If

possession of the canal and the Isthmus with little cost or risk; and this opportunity comes, too, at a time when the possession of the canal is exceptionally important to us. Shall we avail ourselves of this opportunity or let it pass by? That is the question. I am not blind, no thinking man can be blind, to the ulterior consequences of such a step. If we take it we must be prepared to run the risk of an extension of our Imperial responsibilities, of possible complications in the future, of not improbable entanglement in the issues which are sure to ensue upon the settlement of the Eastern Question. My answer is, or would be if I were called to decide, It is too late for us to shrink from responsibility. it were given to any Englishman to say now whether, if the past could be undone, it would be wise for us to enter on the career which has made these small and remote islands the centre of a world-wide. Empire, I can understand how the most patriotic and fearless of our: fellow-countrymen might shrink appalled from the magnitude of the task we should be called on to undertake. But the time has gone by when we could enter on any such speculation. For evil or for good the burden of an Empire has been placed upon our shoulders. We would not, I believe, lay it down if we could; we could not if we would. We, too, have our manifest destiny, which we have no choice save to follow. The same causes which compelled us the other day to annex the Transvaal Republic in the south of Africa compel us also to occupy the Isthmus. And if a want of resolution, a shirking of responsibility, from an irresolution of purpose or a dread of incurring reproach, should cause us at this crisis of our fate to hesitate about establishing our right of way across the Isthmus, then I can only say that as a nation we have lost those imperial qualities by which our forefathers created the England of to-day.

EDWARD DICEY.

L

DISESTABLISHMENT AND DISENDOW

MENT

Ir is with a feeling akin to sacrilege that the pen is taken up against the institutions of old times, which have weathered many storms, and still hold up their heads, claiming to have made good their rights by the very remoteness of their origin. Few, if any, of our institutions, except the Church herself, can compare, in the matter of antiquity, with the prescription of more than fifteen centuries which the principle of Establishment has attained. Unhappily, however, the antiquity of an institution does not always prove even its wisdom, much less its fitness under changed circumstances, with changed political relations, changed habits of thought and society, and changed necessities which have grown up amongst these changes, to serve a present generation. No one can doubt that the whole state of things as regards the relation of the Church to the State, and of the State to the Church, has altered entirely since Constantine first declared himself the patron of the hitherto despised Church of Christ, and even since St. Augustine first planted his mission to the English at Sandwich. Is there anything in these changes to show that what was good for past generations is bad now? Or is there even anything to lead to the conclusion that from the first the establishment' and 'endowment of the Christian religion were a mistake?

It will be necessary first to make sure that we have clear conceptions of the meanings of the words we are using. What is the Church of Christ'? What are establishment' and endowment'? What is the 'State' of which we speak in its relation to these other facts?

What then do we mean by the Church of Christ? The question can only be answered by words of the Church's Founder. We have to deal not merely with a portion of scme earthly State, or with a corporation of human institution, but with that which is divine in its origin, in its life, and in all its conditions. Now by the declaration of Christ and His apostles the Church is a kingdom, not of this world,' founded at Pentecost by the gift of God, into which men are to be admitted by the imparting to them a new life, declared to be the glorified life of Christ Himself, who thus lives in them, and in

whom they live, so that they become, by entrance into it, not so much subjects of a kingdom as members of their Lord's body, and partakers of His life; that these members are to live in the world,' but not to be of the world,' that they are to be hated, despised and persecuted, and thus are to fulfil the end for which they are left on earth, namely the conquest of sin, and the bringing sinners to be reconciled to God through Christ. No other picture has Christ left of His Church, no other end of its existence on earth has He assigned. I do not think I have misquoted or misrepresented the teaching of Holy Scripture on the subject, but believe that not only Churchmen but even every earnest Nonconformist, however much he might differ from me on the results of this definition, would agree to its accuracy. It is then manifest that the Church is a kingdom which differs from all human organisations in that it has to do only with the souls of men ; it affects their spiritual interests only, but affects them with an exclusive jurisdiction, with which no one who does not belong to the Church can interfere. This Church consists of all baptised persons who have not separated from her communion, or been removed from it, with the bishops as at once their ministers and rulers in all purely spiritual things, subject to certain rights of the priesthood and laity, which we shall meet with again further on. Existing in a State, its members are subjects of that State in all temporal relations, and bound to obey the authorities in all that is not contrary to the law of Christ, while at the same time the authorities themselves of the State, if they be its members, take their places in the Church not according to their civil rank, but merely according to their position as Christians. This description, I think, fairly sets forth the meaning of the words Church of Christ' according to His own teaching. In the Church all her members, from the chief ruler of the State to the poorest beggar and the youngest child, are on a level, except so far as differences of spiritual status and condition put one before the other; in the State all persons, whether belonging to the Church or not, from the highest to the lowest are equal, except so far as temporal dignities and personal qualifications in secular things make the difference of higher and lower.

Our next question is an easier one. What is the State? For our present purpose at least, we may define the State to be the aggregate of human beings composing the nation, united by the bonds of common nationality, inborn or acquired, common laws, and a common government, presided over by emperor, king, queen, president, or other supreme governor, as the case may be. As the end of the Church's being is to deal with souls and form them for the future life with God, so the end of the State's existence is the perfection of the life of the citizens in social virtues which contribute to the temporal prosperity and general happiness of the whole. This end will necessarily include morality so far as vice either from its

open commission affects the comfort of the citizens at large, or, from its tendency to enfeeble the race, weakens the State by depriving it of strong men for its armies. An instance of this aspect of vice and morality was seen in the last Franco-German war, where man for man the Germans were the stronger, owing to their greater simplicity of living. But the State knows nothing of spiritual virtues or of morals, except as they bear upon social and political advancement. The State is, no doubt, the ordinance of God as much as the Church, although posterior to it, both in idea and in time, since there are not two Gods, but one God alike of nature and of grace; but it is an ordinance in a different plane,' so to speak, with a different end, not antagonistic to, but apart from, that of the Church. The citizens of this State may be identical with the members of the Church, as was actually the case in England from the seventh to the fourteenth century, with the exception of the short period of the Danish invasion, and continued to be in theory till 1688, and indeed partially till 1829; or they may be wholly antagonistic to the Church so as to refuse to its members all rights of citizenship; or between these extremes the two elements may be intermixed in any possible proportion. These two, therefore, the Church and State, are not necessarily two distinct bodies, but may even be simply the same individuals looked at under two different aspects, or they may intermingled the one with the other in vastly different degrees of personal identity, but their objects are always distinct.

We now ask what is Establishment? Here we mean not any use of the word, but establishment as we find it in England. To answer this we must have recourse to its history; how did the English Church become established? Looking back to our Saxon ancestors, we find the Gospel preached by Augustine at the end of the sixth century gradually extending itself over the land, from the conversion of the Kentish king and his heathen subjects, until the Christianity of the south came in contact with that of north and west, and England was wholly absorbed into the Church of Christ. At first, and for some centuries, the nation lived in harmonious concert as Church and State in one, with no question of rival jurisdictions. The Church was the teacher of the State by her ministry, and was also useful to it in council and otherwise by its knowledge of letters and its exclusive possession of the fine arts. On the other hand the State, being the body of the faithful in their temporal aspect, defended the clergy and upheld them in their cures. The necessary divisions of dioceses and parishes began roughly to be made, probably by the Church in her synods, with the consent, tacit or expressed, of the authorities in the State. Thus, by no definite act or succession of acts, but by the course of events, the mutual relations of the two societies, consisting at the time of the same individuals, grew up into the form which has come to be called Establishment,' of which we shall have to consider

as well the developments as the effect upon both Church and State. There was never any definite act establishing the Church. The only thing which ever was established in England was the Prayer-book, the Church's worship, not the Church. It remains to consider the meaning of 'endowment,' which, however, has been in a great measure implied already. The same respect for the teachers of religion, the same sense of the value to the State of such a learned body as the clergy secured for it, led the possessors of lands and goods to bestow in perpetuity on different institutions and parishes, land, tithe, and money to enable the clergy to pursue their calling without anxiety as to the means of subsistence. These were in all cases private gifts from private persons; even when kings were the donors, the gift was not of public property, but of the king's own possessions. In later times, indeed, we have an example of a public gift in the colony of Canada of a grant of 'reserves' to the Church; but of this gift the State repented, and it was recalled. The old gifts were not such as these, but simply free-will gifts from private persons in their private capacity, whatever their rank. This instinct was a noble and generous one, though we may believe it to have been mistaken. Out of it certainly grew immediately pride, luxury, and rivalry even with kings in pomp and splendour. It is questionable, indeed, how far it is at any time wise for one generation to endow institutions of any kind, so as to relieve future generations of the necessity-or shall we say to deprive them of the privilege?-of supporting that which they find helpful to themselves. One thing is clear, that the wealth of the Church was that which, more than anything else in the sixteenth century, strengthened its foes and weakened its own powers of defence.

These definitions or descriptions will help to keep our thoughts straight in the consideration of what is to follow. Having arrived at them, it will be well to state the question which it is proposed to discuss in the rest of the paper. To break up, or to be in any degree concerned in the breaking up of, relations which have lasted for so many centuries, even in the face of serious difficulties besetting them through all the ages of their history, is too grave an act to be justified merely by present inconveniences, however great they may be. To make such a step lawful, it is necessary to show either that the principle of establishment and endowment is fundamentally wrong, or else that circumstances have so changed as to make the old relations no longer possible. We must therefore at once put away the thought of any pressure which may just now be weighing heavily upon any section of the Church, and take the matter wholly on its own ground. It will be impossible to avoid reference to the complications which are now resulting from establishment, as forming, together with those which have arisen in times past, evidence of the proposition which has to be maintained; but they will be cited only as