So.

unwise, about matters of practice. The law has been appealed to, to allay both, and it has failed to do And more than this, nobody, whether he be layman or ecclesiastic, appears to be satisfied as to what the law really is, either at home or in the colonies. This is a great misfortune. But will the misfortune be lightened if ecclesiastics, in their eagerness to assert what they believe to be the Church's true teaching, bring Church and State, even apparently, into collision?

We do not profess to speak at this moment in the character either of theologians or ecclesiastical lawyers; our object rather is to treat the important subject on which we have entered more as a social than a religious one. We entirely object to the disestablishment of the Church in Ireland, because the measure would not only be unwise in itself, but would inevitably lead to others worse than itself. Were Ireland before us in the condition of New Zealand, or the Cape, or any other colony, we should certainly never think of setting up in her a Protestant Established Church. After the course which events have taken, we scarcely care to hide our regret that a Protestant Church ever was established in Ireland. But that is a very different thing from assenting to its disestablishment now, on no other ground than because the Irish Roman Catholic bishops demand its disestablishment, and are supported in that demand by Liberal writers and speakers, who are quite at a loss what to advise after their demand shall have been complied with. And we object for this reason also The process of disestablishment is one which, once set it agoing, we shall find ourselves puzzled how to arrest. Observe the plea on which the Irish Church is denounced. It is the Church of a mere portion of the population, and if you fling into the same scale with it all the Protestants in Ireland, it must still in a balance of numbers

kick the beam when weighed against the Romanists. Nobody pretends to say that the property, or the great bulk of it, which pays tithe to the Church, is not in Protestant hands. Nobody can. dispute the fact, that a considerable portion of its present endowments the Irish Church has received from successive benefactors since the Reformation. Still the argument of numbers is against it; and because it is pretended that these numbers regard the Established Church as an offence, it will be policy as well as justice to sweep it aside. Apply this argument to other portions of the empire, and what is the result? Of the Church in England we shall for the present say little. Its turn may ultimately come. But at this moment, in spite of the heavy blow inflicted on its influence by Sir Robert Peel's Reform measure of 1835, it is far too closely interwoven with the interests, not to speak of the affections, of the English laity, to be in imminent danger. There are plenty of lay impropriations in England for which the owners will fight hard, and in fighting for which they fight for appropriations also. No small share of the patronage of the Church of England is in the hands of the laity. These are stout collateral ties, which, concurring with the higher one of reverence for the teaching and respect for the constitution of the Church, must range upon her side a phalanx of champions quite able to keep their ground, for a time at least, against her assailants. How is it in those respects with the Established Church of Scotland?

Casual observers may suppose - demagogues, who know what they are about, profess to believe-that the Established Church of Scotland is safe,-first, in the affections of the Scottish people, and next in the modesty of her own constitution. The position of her clergy is as unpretending as the

most rigid purists could desire; and hence agitators-English agitators, be it observed, like Mr Bright-speak of her as worthy of all respect, because, though established, she is democratic. But they who understand, as we do, the tone of feeling in Scotland, know perfectly well that, however faithfully she may have striven to accomplish her mission, she is in no favour with the Scottish people, counted by heads. Compared with Dissenters (we put Scottish Episcopalians and Roman Catholics alike out of this category), she is in a decided minority as regards numbers. Of the working classes-the class of domestic servants, of shopkeepers in towns, of tenant-farmers in the country-many went from her at the period of the last disruption. Some, we are glad to believe, are returning to the faith and worship of their fathers, but as yet the reconversions seem to be comparatively rare. It is a fact, too, that, generally speaking, the ministers, if not the laity, of the Dissenting bodies in Scotland, bear towards the Established Church that bitterness of feeling which invariably attends upon family quarrels. For, after all, what are the grounds on which they justify their secession? The U.P., the Free Church, the Cameronians, equally with the Established Church accept the Westminster Confession of Faith as the standard of their creed, and equally instruct their children in the Larger and Shorter Catechisms. Their government is in Presbyteries, Synods, and a General Assembly. So is hers. They will not tolerate printed forms of prayer, and object to written sermons. She, too, puts these things aside, and of late with a strong hand. But this is not all. The legislation of of the Established Church on the subject of patronage has not been such as to conciliate towards her the aristocracy of the kingdom. So long as they enjoyed

the undisputed right of presenting to her benefices, they had a personal interest, even if declining to communicate with her, in helping to maintain her temporal rights. But the restrictions now imposed upon them in that matter irritate not a little; and it may be doubted whether the people gain in proportion as much as the Church loses by the circumstances. Another source of weakness there is in the mode in which the Scottish clergy are paid. It is not north of the Tweed, as it is south of that river, that the roots of church property intertwine and mingle with the roots of lay property. The teinds are raised exclusively for the support of the clergy in Scotland and the parochial schools, and they are never paid, even by Presbyterian heritors, nor manses built or enlarged, without a grudge.

All this being so, it is clear to us that if the status of the Irish Church be successfully assailed, the blow will at once rebound towards Scotland; and we shall have an immediate demand for the confiscation of Church property there which the stoutest champion of ecclesiastical establishments in the abstract will find it difficult to put aside. The very fact that her enemies agree with her in doctrine and discipline, must indeed shut the mouths of her friends. There is something to be said in defence of a Church which, though it be the Church of a minority, has a clear principle of its own, as well as a distinct worship and constitution. These may be sound or unsound; but the State has adopted them as sound, and because of their soundness the State is morally pledged to sustain them. But what can we allege as a ground of upholding an institution from which the bulk of the people have withdrawn themselves, and that, too, without giving up a single religious opinion or practice to which they had been trained from their childhood?

ter.

We repeat, then, that if the Church of Ireland go, the sooner the Church of Scotland shall begin to put her house in order the betAnd when both are thrown over, assuredly the Church of England, though she may stagger on for a while by herself, will carry about with her the seeds of decay. But will the evil end here? Certainly not. The Churches, as Churches, will doubtless survive their political degradation. But the shock of the political destruction of the Church of England at least must make itself felt in every nerve of English society. Let not statesmen, whether they call themselves Whigs or Conservatives, fall into the mistake of supposing that the democracy, if it succeed in disestablishing Churches, will stop there. The coronet is as distasteful in the eyes of that abstraction as the mitre. The Crown commands little or no reverence, and property of every kind has got, as is well understood, too much into lumps. If we must fight for all these, let us make our first stand where we are first attacked.

Are we then resolved to kick against the pricks, by refusing to inquire into the condition of the Irish Church at all? or if the result of such inquiry be to make clear some mode by which its efficiency as a Church may be extended without casting it adrift entirely from the State, are we determined to reject it? Certainly not. A Commission has been issued. We shall wait patiently before going further into the subject than we have here done, till the Commission sends in its report. We ourselves see a good deal that may be effected to conciliate even ultra-Liberal prejudices, without striking at the root of Conservative principle; but we doubt the expedieney of anticipating either the Government or its agents by explaining, at this moment, what it is that we see. When the Royal Commissioners deliver

themselves, we shall take the liberty of criticising their deliverance; and they may depend upon it that we shall do it in a spirit of perfect fairness. Meanwhile it may not be amiss to remind the bishops and clergy of the United Church that the fate of the Church, not as an establishment only, but as a Church also, is very much in their own hands. If they persist in squabbling among themselves, as for the last four or five years they have been doing, they will give increased boldness to their enemies, in exact proportion to the disgust with which their best friends are affected. Why should Bishop Colenso and his absurd and most unscholarlike criticisms set the world in a blaze? Rather let him be free to teach the Zulus, to his dying day, that Moses is a myth, and the resurrection from the dead a mere form of speech, than that infidels should have the opportunity of pointing to him as a living proof that men cannot profess Christianity in any form, especially as it is taught by the Established Church, without putting heart and soul and the intellect itself into bondage. Colenso will find his level-and is finding it fast. Leave him alone, and six years hence his heresies will cease to trouble any one. Why should the wearers of albs and coloured stoles, and the burners of incense, and the silly creatures who love to walk in procession up and down the aisles of St Alban's Church, be prosecuted for their tomfoolery? Plain - men of common sense need not go all the way to Holborn in order to get their feelings outraged unless they like. Leave Mr Maconochie and his curates to play their antics unopposed, and we venture to predict that they will soon get tired of them when no spectators come either to censure or admire. And extinguish if you can, by ceasing to take them in, such nox

men

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