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The first, and the one probably nearest to its settlement, is the question of voluntary or compulsory payments in support of religious worship. During a whole generation contests for the abolition of Church Rates have been spreading from parish to parish, until, not merely in cities and towns, but in many a country village, their blind and unblushing advocates have been outvoted. But in the majority of rural parishes, and in some other places where Church influence predominates, these unrighteous imposts have invariably been levied. Their iniquitous character has been so obvious to our representatives in Parliament, that year by year Bills for their abolition have been introduced-sometimes making their way through the House, and at others coming to a dead halt there. But now with a pro-rate party in office, and an anti-rate Opposition, Mr. Gladstone's Compulsory Abolition Bill has passed its third reading, without any division, and amidst bursts of cheering. Probably before this article is circulated the measure, which is now before the House of Lords, may have passed its second reading there, with the certainty of soon receiving the Royal assent. For the Lord's have been warned, by high authority, that they will assume a grave responsibility if they deny to the present parliament the satisfaction of settling a question which has perplexed it during the whole of its existence. progress which public opinion on this question has made may be as aptly given in the wailing words of a Church organ as in any which we can indite. "Who would have thought five years ago, or even two years ago, that the enthusiastic aggregations of 250, 260, 270, and 280, which successive divisions were the minorities, and eventually the majorities against Church Rate spoliation, would have sunk to thirty votes, and one speaker? But such is the fact?" Another periodical,

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however, speaking the sentiments of a better party in the Established Church, expresses approval of the course taken by the abolitionists of Church Rates, and says that the Bill should be "accepted without rejoicing and without regret."*

The second public question which has an ecclesiastical side to it is the Education question. In general importance this question far exceeds the foregoing one: and hitherto

there have been more various views propounded as to the basis on which it should be permanently settled. At the present time two measures are submitted for consideration— one by Mr. Bruce, which proposes to bring in the help of compulsory rating, in supplementing and extending the scheme now being worked by the Committee of Privy Council; or, in other words, to make people, who have not voluntarily provided denominational schools sufficient for the districts where they dwell, pay rates for a further provision of schools of the same class. The other measure is that of the Conservative Government, introduced by the Duke of Marlborough, but which is a mere modification of the Privy Council scheme. It proposes that there shall be a Secretary of State for Education-that the revised code shall be turned into an Act of Parliament-that State aid shall be extended to secular schools, and in poor districts to schools without certificated teachers. No child is to be compelled to go to any Church, or Sunday school, as a condition of receiving instruction on week-days. Both these schemes are more liberal than those which have been contended for by intolerant churchmen; but the advance which they indicate is slight and trivial as compared with that which has been made among the

* The Bill was read a second time in the House of Lords, April 23, but from the bitterness displayed towards it by Lord Derby and by the Archbishops and Bishops, and also from the proposal by the Government to refer it to a Select Committee, there is still room for apprehension of danger to the measure.

friends of education outside the walls of Parliament. The popular idea is becoming more favourable to the severance of education from all clerical influences, making schools purely scholastic institutions, and not parts of a complicated ecclesiastical machinery. Up to this day popular education has been treated as a question of words and names, and of "the law" of the most powerful party. Some have pleaded for it as

secular" education, and have thereby offended the prejudices or scruples of pious Churchmen. Others have insisted on its being "religious," and so have made it impossible for consistent Nonconformists to accept it. Elementary education is a sufficiently definite name for the training which is imparted in day schools, and to provide this necessary culture may be the proper work of the State. But as soon as any government appropriates public money to furnish religious education, it oversteps its civil sphere, and encroaches on sacred ground. All the arguments All the arguments adduced in favour of State provision for the religious teaching of children are equally valid on behalf of a State Church for teaching religion to the people at large. Those Nonconformists who have accepted aid from the Privy Council in support of denominational schools have been justly twitted, by Church writers, with their obvious inconsistency. And they are now not afraid to advocate a scheme of national education which leaves the question of religion untouched, being persuaded that with the loud pretensions of giving this pious culture these State-assisted schools have in fact given no more religion than, as Mr. Spurgeon bluntly says, "could be put into a

lad's hollow tooth!"

A third measure, which is gradually receiving augmented support, in the face of the most formidable opposition, is called the Universities' Test Bill, which has been introduced by Mr. Coleridge, but which, in con

sequence of the pressure of public business, will not come on for a second reading until May 19. The simple object of this measure is to make the two Universities of Oxford and Cambridge what their very name imports-seats of learning for the whole nation, without distinction of religious belief. No sooner was this measure submitted than an appeal was got up to the Archbishop of Canterbury to use his influence against it. This appeal received 1,600 signatures, and set forth, in an exaggerated form, the effects of the measure, which, in the judgment of the memoralists, would be to imperil the continuance of religious education, and to inaugurate the establishment of a purely secular system. This numerously signed appeal has been well answered by a member of Oxford University, Mr. Raper, in a letter to the Times; but still better by four Baptist ministers of Cambridge, who, in a counter appeal to the Archbishop, inform his Grace, that at Cambridge the number of Nonconformists in the University has been steadily increasing for the last twelve years; and has comprised two senior wranglers, one second, one fifth, one seventh, two other wranglers, two first class classics, and ten senior optimes. Also that those who have won these honours are far above the average in moral and religious excellence; and that, if the whole University had been like them, it would have presented a scene of purity and piety such as neither Oxford nor Cambridge has yet approached. His Grace, however, as also the Bishop of London, has expressed thorough sympathy with the opponents of the Bill; but they have been severely -criticised by such journals as the Guardian, the Pall Mall Gazette, and even the Saturday Review. Three years ago the proposal thus to throw open the Universities was treated with indignation by the Guardian, was pooh-poohed by the Times, and

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bitterly reviled by the Saturday Review. As an illustration of our topic-the progress of opinion on questions of this kind-and as a proof that this progress has been very rapid in all that relates to the admission of students to the Universities - we could quote largely from these literary organs, but our space restrains us. All we can transcribe here is the last confession of the Saturday Review: "The admission of Dissenters to the highest academical degree is in itself a matter of simple justice and good taste. If a man is to enter a University at all to be educated by it, to win its chief intellectual distinctions, to have his abilities and industry recognised by its class lists, it is ridiculous to suppose that he is to be one day brought face to face with a set of theological statements which the University has never professed to teach him; and on his rejection of these to be punished for an error in theology by a loss of the highest degree in arts. There is a sort of complicated absurdity in such a course which defies any attempt at defence or apology." The carrying of this measure is now only a question of time; and opposition and delay will only make its character more perfect, and its triumph more signal. But considering the rate at which right views have lately been proceeding, we are not too sanguine in asserting that before very long all the old University Tests will be abolished, and that the very Colleges will soon offer the rewards of learning to Dissenters as well as to Churchmen.

The last great movement which makes our era so memorable is the contest for the Disestablishment of the Irish Church. From the days of Edmund Burke to those of Sydney Smith, and Lord Macaulay, and onward to the present time, the enormous wealth of this Establishment,

in proportion to the number of its members, and its utter inefficiency in conserving, to say nothing about extending, Protestant Christianity in the sister island, have been so clearly seen and severely commented upon, that legislative action could no longer be forborne.

It may be proper to repeat the Religious Statistics of the country. The following are the numbers given on the best existing authority. Roman Catholics, 4,505,265; Presbyterians, 523,291; Methodists, 45,399; Independents, 4,532; Baptists, 4,237; Quakers, 3,695; other persuasions, 18,798, or, according to some lists, 14,695; leaving the Episcopalians not more than 693,357!! This "small remnant" monopolizes all the ecclesiastical property of the State, and engrosses its entire patronage.

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The services of this Church are in numerous cases performed in empty buildings, and one instance was given in the late parliamentary debates in which nearly £40,000 per annum was appropriated to the payment of services in a population less than many a single London parish. Latterly the conviction has been deepening in the public mind that this anomalous Church is one of the chief sources of Irish disaffection; that its connection with the State lowers its religious character and degrades its clergy in public esteem; that it stands in the way of the peace of the country; and that its disestablishment is demanded by considerations of imperial policy.

The hour being come for publicly acting out this growing conviction, and the man being found who in the public judgment was best qualified to lead the movement, we have had the whole question laid before the parliament, and resolutions have been carried by a large majority of the people's representatives which may be considered as sealing the doom of this unrighteous establish

ment. The first of three resolutions passed in the beginning of the last month affirms that it is necessary that the Church of Ireland should cease to exist as an establishment, due regard being had to personal interests, and individual rights of property. The second pronounces it to be expedient to prevent the creation of new personal interests by the exercise of any public patronage. And the third, in conformity with parliamentary etiquette, provides for asking Her Majesty to be graciously pleased to place at the disposal of the House her interest in the temporalities of the different dignitaries of the Church.

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propositions, so distinct, so practical, and so decisive in themselves, were submitted with so much firmness by their illustrious author, and were insisted upon with so much emphasis and eloquence by himself and his scarcely less powerful followers, that all resistance to them was overborne. The terrible earnestness of the Liberal leader, and the thorough single-mindedness of his political party, have advanced the cause of religious equality in the British Parliament to an extent which no one a few months ago would have supposed to be possible. How the Conservative Government can endure the defeat they have sustained, and how long they will remain steadfast to their avowed principle of "No Surrender," remains to be seen. It is a much more interesting subject of inquiry as to how the assailants of the Establishment will henceforth proceed in their future conflicts, and how early their hard battle will be fought out.

In connection with the progress of opinion on this grave question among our legislators it is even more assuring to observe how the desire for the disestablishment of the Church has been spreading throughout the country. No reports, contained in the newspapers, can show

the magnitude of the movement, or describe the enthusiasm which has been excited by it. And if to the ardent agitation of the subject among the masses who have crowded to hear public lecturers, is added the calm expression of deliberate sentiment upon it by professors and public writers of the highest eminence, the whole case must be accepted as a clear intimation of the purpose of Providence to put away one other evil from the earth. We give a short passage from one of the most popular of living writers, Mr. Goldwin Smith, who says of the Irish Establishment ::-"The case is literally beyond argument. Not only reason, but our own practice, in the case of Scotland, is against us. The only grounds on which we dealt differently with Ireland were such that we could now scarcely speak of them without shame. They were the conqueror's contempt for the conquered race, and the intolerant Protestants' unchristian hatred of the Catholic religion. The last subterfuge is to represent this wealthy Establishment as a missionary' Church. Strange missionaries, truly, these, and unparalleled in religious history, who, as prelude to their missionary efforts, and before they have made a single convert, appropriate to themselves the ecclesiastical property of the nation. This missionary church of yours,' said Robert Peel when the argument was used to him,' with all that wealth and power could do for her-can she, in two hundred years, show a balance of two hundred converts?' The truth is, that this Established Church, with its centuries of hateful associations, and cold, formal services, wearisome even to the English, and absolutely repulsive to the Irish temperament, is the grand obstacle to the spread of Protestantism, which otherwise would stand as fair a chance among the Celts of Ireland as it does among those of the Scotch Highlands,

Wales, or Cornwall, than whom there are no more fervid Protestants in the world." Since this was written Mr. Smith has spoken at a Manchester meeting on the same topic, when he said: "I am a free Churchman, and believe that as the Christian religion was most powerful to subdue the whole world when it was not connected with the State, in all probability it would recover its force and regain its hold on Society if it were dissevered from the State."

As an illustration of the effect of State alliance on social life in Ireland we refer to a letter just written by the Catholic Dean of Limerick, Dr. O'Brien. This well-known gentleman says that he spent some years in one of the North American colonies that he was at the head of a college there, and was also connected with the press. His most intimate friends were Protestants, and Protestant clergymen were sometimes his guests. He lectured frequently before societies exclusively Protestant, and received from them many tokens of strong regard. He has " now been twenty-three years in Ireland, without speaking a dozen times to a Protestant clergyman, or sitting down in social intercourse with a Protestant one score times." Is this one of the fruits of religious establishments? Then they are social as well as spiritual evils. And the experience of many an English dissenting minister might be appealed to in illustration of the anti-social working of State patronage in the Church of our own country. We are familiar with one who has lived in the midst of three clergymen for seven years past, paying tithes to one, and Church Rates for the support of a second, and frequently crossing the path of the third, without even the sign of a recognition from any of them! The plea of the honourable member for Sheffield in favour of the Irish Church, that its establishment planted one educated gentleman in

every parish whose income and intelligence diffuse benefits among the population, was one of the weakest which could be advanced. If this educated gentleman at all resembles others of the clerical fraternity in England, his influence is anything but wholesome. Indeed the system which naturally tends to foster superciliousness towards Catholics and Nonconformists, is positively baneful; and the sooner it is undermined and subverted the better.

The proposal to disestablish the Irish Church was met by the Government and its supporters by citing the Coronation oath, and it is even said that Her Majesty has been made to believe that she cannot give her consent to the proposal because of having sworn to preserve their rights and privileges to the bishops and clergy. But it is found that there is no difficulty of this kind in the case the Coronation oath binding the Sovereign to preserve those rights and privileges which by law "do or shall appertain to them." The law may increase or lessen them, and the Sovereign is not sworn to forbid a change either way, but merely to carry out the law as it is for the time being. The same may be said of the Act of Union, in which an argument has been found against the disestablishment. That Act, like all others, is alterable, and must cease to be binding, if the supreme power of Parliament so wills it. For while it identifies the Church of Ireland with that of England, and decrees that the doctrine, worship, discipline, and government of the said united Church shall

remain in full force for ever, yet as it is not quite seventy years since this Act was passed, its repeal would be only the removal of a human and quite a modern statute. Parliamentary enactments may aspire to a perpetuity of operation, but they never attain it; and the "for ever" of their existence is a mere techni

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