MR GLADSTONE ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

Evening Star, Issue 6775, 15 December 1884, Page 4

MR GLADSTONE ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

At the St. Asaph Diocesan Conference a letter addressed by Mr Gladstone to the Bishop of the diocese was read, in which, without entering upon the wide field of argument respecting the disestablishment of the Church, the right hon. gentleman asked three questions—Will it come ? Ought it to come ? Must it come ? Another interesting inquiry was whether it was somewhat distant or indefinitely remote. To these he propounds no reply. Further on Mr Gladstone says his present purpose 11 aims at pointing out that when uniformity was fina’ly brought by law into the Church of England still much room for diversity was left—room enough to invite polemical criticism, but perhaps not more than on the one hand the inestimable value of the principle of liberty squired, or tbqn, on the other

hand, the teaching office of the Church could, without vital injury, allow.” Whether disestablishment would be disastrous or not, there was only one way hr which it might Cbme to be disgraceful, and this would be a result of neglect, indifferenee, or deadeeaa. It might also be disgraceful were it a consequence of dissensions; but this would be an unworthy termination of a controversy which ought to be settled upon far higher grounds. By historical references tho Premier showed that the Church of England has bacn all along peculiarly liable on the one aide and on the other both to attack and to defection, and that the probable cause was to be found in the degree in which, whether for worldly or for religious reasons, it was a' tempted in her case to combine divergent elements within her borders. Tho effect of the separation that took place in the Church in the seventeenth century was that it “so far enabled the Church of England to fulfil tha conditions of a corporate life and unity that it has now been maintained during two centuries and a quarter without either the unmitigated dualism or the ag nies of convulsion which had marked tho previous experienoe; and with this geneal result, that at the present hour the hopes of the Church of England are higher and more buoyant than perhaps they have ever bsen. It has been very far indeed from an heroic history. Not only defect, but scandal has abounded.” In his historical references the Premier points out that “ what may be called the Puritanical element ejected at the Restoration began slowly to reassert itself in the latter half of the eighteenth century, and is now admitted to have brought about a great revival of religious life in the English Church.” In impressing on the members of the Church of England their duty in remembering in their internal differences the great maxim “In omnibus caruas,"- the Premier asks if this advice “is not eminently rational at a time when, oh the one hand, the deepest and widest questions of belief in a Saviour, in a Deity, and in a moral law are everywhere coming to issue on a scale hitherto without example, and when, on the other hand, this great organisation within which our lot has been oast is from day to day exhibiting here, and beyond the seas, not only a remarkable material extension, but a growing vigor of inward life, and an increasing abundance in every work of mercy, of benevolence, and of true civilisation ?” The letter concludes by saying that he had endeavored to place himself at a point of view which was impersonal and impartial, as well as historical, and he had not knowingly wounded the susceptibilities, or assailed tho opinions, of anyone who might read them.