against your intention it
may well be understood as such. You do not say that _you_ are one
who will co-operate with the political party which now seeks to
disestablish the Church in accomplishing its purpose, and I do not
suppose you ever will. But on behalf, not so much of the clergy as
of the laity--on behalf of the worshippers in our churches, of the
sick to be visited at home--of the poor in their cottages, of our
children in their schools--of our society in general, I entreat
those of the clergy who are now feeling the most acutely in this
matter, not to suffer their minds to be so absorbed by the present
grievance as to take no thought of the evils of disestablishment.
I am not foolishly blind to the faults of the clergy--indeed I
fear I am sometimes censorious in regard to them--and some of
their faults I do think may be referable to Establishment; the
possession of house and land, and a sort of independence of their
parishioners, in some cases seems to tend to secularity. I regret
sometimes their partisanship at elections, their speeches at
public dinners. But what good gift of God is not liable to abuse
from men? Taken as a whole, we have owed, and we do owe, under
Him, to our Established clergy more than we can ever repay, much
of it rendered possible by their Establishment. I may refer, and
now with special force, to Education--their services in this
respect no one denies--and but for Establishment these, I think,
could not have been so effectively and systematically rendered. We
are now in a great crisis as to this all-important matter.
Concurring, as I do heartily, in the praise which has been
bestowed on Mr. Forster, and expecting that his great and arduous
office will be discharged with perfect impartiality by him, and
with a just sense of how much is due to the clergy in this
respect, still it cannot be denied that the powers conferred by
the Legislature on the holder of it are alarmingly great, even if
necessary; and who shall say in what a spirit they may be
exercised by his successor? For the general upholding of religious
education, in emergencies not improbable, to whom can we look in
general so confidently as to the parochial clergy? I speak now
specially in regard to parishes such as I am most familiar with,
in agricultural districts, small, not largely e