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have repeatedly said, is the essential condition, the high vocation, of a National Church. Each body of Nonconformists in England-the Free Church, the United Presbyterians of Scotland-the would-be Anglo-Catholic Nonjuring sect, whether in the past or the future of the English Church, has its being only by virtue of sustaining one single mode of thought and of excluding all besides.* A remarkable example of this has lately been given in the burst of fury against the Established Church of Scotland lately exhibited by the Scottish Dissenters on the express ground that it had consented to admit a wider, larger, teaching of Christian truth. It has been the glory of the Church of Scotland that in its pale have been nurtured the most liberal elements of Scottish theology, the very existence of which within the borders of the seceding Church the chief officer of that Church has recently repudiated as a shocking impossibility. It has been the glory of the Church of England that, taking it not at its real worst but at its ideal best-not according to the clamorous representations of the partisans of its various sections, but according to the inherent virtue of the constitution which it has derived from the mixed character of the English Commonwealth-it has 'room' for all. It is by their juxtaposition, by their friction, by the mutual toleration of each other, expressed by the fact that they are all alike subject to the supreme law of the land, and to that only, that the existence of the National Church is justified, and that the best hopes are afforded of its ultimate enlargement, purification, and elevation. It is not the High Church school, nor even the Church of England itself, which is the chief gainer by the recent decision; it is the general cause of Christian moderation and Christian truth. Had the Gorham decision ejected the Evangelical school, the nation of England would not have been quit of them. They would have remained, but in a lower and narrower phase of bitter nonconformity. Had the Essays and Reviews" Judgment ejected the advocates of free inquiry, free inquiry would not have been suppressed, it would only have assumed a fiercer, wilder, more destructive character. Had the Bennett Judgment ejected Mr. Bennett and his friends, they would still have remained a thorn in our sides not the less provoking and irritating, because they would have been goaded from without into every fantastic reprisal, both in act and word. It has been happily ordered otherwise; and

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* This is well discussed in the recent Bampton Lectures of the Rev. G. H. Curteis, on 'Dissent in relation to the Church.'

though we dare not presume on the softening effects even of justice and mercy on the inveteracy of party zeal; though we dare not expect toleration from a school whose usual practice has been only to recognise the word as applied to itself; though this moderation may possibly be abused, and its sweet natural fruits poisoned and embittered by the violence of faction -yet we shall never regret that we have stood by the sound. principles which in its three principal decisions have inspired the hopes and guided the policy of this august tribunal; we shall yet look hopefully forward to the general atmosphere of calm content which such a concurrence of Judgments so gravely, impartially, and wisely expressed is likely to produce.

No. CCLXXVIII. will be published in October.

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THE

EDINBURGH REVIEW,

OCTOBER, 1872.

No. CCLXXVIII.

ART. I.-1. Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States. (Papers presented to Congress.) Washington: 1868 and

1870.

2. Vie de Monseigneur Berneux, Evêque de Capse in partibus Infidelium, Vicaire apostolique de Corée.

PICHON. Paris: 1868.

3. Journeys in North China.

WILLIAMSON, B.A.

Par M. L'ABBÉ

By the Rev. ALEXANDER London: 1870.

4. Commercial Reports of Her Majesty's Consuls in China and Japan, 1864-1866.

5. Kwang Yu Ki (Geography of the Chinese Empire and its Tributaries).

FRU

RUITFUL as the decade in which we are living has shown itself in great and unprecedented episodes of history, it may be said to exhibit no feature more strongly marked than the accomplishment (as it would seem) of the task of forging links of communication between the most widely sundered corners of the earth, and of casting down the few barriers that remain interposed between nation and nation. Viewed in this light, it is not a little singular that the very last of the strongholds of exclusion and rigid abhorrence of men from afar should be found in a long and narrow peninsula jutting out into seas that have been furrowed for years past by the keels of European vessels, and offering in its long and deeply-indented coast-line no less an incentive to navigation than that with which the British Isles are proverbially blessed; but nevertheless preserving a fixed resolve that no stranger shall set foot within its bounds, and holding its people in the grip of

VOL. CXXXVI. NO. CCLXXVIII.

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