the other. Self-government is but one way of spelling Disestablishment.

But, without insisting too strongly on this view, I may be allowed to point out that the whole current of feeling and ecclesiastical legislation for the last 200 years has flowed steadily in the direction of Disestablishment. For it should be recollected that every Act which deprives the Church of any single item of the privileges with which the State has endowed her is, so far as it goes, a Disestablishing measure. In fact, the Toleration Act of 1689, when viewed in the light of history, can only be described as the morning star heralding the sure approach sooner or later of the dawn of the Disestablishment. That Act was not only a concession to the sturdy consciences of those who claimed the liberty to worship God as their consciences dictated; it was a formal confession on the part of the State that it did not possess the power to order the worship of any man.

As has been recently said, English people are slow to see the logical results of their actions. And it has taken 200 years to push home the truth which lay at the core of the Toleration Act, that the State cannot order either the worship or the beliefs of religious people. It is quite true that the relief granted to His Majesty's Protestant subjects in 1689 was, as Dr. Sacheverell contended, an Act of Indulgence rather than Toleration. It excepted, however, Papists and Anti-Trinitarians from its scope, and imposed an oath and a declaration on all who might take advantage of its benefits. It was to all intents and purposes an inchoate repeal of the coercive Acts of Elizabeth and Charles the Second, and did for the Act of Uniformity of 1662 what 9 and 10 Vict. c. 59 did in 1846 for 5 and 6 Ed. VI., c. 1. The single result of the passing of this Act and subsequent ones of the same tenor is that while Dissenters are relieved from the pains and penalties previously imposed on those who abstained from attendance at their parish church, Churchmen may still be fined for non-attendance under the Act of 1559.

A further measure of indulgence to Dissenters was passed in 1778 (19 Geo. III. c. 44), by which the Dissenting preachers and teachers were relieved from the obligation to subscribe to the Thirtynine Articles, on condition of subscribing a declaration that they were Christians and Protestants and believers in the Scriptures.

Twelve years later, by 31 Geo. III. c. 32, the Papists were set free from all persecutions for being Papists, or reputed Papists, provided that they took the prescribed oath; and what restrictions remained were gradually removed by successive Acts, the best known of which is that which crowned the whole edifice of indulgences so far as they were concerned, passed in 1829. (Vide 18 Geo. III. c. 60; 31 Geo. III. c. 32; 43 Geo. III. c. 30; 10 Geo. IV. c. 7; 1 Wm. IV. c. 26; 2 & 3 Wm. IV. c. 115.)

The exception made in the Toleration Act of 1689 to the detriment of Anti-Trinitarians was removed in 1813 by 53 Geo. III. c. 160.

It is not necessary to do more than refer to the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts in 1828, by which the holders of offices of trust or emolument under the Crown, or in connection with a municipal corporation, were relieved from the odious obligation of communicating at their parish church as a pre-condition of holding office. It is interesting, however, to note that Lord Eldon bitterly opposed the passing of this Act, on the express ground that it was a sure forerunner of the total overthrow of the Church.

Although it is true that all these Acts, so far as Parliament was concerned, were passed for political rather than ecclesiastical reasons; although, to quote the words of Mr. Justice Best in Rex v. Waddington (1 B. & C., 26), Legislation in passing that Act (1 Wm. & Mary c. 18) only thought of easing the consciences of Dissenters, and not of allowing them to attempt to weaken the faith of the members of the Church; 9 & 10 Wm. III. was to give security to the Government by rendering men incapable of office who entertained views hostile to the Established religion;' yet the invariable result of granting such indulgences was pari passu to deprive the Church of that monopoly of privileges which the Establishment had endowed her with. How far the ship of the Church has moved away from the continent of Uniformity may be seen in the words of another learned judge, Sir William Scott, which were meant to express the effect of the whole series of these special statutes of relief and Annual Indemnity Acts:

As the law [he said] now is, everyone goes to his particular church with a certainty of not feeling any of his solemn opinions offended. If any person dissents, a remedy is provided by the mild and wise spirit of toleration which has prevailed in modern times, and which allows that he should join himself to persons of persuasions similar to his own. [H.M. Procurator-General v. Stone, 1 Consist. 428.]

We may next take another set of Acts, which have acted in precisely the same direction. The late Lord Selborne placed the essence of Establishment in the clothing of the Church with jurisdiction by the State. This view is true, but inadequate. In so far as it is true we may say again that a whole set of Disestablishing measures have been passed one after the other. For instance, the jurisdiction of the Ecclesiastical Courts of England and Wales in suits for defamation was abolished by a short Act in 1855 (18 & 19 Vict. c. 41). Starting with the Metropolis Local Management Act of 1855, down to the Local Government Act of 1894, and the London Government Act of this present year, we may say that the Church's jurisdiction in, and connection with, municipal life has been gradually diminished, so that little still remains to be done in this department when Church and State may finally sever their partnership, or when an

Act shall be passed to put our present vestries, with their diminished powers, on their proper footing of assemblies of Churchmen only, for Church purposes alone.

In 1857, by 20 & 21 Vict. c. 75, Her Majesty's Court of Probate was substituted for the Ecclesiastical Courts in all matters relating to the grant and revocation of probates of wills and letters of administration.'

Again, in the department of marriages a tremendous inroad was made on the Church's jurisdiction in 1836, when by 6 & 7 Wm. IV. c. 85 marriages other than those solemnised in Churches of the Establishment were made legal by the setting up of the recognition of the jurisdiction of the Civil Registrar. The change begun then was carried still further when in 1857, by 20 & 21 Vict. c. 83, the Church Courts were abolished in all matters relating to divorce and matrimonial causes, and a Civil Court established in their place. The recent Act by which Dissenting Ministers are, like Clerks in Holy Orders, allowed to dispense with the presence of a Civil Registrar, is the last step in the same direction.

A still further inroad was made on the privileges of the Ecclesiastical Courts by the Brawling Act of 1860, which, with certain exceptions, deprived them of jurisdiction over persons not in Holy Orders in suits for brawling.

If we turn to the law of burial, we find the same tendency at work. Up to 1852 the Church may be truly said to have enjoyed a monopoly of ministrations at burials. In that year, 15 & 16 Vict. c. 85 showed what was to come. The relief given to Dissenters then was carried still further by the Burials Act of 1857, by Marten's Act of 1879, and Osborne Morgan's Act of 1880. These, with others, have combined to deprive the Church of many of the privileges which she once prized so highly, and have left the whole system of our burial laws in such admired confusion that a Select Committee of the House of Commons was appointed in 1897 to inquire into them, with the result that in all probability further legislation will be introduced at the first opportunity. It will have for its object the conferring of still greater relief on those who object to consecration with what it now entails.

I need not do more than allude to the passing of the Church Rates Act in 1868 (31 & 32 Vict. c. 109), which rendered a compulsory Church rate illegal.1

The following passage from the Church Review for February, 1861, p. 25, is instructive:

It is said that were the [Church] rates abolished, the sanctuaries of England would not be left to decay, nor the Word and Sacrament cease to be dispensed at their altars. We dispute not this, for we have all faith in the zeal and liberality of Church people. But surely, if by an Act of Legislature the support of the fabrics and services be repudiated as a national obligation, that Act will virtually be an avowal that the nation no longer cares for either, and that, as a nation, it is ready to

But this Disestablishing tendency may be seen perhaps most clearly in the different Education Acts passed in the present reign. Formerly all schoolmasters, like doctors and midwives, required a licence from the ecclesiastical authority, and, indeed, it seems that the right of the Bishop of London, or the Dean of St. Paul's, to licence doctors remains formally unrepealed to-day. So late as 1869 all grammar schools were under the Ordinary, and their masters required his licence. The Endowed Schools Act of that year (32 & 33 Vict. c. 56) took that power away. The spirit at work then was seen again in the Education Act of 1870, in the University Tests Act of 1871, and in the Welsh Intermediate Education Act of 1889.

It only needed the example of the Act for the Disestablishing of the Irish Church, and of the Bill for the Disestablishing of the Church in Wales five years ago, to open people's eyes to the fact that for 200 years the State had been legislating in one direction only so far as the Church was concerned, and that was in the direction of depriving her piecemeal of the privileges with which she had been invested in Uniformity days. Here and there an effort may be seen to turn the current in another direction, such as in the Schism Bill of 1714 (which never became effective), and (according to their enemies) in the Tithes Rent-charge (Rates) Act of this present year, and the Elementary Education Relief Act. But these are such insignificant exceptions that they serve only to illustrate more clearly the whole tendency of ecclesiastical legislation for two centuries. It all goes in the same direction. Vestigia nulla

retrorsum.

No better test can be applied for determining the trend of social feeling than legislation. But if it be argued that the Acts referred to above are nothing but testimonies to the pushfulness of the minority, I ask whether that same virtue will be less operative in the future, and whether the majority, which has yielded uniformly in the past, may be expected to behave differently under a similar pressure. If not, I do not see any force in the objection.

If, however, this series of Acts does not carry conviction, then let it be considered that side by side with them there has gone on a steady movement against the enforcement of dogmas by authority, and this as much within the Church as without. For the former the late Archdeacon Denison is an unexceptionable witness. Writing in 1878, he said:

I am constrained to repeat my belief here, that if I had to deal with Essays and Reviews, and with the book of Dr. Colenso, at this time, and with proceedings against him personally as a heretic, instead of some eighteen years ago, I could not

acquiesce in the destruction of the one and the discontinuance of the other. We will go further, and say that it would be almost tantamount to an emphatic national repudiation of the Christian faith. [The italics are not mine.]

Resolutions to the same effect were passed at a meeting of Churchmen on the 28th of January 1861. [Ecclesiastical Gazette, the 12th of February 1861, p. 209.]

carry the condemnation through the Lower House; I need say nothing of the prospect of it in the Upper House.*

Outside the Church the anti-dogmatic spirit has advanced by leaps and bounds. The influence of that arch-theologian, T. H. Huxley; the spread of evolutionary philosophy, especially as expounded in the 'Synthetic Philosophy' of Mr. Spencer; the solvent power of an increased knowledge of other religions than our own, and in particular of the East; the rise of higher conceptions of God which have made it increasingly difficult for men to accept the traditional theology; the freer handling of the Bible by modern criticism and research; the rise of ethical societies and all that they imply; the doctrinal differences of the Churches; Ritschlianism and the Kantian theory of the relativity of knowledge; these and a hundred other influences have been quietly but surely at work, making the maintenance of the old dogmatic spirit almost an impossibility even among the most rigidly orthodox. How, then, can it be expected that a State which is composed of men who are so largely imbued with this free spirit should be able to go on indefinitely enforcing or recognising a single exponent of the religious consciousness of the nation? That the Church should act as this exponent is an excellent counsel of perfection, but as things are it can only do so by consenting to such a comprehension as is advocated by Mrs. Humphry Ward, and that is out of the question.

It will be enough to refer simply to the anti-clerical feeling which is so marked a feature of our times, and to the opposed fact that the Church of England puts large powers in the hands of the clergy, and exercises discipline over the laity purely by coercing the clergy, to find further evidence of the impossibility of regarding the present Establishment as permanent.

Those who hold that the Establishment should be maintained at all costs are bound to face the difficulty that they are asking that an undogmatic and anti-dogmatic State should recognise as true dogmas which it either holds to be false or at all events indifferent. Or is it that we are to say with Gibbon that a religion is to be looked at by the statesman not as true but as useful?

It is not too much to say that the general feeling to-day is with Bishop Colenso and 'Lux Mundi.' It no longer teaches or believes what Jonathan Edwards taught about hell. It regards sin as an evolutionary disease and not as a moral culpability. It questions the authority of the Bible, and treats the Church as subject simply to the laws of human education, and not as a divine society. There is no need to postulate a majority for such views. It is enough that they are widely held for the inconsistency of an Establishment to be made plain.

2 Notes of my Life, p. 325.