higher things. And meanwhile their splendid vindication of the supremacy of Conscience must do good to the world.

We

2. Another essential principle of Old Catholicism is the recognition of Divine authority, as given directly to the State as well as to the Church. One of the most dangerous doctrines of Ultramontanism is, that the Church has a right to control the State, and that the Pope may rightly interfere in matters of national social life, by virtue of some supreme authority divinely given to him. The Old Catholics reject this view. It is not, they say, in accordance with the teaching and practice of the primitive Church. know they are right. St. Paul would certainly have repudiated any such Papal claim. When he wrote that "the powers that be are ordained of | God," he was referring to State authorities. The point is, that their commission comes to them direct from God Himself. We are familiar with the recognition of this by all Protestant Churches; but the recognition of it by the Old Catholics, as coming from the Catholic side, has a value of its own. The Old Catholics, in other words, build their patriotism on a religious basis; and, as time goes on, that too may bear good fruit.

3. A third feature in Old Catholicism must also attract our sympathy as Englishmen. They have no quarrel with modern civilization. The Vatican has over and over again declared that to be evil; a stereotyped Mediævalism is to be maintained. But the Old Catholics teach very differently. They welcome scientific research. They are not afraid that science and revelation can ever ultimately be in disagreement. And they feel, as we in England do, that the task of the Christian Church is to meet the needs of our own time, and, if occasion call for it, by methods of our own time. Not to enslave men and tie them down to a mere mechanical observance of outward forms, but to build them up, as free men and women, in the fellowship of Christ, is their great object. They value, as the Church of England does, the historic continuity of the Christian Church-its accredited Episcopate, its ancient creeds and liturgies, its sacraments and worship—as means to an end, that end being to draw all men together in the faith of a common Redeemer, rejoicing in the love of God, and living in the practice of that self-sacrificing love of their neighbour which Christ taught.

Once more, there is this also in Old Catholicism as a religious system, to interest us all, and having perhaps a special significance for the Church of England, -that it has adopted with great boldness the principle of giving a large share of power to the laity. The Old Catholic bishops (excluding Holland) are elected by the joint votes of the clergy and of the lay representatives. Even the parish clergy are elected by the congregations. And all legislation lies with the Synod, which is composed of clergy and laity, under the presidency of the bishop. It need hardly be said that this, among Continental Catholics, is a great innovation. But it cannot be denied that there is authority for it in the early ages of the Church. And so far the system has worked well-as it has done also in our own colonies

-and without any real diminution of Episcopal authority. There is some importance in this for ourselves. Beyond doubt, there can be no really vigorous life in any Church, in the affairs of which the laity do not take an active share. And although the varying circumstances of different Churches must largely affect the extent and character of that share, the experience of the Old Catholics may have a special value for some of us at home.

One thing must be added. I have spoken this afternoon only of those Old Catholics who belong to duly-constituted Churches in Holland, Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. But there are besides some considerable bodies who either have reformed or are engaged in reforming themselves on the same lines in other countries also. In Spain there are eight congregations, who have Señor Cabrera as their bishop-elect; there are five others in Portugal; the zealous labours of Count Henry di Campello have led to the formation of two in Italy; and M. Loyson (better known in this country as the Père Hyacinthe) is at the head of one in Paris. It must further be noted, that in addition to those who have had the courage to declare themselves Old Catholics, there are tens of thousands who secretly sympathize with them.

The truth is, that for generations past there has been a very widespread desire for substantial reforms among the Roman Catholics of Europe. The Vatican decrees brought on a crisis; and the importance of Old Catholicism lies in this, that it has provided the permanent means and opportunities, which were wanting before, for leavening large masses of the population in various countries, and thus paving the way for far greater results hereafter. All who value the supremacy of conscience, all who care for religious liberty, all who feel a strict truthfulness to be the first element of Christian morals-still more, all who believe in the Divine mission of Christ's One Catholic and Apostolic Church, and who, because they do so, are jealous for its purity and eager to cleanse it from superstition and from worldliness, that it may be fit to deliver worthily its loving message to mankind—must assuredly wish the Old Catholics God speed.

We are passing through a period of transition; and if what we desire should be the outcome of it, is not mere change but betterment; above all, if our longing is that, in a degree we have not reached yet, the Law of Force should be replaced by the Law of Love, as in all things, so most of all in Religion-then we shall welcome whatever "makes for Righteousness," in religious teaching and religious life. And this, I am convinced, is true of Old Catholicism.

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

BY REV. H. C. SHUTTLEWORTH, M.A.,

Rector of St. Nicholas Cole, Abbey, and Professor of Pastoral Theology in King's College, London.

THE Church of England, it is sometimes said, with a certain tone of contempt, is a compromise. The old and inaccurate epigram about her Arminian liturgy and Calvinistic articles is recalled. The fact is accentuated, that three well-defined schools of thought may be traced among both clergy and laity, shading away into a great variety of intermediate opinions. Accordingly, it is often declared, that only the golden links of Establishment prevent the Church of England from falling to pieces, and that, as Dr. Momerie has lately announced to admiring drawing-rooms, she is within measurable distance of dissolution.

There is at least so much of truth in the "compromise" theory, that the statesmen and ecclesiastics who guided the course of the English Reformation fell back, perhaps to some extent unconsciously, upon the idea of a national Church as an autonomous portion of the universal or catholic Church. The conception was that of a universal human society, founded by the Lord Jesus Christ, conditioned by national character and adapted to national needs; each national Church retaining large powers of selfgovernment, and owning no allegiance to any personal, visible head, or to any supreme authority on earth, save and except that of the universal society itself, expressed and uttered through a General Council. The comparison may perhaps be ventured to a world-confederacy of states, each state possessing a large measure of independence, but owning allegiance to a federal constitution.

The task of the English Church was to vindicate the independence of national Churches, and to define its limits. The relations of a national Church to the universal society, on the one hand, and to the nation itself, on the other, were the practical problems to be solved. The former was dealt with by repudiating the claims of the Papacy to absolute dominion over the universal society, and by accepting the authority of these General Councils, which were admitted to express the sense of the undivided Church. Cranmer's famous appeal to a General Council was the voice of the English Church. The creeds, the two great sacraments, the canon of Scripture, the "historic episcopate," these were the property, so to speak, of the whole Church, and with them the Church of England could not

meddle. There were other matters with which, she judged, a national Church was thoroughly competent to deal. Her own forms of worship and methods of internal government, for example, while following the general type, might and should be arranged by herself. Her own officers should be appointed as she herself might approve, without external interference. It was attempted to solve the second problem by the help of a principle which really underlay the whole movement of the Reformation. The power which undermined the medieval Papacy was the growth of the national consciousness. Men had come to perceive that the nation itself was a Divine organization. They realized the sanctity of the State. They felt that the nation's own language, the "vulgar tongue," was the most fitting vehicle for the utterance of the people's highest thoughts and deepest feelings. They regarded it as one of a nation's most sacred rights and supreme duties to provide for the worship and religious teaching of the people. Hence followed the theory of Hooker, restated in more recent days by Arnold, that Church and State are not two societies, but the nation itself under different aspects. Every Englishman, as such, was potentially an English Churchman.

It cannot be said that Hooker's theory has borne the test of three centuries. It has been broken against the logic of events. But it does not follow that, because this particular view cannot now be maintained, there is nothing which survives in that general idea of a national Church which found expression at the Reformation, but which can, in fact, be traced up to a far earlier period. If Church and State in England are two societies, and not one, history has yet bound them so intimately together, that to separate them will be a task of stupendous difficulty. The Church of England, then, represents not a compromise, but a principle, apart from Hooker's so called "Erastian " theory. Has this principle endured the test which has shattered the theory? In other words, is there room, in the England of to-day, for a national Church? And if so, how far does the Establishment fulfil the necessary conditions?

It may conduce to clearness to state at this point that the present writer regards the universal Church as consisting, in idea, of the whole of humanity; in fact, of a society of persons called out to witness to man's true condition in God. Just so, the Church of England consists, in idea, of the whole English people: in fact, of baptized Englishmen and Englishwomen. The external rite of baptism is (among other things) the method of admission to the Church; and it is to be observed that it is given to infants, who can have neither correct opinions nor pious feelings of any kind. To be a man is, implicitly, to be a Churchman; and the promises of the baptismal service-to give up the evil, to believe the true, to follow the right amount to an undertaking to be a true man. On this undertaking the Church gives baptism to every child; and formerly gave confirmation and communion (as still in the Eastern Churches) at the same time and on the same terms. This indicates a marked difference between

the Church's bond of membership and that of some other religious bodies. The holding of common opinions, the experience of common emotion, are not the fundamental facts of union in the Church. She does not profess to be a religious aristocracy, consisting of all the wise or all the good. She is catholic, belonging to all mankind; and her sacrament of admission to membership is bestowed upon any unconscious child who may be brought to her fonts, simply because it is a human being.

The principle of a national Church is widely regarded as utterly out of harmony with the tone and tendency of our age, and Disestablishment is now well within the horizon of practical politics. It may however be questioned whether the assumption upon which the proposed de-nationalization of the Church rests, is not itself out of harmony with modern thought and feeling. That principle I take to be, that the State, as such, has nothing to do with religion. It may not be set forward quite so fiercely as by those earlier Liberationists who contended that the State was "the world," with which the Church could rightly have no relations. But it seems to be the natural and inevitable conclusion from the premises of the old Liberal party in England, who were associated with the Manchester School. They held as their fundamental doctrine, that the State should interfere as little as possible. A free State, as they conceived it, was one in which the government imposed the fewest duties on the citizens, and left things generally alone to work themselves out. A free Church, in their view, was one altogether self-governed. It naturally followed, that the very idea of Establishment was repugnant to them; and Disestablishment, as a plank in the political platform, is a survival of the old within the new Liberalism. Yet the new Liberalism is far from holding the essential "worldliness" of the State; still farther from accepting the noninterference doctrines of the Manchester School. On the contrary, the English democracy of to-day calls in the State at every turn. We are practically agreed, pace Mr. Herbert Spencer and Mr. Auberon Herbert, that the State ought to provide means for the well-being and elevation of all her children. Free libraries, free education, public recreation grounds, provision for public health,-all these are now recognised as the care of the State. Then why not free religion?—not in the sense of the Manchester School, but in the modern sense which gives a wider scope to the word freedom. Only a certain section of atheists will contend that religion is the highest and most necessary of all means to the well-being of a people. Alexander Vinet, the great Swiss Liberationist, consistently opposed the principle of Establishment on the ground that it was a fundamentally socialistic principle. "The individualism which Vinet preached," says the Rev. T. Hancock, "as the road to social salvation, and upon which every sectarian Church' is founded, is rejected and hated by the newer Zeitgeist as the road to social damnation." Mr. Hancock also points out that the two "most democratic States in the world," Zürich and Geneva have each recently affirmed, by the vote of