Hudson in Shanghai, and call and see their neighbours in Japan, and pay my respects to the good missionaries in Fiji, and see how the New Zealanders and Australians are getting on in my way home. This world of ours-for God has given it to us-is so full of interest and beauty, that I should like to see as much of it as possible before I go hence. Should these travels be effected, some more jottings may interest our readers.

In the meanwhile, allow me to add a few words as to our denominational status in London as compared with what it was in 1835.

Then, as per Minutes, we had three chapels and 459 members. In 1869 we had four chapels-but Borough Road double the size of Great Suffolk Street, Commercial Road enlarged, New Church Street two hundred additional sittings-and 1147 members in all, or an increase of 150 per cent.

And now allow me to remind our readers that our Centenary Association is approaching, and I trust its celebration in every respect will be worthy of the occasion, and of the momentous age in which our lot has been cast.

Ir is not unwise, under any circumstances, to investigate the relations between institutions so important to a country as the Church and the State. Even in times of religious and political quiet it might be very profitable to ask whether the temporal government and the Christian Society hold such a position toward each other as secures the most thorough efficiency in each, and the highest measure of good to the people at large: but in the present conditions of British life, and the irrepressible urgency of ecclesiastical questions, no inquiry is more imperative, or if properly conducted, more likely to be fraught with good.

For three centuries there has been a union between the State and a section of the Church of Christ in these realms, and we have before us the records and results of this alliance, not more in the annals of the past than in the living, compact, and homogeneous circumstances of our present national life. This immediate generation, in all its phases of thought and action, is the direct offspring of the whole past; and the condition of the Church and State question to-day is seen in the complete result of the manifold efforts and experiences of the nation in the direction of religion, since the time the Anglican Church sprang out of a compromise between the Catholics and Protestants of the reigns of Henry and Elizabeth. To look at the union of these two chief

organs of a people's life "in the light of present circumstances," is to obey the necessities of the hour, and to submit current theories on ecclesiastical matters to a fair and valid test; and we do so, not forgetting the teaching of Scripture, but with the assurance that a separate appeal to the times in which we live cannot issue in a verdict opposed to the precepts of the Word of God.

No age is without its witness to the exact value of the agents at work in its midst. The voice of humanity, drowned for awhile, finally sounds above the strife of tongues, commending the good, and condemning the bad. Every tree is known by its fruit; and the most patient gardener must, when the Great Husbandman bids, take the axe and lay down the spade. Neither churches, nor states, nor both together, are exempt from this law. There is more in every kingdom than is visible to the eye. Man is not alone. Each nation lives and moves in God, and therefore you cannot always violate its conscience with impunity. The day of reckoning is marked in the divine calendar, and when the morning dawns resistance is useless. Unjust statutes and iniquitous institutions may spread like the green bay tree, but the Lord will pluck them up by the roots, and scatter every scrap of fibre to the winds. Our eternal Father is not absent from any people or any time, and

if His children will take heed, they may read the teachings of His providence with scarcely less ease, accuracy, and profit, than they find in studying the records of His grace.

Howbeit circumstances, externally regarded, are not so faultless a test of truth that it is unnecessary to search for the ideas and feelings that produce them; nor is the "logic of events," even when driven in upon us with the quenchless energy of a tornado, always so conclusive as to release us from the obligation of resisting it with the sterner and holier logic of individual conscience. Successes are not principles. Defeats are not in every case proof of falsehood. Customs, though they crystallize in forms of beauty and strength, do not make irrefragable law. Circumstances are not kings, but heralds trumpeting the monarch's presence. They are not themselves moral rules, but reliable commentaries upon such rules, moral or immoral as may have been followed. Like mirrors they reveal the purposes of God and the wants and weaknesses of men. In them we have the outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual ideas. For the real history of mankind is not first written in the "pomp of circumstance," but on the fleshly tablets of the heart. Those conflicts that come to the front for their award have been first fought out in the arena of the soul. The spirit of the age gives shape and form, direction and movement to society. Laws and institutions are the clothing of the intuitions, beliefs, and hopes of men; and experience assures us that when we once get at the ideas ruling their minds, controlling their choice, and moulding their acts, we are in the domain of truth, where, more likely than anywhere else, we shall gaze upon her form and receive her benediction. Present circumstances may, therefore, tell us, if we know how to read them, what human needs are deepest, what organizations are best adapted to certain states of social life, and what purposes God is working out, and so bring us abreast of the teachings of that common sense or common consciousness of mankind which seems the chief criterion of truth available to us. The man, then, who ignores such signs of the times is as unwise as the navigator who, carefully guarding his sextant and compass,

attempts to track the ocean heedless of changing winds and of the currents of the sea.

Moreover this examination is necessary as well as wise, because the methods and measures of the future are mainly determined by our sense of the needs and teaching of the nation at the present hour. The good plans of to-day are the result of an appeal fairly made to the whole facts of yesterday; and the methods of to-morrow will grow out of the circumstances of this moment as naturally as one generation follows another, or as the blossom gives place to the fruit. The temple of national well being is built up day by day from the materials of the past. Judaism completes its work, and then grace and truth come by Jesus Christ. Scholastic philosophy wanes, and then Lord Bacon appears. Famine, bankruptcy, and wide-spread calamity, extort an unwilling acknowledgment of the evils of protection, and then we have unfettered industry, a cheap loaf, and the produce of the world at our feet. If we are to provide for the morrow's need as we ought, we must carefully look at yesterday and to-day.

"At yesterday." For we must not break with our past. It is the complement of the present, and must always be judged with it. We cannot collect a true verdict by merely testing the few facts that rush to the front and insist on being examined, any more than we can get a system of geology out of a single fossil oyster, or a true knowledge of farming from the analysis of the soil of a solitary field. Though truth is one, it is wondrously manifold, and requires to be known in its variety before it can be understood in its unity, and appreciated in its broadest range, in order to be felt in its highest power. "Throughout the ages one increasing purpose runs, and the thoughts of men are widening with the circling of the suns." There is a visible development of moral ideas along the path of history. One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh, but the truth abideth for ever.

No age

lives to itself, or learns for itself. Each is teacher to its successor, and teaches the better because it has before been a dependent and diligent pupil. As the light of distant stars has been ages in travelling to us, so this "light of present circumstances" comes along all

the past, and we must allow its collected force to shine upon us without any restriction. One thing remains to be desired, that as we gather together its scattered rays and concentrate them on this subject of Church and State, we may follow in the wake of Professor Tyndal, but with a higher experiment, and consume with the holy flame of love of truth all particles of the "dust" of prejudice, custom, and selfish interest floating in the path of these rays, so that the light beaming with unobstructed freedom and purity, the union of Church and State may be distinctly and fully revealed.

What, then, is the result of our inquiry conducted on these principles, and we believe in this spirit Must

we declare for the continuance of the alliance between the English Establishment and the Parliament? Is the evidence compiled from within and without the State Church, and illustrated by the experiences of other peoples, so conclusively on the side of maintaining existing relations that we do wrong to ask whether we follow the will of God in this matter, and greater wrong to require a readjustment of those relations? We cannot hesitate about our answer. The light of present circumstances points out the necessity for obtaining a speedy separation of Church and State, and an independence for each of the other as perfect as that between the government and a literary club, a life assurance society, or an omnibus company. The teaching of God in His providence seems unambiguously on the side of the deliverance of His church from State patronage and control. The minds of men are gravitating with ever increasing speed towards religious equality, and it is as impossible to prevent their arrival at that goal as to keep back the sea. Individuals may fret and fume against their destiny, it avails not; they must either go with the strong forces of justice and truth that grapple them, or be left as beacons on the deserted rocks of iniquity. Man cannot always be unjust. living energies of God urge us along in a nobler path. The line between politics and religion becomes more and more definite to the eye of the nation. Men perceive that the State has neither qualification nor right to be the supreme judge of religious truth, and

but

The

that a grave wrong is done to their manhood when government puts a premium upon the avowal of one religious opinion, and a penalty to the holding of another. The more we think, the more we differ at the first; but thinking on and on, discord disappears, and a basis of agreement is found. A real unity pervades the life of humanity. Differences high as the Andes separate us, but we meet in concord in the deep vales from which the mountains start. In the crusading days of Peter the Hermit the multitude asked, as town after town came into view, "Is this Jerusalem ?" Justice is the Jerusalem of the world, the rallying point of national crusades, the meeting place of all kindreds and tongues. "A nation is stronger than a law, but there is something stronger than a nation, and that something is justice, .. that rare, noble, and imperial virtue, has this above all other qualities, that she is no respecter of persons.

and

She presents a tranquil and majestic countenance towards every point of the compass and every quarter of the globe." And as men see more of her chaste beauty, and imbibe more of her righteous spirit, every injustice, and above all every inequality legalized in the name of religion (which is nothing if it is not just), will vanish at her advancing sway like darkness before the morning dawn.

It was said a short time ago in the Pall Mall Gazette-"There are no movements to which a wise man ought to pay greater attention or respect than those which proceed from the tacit unexpressed conviction of the great mass of mankind in the face of the denunciations of eloquent exceptions. Burke reviled the voluntary system with all his power, and yet the current of opinion has set steadily all over Europe in the opposite direction to Burke for two generations, and is getting stronger every day." England is not alone in her struggles for religious equality. She is but one in the company of nations eagerly bent on gaining this prize. The wave of freedom rises higher and higher, and is rapidly spreading over both hemispheres. We have just seen a church voluntarily disestablish itself, to defend the truth with greater success in Neufchâtel.

* Mr. Gladstone's speech on the second reading of the Irish Land Bill.

Sir James Grant finds in this principle the only pacific settlement of the relations of Church and State in Jamaica. The voluntary system enjoys free play in the Western Republic with such pure and salutary issues as never proceeded from state protection and state pay. The colonies of the Pacific have uttered their potent voice in favour of liberty, and a welcome echo of it has just been heard from the vast province of Hindostan. Italy, in the hearing of the Pope, has announced and adopted the maxim of a free Church in a free State.

Even Austria marches with a fleet foot to the same ideal. The tolerance of all sects has been proclaimed in the home of the Inquisition. Sweden, Turkey, and France, are travelling in the same direction; and Britain cannot surely be left behind in this race for the goal of liberty, equality, and religion. Never! Already the Irish Church is rejoicing in its newly bestowed privilege, and preparing for the vigorous deeds of a dawning manhood. Wales is astir. Scotland has given signs of a fixed purpose and substantial hostages to the cause in her Free Church life, and the English people are moved by those ideas and actuated by those principles which must come forth shortly in the complete emancipation of the religion of the Son of God from the enslaving patronage and unrighteous control of the civil government. Haste, thrice happy hour! when the true King of men and only Head of the church shall be acknowledged from one end of the world to the other as the sole Lawgiver and Ruler of His redeemed and holy people!

Nor can we see that State-Churchism, as such, has in a single instance proved itself so worthy of honour as to deserve any exceptionally favourable treatment. We rejoice that in many lands it has rendered distinguished service, but its achievements, as compared with those of voluntaryism, have not by any means been so remarkable as to justify the slightest preference for government supervision of religion. Indeed the opposite is the case. The Free churches of England, with all their defects, have done a good work for the nation. They have produced out of slender materials, and in the face of great obstacles, writers of some genius and of accurate scholarship, preachers

of surpassing ability and eminent piety; and, above all, they have reared a race of men of firm conviction and quickened devotion, who "reverence conscience as the source, and liberty of conscience as the only guarantee, of truth." These churches have shown themselves able to grow in an atmosphere of oppression and social injustice, and given fair promise of what may be expected from them when they dwell in a clime genially refreshed with the breezes of liberty and equality. The record of Dissent is with the nation, and we are content to abide its verdict. Already the successes of Nonconformity are contrasted with the proved and palpable failure of its rival as an organ for unfolding and maturing the spiritual life of men, and it is not difficult to see with what result. The essential evils of the alliance between the State and the Church multiply and increase with the growing vitality and earnestness of the members of the latter. The more they strive to do the work of the Church, the more patent becomes the iniquity of receiving the support, and the more irksome is submission to the control of the State. now it is said by those who would withhold it if they could, that error is endowed to a greater extent than truth, and every day brings to light some fresh case enforcing the necessity for separation. Men's consciences are seriously hurt, social life is poisoned with bitterness and jealousies that ought not to be so much as named amongst us, political progress is checked, ignorance is fostered, and religion herself is wounded and imprisoned in the magnificent house of her friends.

Even

It is separation that is needed, and not reform. To cut off a branch will not pluck the disease from the root. Mending a window will not save the house built on sand: it needs not a pane of glass, but a new foundation. Injustice is not wiped out with a word. Projects of reform, even if honestly conceived and strenuously urged, are misplaced and mistimed. It is too

late. The ship must go. The drug of advowsons may be cast out, but the vessel still sinks. Bel and the dragon may be thrown overboard, but their place is filled by the inrushing water. Bishops may cease to oppose good legislation and work away at the

pumps, and chivalrous deans may urge others to come on board to save them, but it is too late. The ship is eaten through and through by error, and though all the living shall be saved, yet the worm-eaten timbers of StateChurchism cannot be kept from their deserved doom,

From

Yet is it not a humiliating circumstance that the British nation, at this advanced period of its civilization, should be terminating the long confusion of the provinces of civil obligation and religious duty?-a service the Romans performed for their republic before they had travelled far in the fourth century of their history. But such is the fact. It required more than six hundred years to effect a separation between politics and the administration of justice in this country, and it has taken more than eight hundred years to bring us on the line of that higher division between politics and religion; whereas if men would have been content with any other teaching than painful experience, they might have found not only in the Scriptures but in the history of the world and the church more than enough to have induced them to insist on such a separation ages ago. one fact learn all. Maine, in his Ancient Law, suggests the high probability that the Romans would have had a civilization as feeble and sickly as the Hindoos, if they had not made this vital distinction when they did. He also says: "We can see that Brahminical India has not passed beyond a stage which occurs in the history of all the families of mankind, the stage at which a rule of law is not yet discriminated from a rule of religion. The members of such a society consider that the transgression of a religious ordinance should be punished by civil penalties, and that the violation of a civil duty exposes the delinquent to divine correction." The union of Church and State is logically the perpetuation of the political blunder which Rome corrected soon after the promulgation of the Twelve Tables, and thence advanced to, and for four centuries kept in the van of, all progressive societies; but which the Hindoos, born of the same stock, continued, and so first arrested their advancement, and then sunk to a perverted and cruel degeneracy. It is a law of progress,

traceable in the past, and never more emphatically declared than now, (and an essential part of the philosophy of progress,) that a clear and broad line must be drawn between the duties of men towards God, and their duties to the Government; and that on no pretence whatever should the State invade the realm of religion with its sanctions, or the Church interfere with the civil government in the discharge of its appropriate duties.

But are there no circumstances that conflict with this broad deduction? Many, undoubtedly. There is a keen desire to maintain the existing alliance, and even a strong determination on the part of a diminishing number not to give it up at any price. Some good men think that the Church will be drowned beyond all recovery if turned out of the ark of the State. Defenders of the union abound, and they are not remarkably particular as to the theory on which they conduct their defence. Some take us to Hooker, others leave us with Mr. Gladstone in his youth; these are given up for Warburton by a few, and all three are surrendered by a growing party for the comprehending of all creeds in heaven and under heaven, on the earth and under the earth.

Are we told that the Church must have the help of the State to keep her out of the dangerous ways of error? Must these chains of civil government be placed upon her limbs lest she should wander into forbidden paths? Why, godless men laugh at the hollow apology, and point to the motley host denouncing and condemning one another in the churches of the Establishment; and godly men mourn with a bitter grief as they see the national property used in the name of Protestantism for the support of those who are teaching undisguised Roman Catholic doctrine. Surely no proof is needed that the union is useless for the maintenance of truth as against error. During a longer period than a generation the Anglican Church has been passing more and more into the hands of teachers who have ceased to be Protestants, who openly declare the doctrine of transubstantiation, defend and use the confessional, and disseminate nearly all the dogmas of the priest-corrupted Church of Rome. And is this decreasing at the present