotland is really much more urgent 
 than that of the English Church, so fiir as regards ordinary 
 judicial purposes ; because the Church of England lias a code 
 of ecclesiastical law partly general, partly proper to herself, 
 together with a body of lawyers competently instructed, and 
 courts which are conducted according to recognized judicial 
 principles. Whatever be the defects of these laws or courts —
 
 30 ON THE FUNCTIONS OF 
 
 whatever dangers to the very life of the Church the present 
 unprecedented and base-born, but really fortuitous, provision 
 for appeals may entail, yet as to ordinary causes in their 
 ordinary course through the diocesan and provincial courts, 
 the judicial system in England is, on the one hand, a secu- 
 rity to the public and to individuals that the main principles of 
 justice shall not be contravened, and on the other it affords 
 a living and very effective assistance to the authority of the 
 Bishop. It has this further advantage, that it tends to divest 
 a Bishop's efforts for maintaining discipline of the character 
 of personal contention, which they are otherwise so likely to 
 assume. 
 
 In these points, the Scottish Episcopal Communion offers 
 nothing but a blank. In judicial matters the authority of the 
 Bishop stands almost naked and unattended — neither protected 
 against assault, nor limited and hedged in by publicity and 
 adequate forms ; and such an authority, wisely and mildly as 
 we know that it is exercised, cannot secure, as of course, that 
 easy, familiar, and settled confidence, which it is to be desired 
 it should enjoy. 
 
 The settlement of contested questions between man and man, 
 or between private persons and public authority, in which all 
 the forces of individual interest and passion are aroused and 
 enlisted to defeat or baffle justice, is a great difficulty even with 
 the civil power, which has coercive sanctions at its disposal. 
 Much more, then, for a religious society : and where such a 
 society is organized like ours, with a liberal regard to the prin- 
 ciples of human freedom, I believe but two alternatives are 
 offered ; one of them, a strong judicial system, calling to its aid 
 the general opinion and sense of the body ; the other a weak one, 
 divested of that aid, dealing with some few questions fearfully, 
 and with many not at all. \Vhen we turn to our Book of 
 Canons, well and wisely as it has been drawn with reference to 
 the circumstances of a Churcli just raising her head from a 
 crushing proscription, and still yarva metu primo ; and when 
 we find our whole judicial system comprised in two canons only, 
 occupying as many pages ; when we read those canons, and 
 observe what, and for what cases, they provide, and begin to 
 consider with ourselves even a small fraction of that for which 
 they make no provision whatever, — we seem to see that they
 
 LAYMEN IX THE CHURCH. 31 
 
 were meant for a state of things which has fairly been out- 
 grown, and we are reminded that the simple legislation of the 
 nursery must be enlarged and invigorated when manhood is 
 coming into view, 
 
 I shall now touch lightly on that much vexed question of 
 ritual, which has, as I believe, on account of the immediate 
 and palpable appeal it makes in all its forms to the general 
 mind, and yet more to the general eye, afforded the chief 
 material for the present lamentable heats and controversies in 
 England ; and which, although it has not had here the same 
 formidable operation, yet does not stand altogether well among 
 us, inasmuch as we too want due and adequate means for 
 determining how the numerous points of detail belonging to 
 Divine service — in which one congregation may lawfully and 
 innocently differ from another — are to be settled as they arise 
 in each case. 
 
 I shall venture two remarks upon ritual changes generally, 
 in which I am bold enough to anticipate extensive agreement. 
 The first is, that as ceremonial is but the dress of devotion, it 
 ought to follow upon rather than to precede spiritual growth, 
 of which it must be the consequence before it can become the 
 cause ; and, except as to the removal of palpable indecency and 
 scandal, it should be left for its increase to such spontaneous 
 demand as may arise out of our gradual return to that temper 
 of elevated and concentrated devotion, which has unhappily 
 become rare among us. The second is, that many of the points, 
 which have given rise to dissension, are in themselves really but 
 secondary, and have derived their importance from preposses- 
 sions conventionally rather than essentially connected with 
 them. Now both of these remarks point to one and the same 
 conclusion ; namely, that diversities and changes of ritual, so 
 far as they are properly open questions at all, are a matter to 
 which the people ought to have something to say. If cere- 
 monial be in general not so much a means of awakening as an 
 instrument of edification for those already awakened, then the 
 expediency of ritual restorations must, it is evident, vary greatly 
 with the religious temper of each congregation. If, again, its 
 details are as it were prejudged by prepossessions for or against 
 them, then manifestly there is a tender and irritable state of mind 
 to deal with, which will become hopeless under anything like an
 
 32 ON THE FUNCTIONS OP 
 
 exasperating treatment. The way to conquer men's prejudices 
 is to appeal freely to their good sense, and allow some reason- 
 able scope to their freewill and choice. Such appeal involves, 
 or at the very least harmonises with, the idea of giving them a 
 share of discretion in determining the points at issue. Nothing 
 can he more painful or disgraceful than to see questions of 
 divine service settled, as they were some years ago settled in 
 Exeter, by riot and uproar. Such modes of proceeding are 
 fitter for Turkey than for England. But we probably never 
 should have witnessed them, had it not been for the anarchical 
 state into which congregational organization has there been 
 allowed to lapse. Besides the things in themselves, nay, besides 
 the prejudices attaching to them, there was, I believe, at the root 
 of all, a sentiment in the people that they were over-ridden, 
 which generated, as it were in self-defence, a strong and un- 
 manageable reaction. Had there been in those cases a regu- 
 larly constituted congregation, or to borrow a phrase from our 
 Presbyterian friends, a roll of communicants, and had these 
 had the means of making known their sentiments, and of acting 
 by their duly chosen officers, the clergy would have derived 
 from them the most valuable aid at the outset, instead of being 
 left to work out their way as it were blindfold ; a general har- 
 mony would have been secured between the forms of divine 
 service and the tone of feeling in the congregations, to which, 
 as we have seen, they ought to bear a close regard ; and autho- 
 rity, too weak already, would have been spared some heavy 
 blows. 
 
 It would be transgressing my proper sphere were I, in touch- 
 ing on this question, to point out particulars which might 
 advantageously be left to vary with the will of each pastor and 
 congregation, or in which usage of a certain duration should be 
 held to give a title as against written laws until the pastor and 
 the congregation jointly were prepared and desirous to reform 
 it. I assume of course all along, that the leading principles and 
 usages of the ritual will remain fixed, as at present, by canon ; 
 and that the Episcopal authority will still hold its place above 
 merely local discretion. My suggestion is, that over and above 
 all this the clergy may most advantageously take counsel with 
 their people, as members of a Christian Church, according to 
 the principles of a sound ecclesiastical constitution, on matters
 
 LAYMEN IN THE CHURCH. 33 
 
 like these ; and that such counsel, and its results, will be found 
 an admirable specific for the practical solution of the question, 
 when it arises, between custom and written law, or between 
 allowable varieties of taste and predilection, subject always to 
 the general principle of uniformity within the limits determined 
 by our Church law. 
 
 Thankful for that wholesome stir of life and progress which 
 marks the present condition of our communion, and anxious 
 for the regular development of measures by which, under God, 
 it may from a weak Church become a strong one, and deepen 
 its foundation as it extends its borders ; I have now, Right 
 Reverend Father, submitted in a general form some of the 
 considerations which have led me to the belief that, if it be the 
 Divine Will that your Reverence should as our Primus inau- 
 gurate among us a representative system, and if, with the other 
 Right Reverend Fathers of our Church, you call upon your 
 lay flocks to communicate and advise freely with you, and 
 to strengthen your hands for the work of the ministry, then 
 your name and the names of your brethren will be remembered 
 among us in connection with a noble epoch of restoration and 
 revival, a great ingathering and edification of Christian souls. 
 
 But I have a few words yet to say upon two points. First, 
 how are we to prevent liberty from deviating into licence ? 
 Do I propose to place the government of the Church on such 
 a footing, that the main seat of power shall really be in its 
 popular branch ? If lay privileges and powers have fallen into 
 desuetude, must it not be dangerous to place weapons so keen 
 and trenchant in the hands of raw recruits ? 
 
 And, secondly, is this the time for the Scottish Episcopal 
 Communion to stand forth as the pr<Brogativa tribus of what 
 may be called the Anglican Churches, to act for herself, and 
 by acting teach others how to act ; or should she modestly 
 wait upon their steps, and follow in their line ? 
 
 As to the first, it will be remembered that we live in a sea- 
 son of peril, when the rose of safety can only be plucked from 
 amid the thorns of danger. We need not go far to perceive 
 by example the sad consequences of a cowardly and narrow- 
 minded policy, which takes this for its maxim, to give as little 
 as possible, and has this for its reward, that for what it gives 
 (and in time it is forced to give all) it gets neither thanks nor
 
 34 ON THE FUNCTIONS OF 
 
 compensation in return ; a policy which when pursued by the 
 strong is ungenerous, when aped by the weak is mad. But 
 while I presume to hold this language, I admit freely that it is 
 only capable of a general application, and that, if it were to 
 supei-sede care and caution in detail, we should only have 
 cured one set of mischiefs with another. I am far indeed, 
 then, from proposing that the Church should be democratically 
 organised. Nay, in my view it cannot be so organised ; for 
 whatever man may choose to ordain or adjust about chambers 
 and branches and the like, must of necessity be for ever and 
 wholly subordinate to the unchangeable conditions of her 
 Divine Charter. 
 
 I will therefore. Right Reverend Bishop, state in few and 
 simple words what I humbly believe would be found at once a 
 free, a vigorous, and a safe form of constitutional organ for the 
 Scottish Episcopal Communion. 
 
 First. That the Synod or Assembly for Legislation should 
 consist of three houses or chambers — the first that of the 
 bishops, the second that of their clergy, the third that of the 
 laity. It might deserve consideration, whether the second and 
 third of these, of course voting separately, should, either per- 
 manently or for a time, sit and deliberate together on certain 
 or on all occasions. 
 
 Secondly. That the lay representative system should be 
 based exclusively upon an ecclesiastical qualification, and not 
 upon a pecuniary franchise in any form : in other words, that 
 communicants only should be either eligible or electors. But, 
 I may add, it might be found necessary first to limit this privi- 
 lege somewhat further, (1) by age, and (2) by requiring per- 
 sons to have been communicants for a certain space of time 
 antecedent to its exercise, in order to exclude all electioneering 
 practices from the precincts of the Church. And further, a 
 different rule might still be required for the settlement of 
 questions of temporal or proprietary right in particular congre- 
 gations, and for the protection of all vested interests. 
 
 Thirdly. That the mode of procedure should not be to con- 
 stitute arbitrarily, so to speak, a central organization before 
 providing local institutions fitted to give it a broad and solid 
 groundwork, but to take the local institutions first. That is to 
 say, to begin by inviting the clergy of the various incumbencies,
 
 LAYMEN IN THE CHURCH. 35 
 
 in conjunction with the principal members of their congrega- 
 tions, to fi'ame, where such a thing does not exist already, 
 lists of such persons of given age as have been communicants 
 for a certain time ; to make provisional arrangements for the 
 preservation and due correction of such lists ; and to move 
 those on each list to choose from among themselves delegates 
 for a Diocesan Synod should the ordinary think fit to hold one, 
 and should it be deemed wise to obtain the sense of the Dio- 
 cesan Synods thus constituted as consultative assemblies only, on 
 the intended measure, before its taking effect. Or otherwise, 
 to give their suffrages directly, in common with the commu- 
 nicants of every other congregation thinking fit to act on the 
 said invitation, for duly qualified persons to represent them in 
 any General Synod of the Church. 
 
 The body issuing, or giving power to issue, the invitation, 
 and thus setting the new machinery in motion, must, I presume, 
 be the General Synod according to its present constitution ; 
 which, if summoned by the wisdom of your Reverences the 
 Bishojis for such a purpose, it might probably be thought fit to 
 summon for that purpose (with its cognate particulars and exe- 
 cutory provisions) alone. 
 
 Thus, then, the mechanism proposed would be self-acting. 
 Congregations desirous of such franchises, and prepared for the 
 discharge of the duties they entail, would act upon the invita- 
 tion. Congregations not prepared for these things, if any such 
 there were, would not be damnified, since they would be no 
 more subject to the General Synod as newly organized, than 
 they now are to the General Synods composed of clerical 
 members only. 
 
 Fourthly and lastly. As the governing power over the Church 
 resides most properly and strictly in the Bishops, and as they are 
 supremely responsible in particular for the decision of doctrine, I 
 cannot but express the strongest conviction, that the initiative Oi 
 all legislation should rest with them absolutely and exclusively ; 
 and that it should be competent to either of the other chambers 
 to approach them spontaneously in the way of petition only. 
 Their veto would, of course, remain complete ; and between 
 these two powers duly carried through the whole scheme, I 
 hope adequate provision would have been made for preventing 
 
 d2
 
 36 ON THE FUNCTIONS OF 
 
 any collision between such a constitution and the great and im- 
 movable principles of our ecclesiastical polity. 
 
 To these provisions on behalf of order and authority, I 
 may append a remark touching an apprehension that proceeds 
 from an opposite quarter. It is feared by some that the laity 
 would not act, so that their synodical functions would remain a 
 dead letter. 
 
 I do not doubt, that our Right Reverend Fathers must reckon 
 upon finding a certain amount of apathy in a mixed body, which 
 has been long unaccustomed to public duties. Still, I venture 
 to think, this would not be so widely spread, as not to leave 
 accessible and available a great mass of zealous and intelligent 
 co-operation. This complaint of inertness on the part of the 
 laity when the burden and heat of duty has to be borne, is 
 made, and justly made, in England ; yet cannot it be said that 
 any important plan has fallen to the ground through such inert- 
 ness. Some evade their duties, but some also perform them : 
 and even though attendance might, not certainly but possibly, 
 at first be slack, yet this evil would diminish with the lapse of 
 time, as the representative system should take root among us, 
 and enter, gradually and gently, into our ecclesiastical habits 
 and ideas. In America, where the demand and pressure of 
 material pursuits is even more absorbing than with us, it is not 
 found to prevent the laity of the Church from taking an active 
 part in its general concerns. 
 
 And now, finally, should the Scottish Episcopal Communion, 
 in the persons of its Bishops, proceed to deliberate forthwith on 
 this weighty subject, or should they wait to be led by other 
 Churches of the Anglican origin or communion ? Where, by 
 other Churches, we must mean those of the colonies ; for the 
 Church in the United States has led the way already ; and the 
 Church of England, as well as that of Ireland, can only move 
 slowly in a matter which, for them, is beset with real as well as 
 with factitious difficulties But the colonial Churches of British 
 North America, and of the Australasian colonies, have already 
 so far got in advance of the Scots Episcopal Communion, that 
 they have largely declared, in their several orders, their anxiety 
 for a regular ecclesiastical constitution, including the lay 
 element.
 
 LAYMEN IN THE CHURCH. ' 37 
 
 Yet, Right Reverend Sir, after a long and anxious observa- 
 tion of the condition of these Churches, I venture unhesitatingly 
 to assert, that it is not for you to be their debtors or followers 
 in such a matter, but for them to be yours ; and that, had they 
 possessed anything like the facilities and means of action that 
 happily belong to you, they would not now have been expressing 
 their desires, but exhibiting finished results. 
 
 The vantage ground, as I understand it, which your Rever- 
 ences possess, and which is wanting to the colonial Churches, is 
 twofold. First, an entire freedom from the fetters and entangle- 
 ments of the law : secondly, a defined ecclesiastical " platform," 
 and a legislative power in actual existence, with a clear, unques- 
 tioned title. 
 
 But how different is the condition of the Churches in the 
 colonies ! It is scarcely too much to say that, while for the 
 purposes of internal subordination they are without law or 
 legal sanctions of any kind, they are subject, without mitiga- 
 tion, to the worst of its inconveniences. On every side they 
 are involved in the meshes of the net of legal doubt. There 
 is a doubt whether, if their members meet in Synod, they are 
 subject to penalty ; a doubt whether they can pass any Canon ; 
 a doubt whether they can set up even phantom officers in eccle- 
 siastical courts ; a doubt whether they can come to any binding 
 voluntary agreement whatever among themselves. Of one 
 thing only there is no doubt, that they are practically without 
 the means, either of protecting innocence against oppression, 
 or of punishing wrong, or of fulfilling for themselves any of the 
 purposes of Church government. Nor, as I believe, can they, 
 without an Act of the Imperial Parliament, be relieved from 
 these very cruel disabilities, or attain to that footing of equality 
 with the Presbyterian and Dissenting denominations in the 
 colonies, to which they fondly and ardently aspire. 
 
 None of these most formidable impediments to organic 
 measures exist for the Scottish Episcopal Communion. 
 
 But suppose the colonial Churches emancipated, how are 
 they to proceed to act ? They have no existing framework of a 
 legislative organ ; they have not even the pattern of an English 
 Convocation to work by ; for they have no deans, no chapters, 
 in some dioceses no archdeacons, in many no parishes. They
 
 38 ON THE FUNCTIONS OP 
 
 have under God two constitutive elements only, the Apostolical 
 power in the Episcopate, and their own good principle and 
 good sense. That, by virtue of the great gifts of the covenant 
 of Christ, they will work their w^ay to an adequate organization, 
 what they have already done, in a state almost chaotic, affords 
 us ample assurance. Yet at the same time we must admit 
 that they will have to begin by digging the foundations, and 
 then laying, with elaborate care, every stone of the building. 
 For the Scottish Episcopal Communion, again, I say, these 
 difficulties do not exist. We have foundations already, and 
 building too. It rests, beyond all question, with your Reve- 
 rences of the Episcopal College to devise a plan in your 
 wisdom, to bring it before a general clerical Synod by your pre- 
 rogative, and, with the assent of that Synod, to tender it as a 
 graceful and spontaneous boon to the laity of your communion. 
 It is plain that we who now live must not look for days of 
 ease and calm, even of such ease and calm as have at certain 
 periods been permitted to the Church, being, as she must ever 
 be, a wayfarer and a pilgrim upon earth. We must never 
 think to say — 
 
 *' Suave micant fluctus, ac detiimuere procellaB." 
 
 But while making this confession, I, for one, am fondly 
 perhaps, but yet firmly, assured, that, on the day when our 
 Bishops shall be bold to show their confidence in their own 
 position, and in the vital energies of their Church, by pro- 
 pounding a measure which must tend, first searchingly to test, 
 and then powerfully to invigorate and multiply those vital 
 energies, they will strengthen many a weak hand, confirm many 
 a feeble knee, chase away the gloom from many a desponding 
 heart, breathe the new life of hope into spirits that have flagged 
 under accumulating misfortune, stir up many a voice of joy 
 and health and thankfulness to God from the dwellings of the 
 righteous, and quicken the footsteps of them that tread, or 
 that ask, the way to Zion, with their faces thitherward. 
 
 In thus submitting to your Reverence my thoughts upon a 
 deeply interesting and momentous question, I do not for an 
 instant presume that I shall convey to your Reverence, or your 
 Right Reverend Brethren, any view of this subject either new
 
 LAYMEN IN THE CHURCH. 39 
 
 or serviceable to such a body ; but I have written with the desire 
 and hope, that I might be made the instrument of stirring up 
 the minds of others, my brethren in the Church, to a careful 
 and practical consideration of the actual position of our Com- 
 munion ; of its dangers, its duties, the genial promise which it 
 gives, and the means required to enable it duly to fill its rapidly 
 expanding sphere. 
 
 I remain. Right Reverend Father, 
 
 With cordial and dutiful respect. 
 
 Your obedient and faithful servant, 
 
 W. E. GLADSTONE. 
 
 Fasque, KincardinesMre, Dec. 1851. 
 
 LONDON : PRINTED BT W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET.
 
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