crustation: it is water-logged and overburdened now, and its sails are patched and outworn. I do not ask you to use steam or any new-fangled mode of propulsion. By all means keep your attachment to the past, but study reality and sincerity; strive to say what you really mean, and to say it in such way that others may know that you mean it, and may feel that they mean it too. The American Church has modified some of the features characteristic of the Anglican Liturgy; and its authorised Prayer Book contains interesting minor variations; all of which are devised in the interests of elasticity and freedom, yet subject to a commendable spirit of conservatism.

I trust that it is not an inseparable concomitant of a State religion that petitions should be tied and bound in rigid forms, that no audible prayer can be uttered except what is printed and authorised; it is pitiful when the only initiation permitted, even at times of stress, lies in the emphasis which may be thrown upon certain words, and the pauses that may be made after them. But at least the sermon is free. So let preachers realise their opportunities and make use of them, and let them no longer throw away their chance of moving the hearts of men towards a higher and more useful and unselfish life, by over-attention to the conventional arrangement called the Church's Year. The annual commemoration of everything is often made an excuse for laziness: it saves the trouble of choosing a subject. It provides a hackneyed theme ready to hand, to be treated in a conventional

and hackneyed manner. Silently and patiently the people sit there, and are not fed.

Religion is one thing; Church services as often conducted are quite another thing. Modification will be resented and opposed by some singularly minded lay Churchmen; nevertheless, if more eminent ability is to be attracted to the service of the Church, if the great body of the laity are to be reached in any serious and effective manner, modifications, excisions, and reforms are necessary. It is not religion to which people are indifferent.

CHAPTER V

UNION AND BREADTH

A PLEA FOR ESSENTIAL UNITY AMID FORMAL DIFFERENCE IN A NATIONAL CHURCH

"The true tragedy is a conflict of right with right, not of right with wrong."-HEGEL.

I

SOON became aware that my little book called The Substance of Faith could hardly be regarded as an eirenicon in respect of the present English Education controversy, though I began it somewhat with that hope, and still think that it should be of some assistance in that direction; for it is apparent that the dispute between Church and Dissent is not only of long standing historically, but is intrinsically deepseated. It would be worth a considerable effort if the inflammation due to that chronic sore could be reduced; but the cure should be attempted, not by blinking or denying the reality of the differences, but rather by facing them resolutely and understanding their nature and origin before seeking to prescribe a remedy.

The dispute which is most alive to-day between State Church and Free Churches is not exactly religious: it seems to be rather ethnological or anthropological. That is to say, it may be held to represent a difference inherent in the varied nature of humanity,

and to correspond to the divergent views taken of religion by two different types of mind. If there is any truth in this statement, it ought surely to be possible to recognise the fact, and to adjust our arrangements to it, as to any other of the facts of nature.

It must have been frequently pointed out before -but sometimes statements bear and need repetition -that there are two chief religious types: one type valuing ceremony and artistic accessories and human organisation and intervention; while the other, thinking itself competent to dispense with what it may consider adventitious aids, seeks to worship, neither in temple nor even in mountain, but directly in spirit and in truth. This one thinks that the Holy Spirit is equally accessible to every individual. That one conceives that a Special Power is miraculously transmitted by ceremonial means, namely, by the imposition of hands.

Those who take this which may be called the Apostolic view, necessarily exalt the Church, which to them is God's vicegerent upon earth; for its priests possess a power denied not only to laymen but to ministers of all other denominations, who in this essential respect are and must be regarded as laymen. It is true that the branches of the Catholic and Apostolic Church do not agree among themselves entirely as to the authentic channels of this mysterious influence. To the Roman, the Anglican Catholic is a layman, even though he be a prelate.1 To the Anglican, the

1 The question of the recognition or non-recognition of Anglican Or

President of the Wesleyan Conference, or the Moderator of the Presbyterian Synod, may be in friendship a brother, and in good works a helper, but he has no claim to recognition as a priest: nor, indeed, does he prefer such a claim, because he does not belong to the type which appreciates the idea of Divine influence ceremonially conveyed from one human being to another.

But the distinction of type is not confined to the clergy: it runs through the laity likewise. Those who believe in the special and exclusive character of ecclesiastical priesthood are bound to venerate the Officers invested with those powers, and to submit to their teaching and influence, irrespective of their personality; for they can not only help and strengthen you by administration of the Sacraments: they actually have the power of forgiving your sins,-or, still more remarkable, of preventing the forgiveness of your sins, if they be so minded.

Baptismal regeneration is only one of the things which can be effected through their agency, but that too is a power of great magnitude, and if your child is to be eternally lost without their aid their aid must be sought; for in this ceremony he is made, according to the Catechism-not recognised only and admitted into the Church as such, but actually made-a child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of Heaven.1 ders is sometimes said to have been decided like a move in a game or in party politics—after private discussion as to which course was best calculated to benefit one side and to damage the other. The subject appears to be eminently fitted for such treatment.

1 The preposition "in" is used in the Catechism, but "by" occurs in