Page:The Conscience Clause (Oakley, 1866).djvu/66

54 have talked of Erastianism and Free Churches—and some have actually seceded from us on the ground of such objections—held fast with an Englishman's tenacity to the doctrine that a close alliance of the civil and spiritual power is a vast blessing to a Christian country, and, if I understand him rightly, has held—as I certainly hold myself—that in some shape such a relation of some kind is inevitable in a highly-organised and widely-cultivated society. I allow that there is a question what is the best relation of the two powers for ourselves in England at the present day. The question is, perhaps, more likely to come up for discussion than it has been for many years. I quite allow that the present relations of Church and State are not a little endangered by this very controversy. The State means to extend elementary education to all classes of the community. The State has again and again expressed its willingness—nay, its intention—to give this education a religious character. The State still intends this. To effect it, it has hitherto intrusted each religious denomination with the education of its own children. That system now discovers—indeed, has discovered from the first—symptoms of coming to a dead-lock. The Church might have taken the whole system into her own control from the commencement had she seen the opportunity, and used it aright. In its perplexity, the State again appeals to the Church in the first instance to solve the difficulty, to undertake the education of those who cannot otherwise be provided for, or who can be far better provided for in this way than in any other. Again, a golden opportunity is placed in the Church's hands to show herself a true nursing-mother to her children. If it is lost, much more if it is thrown away, contemptuously rejected. Parliament will not be diverted from its purpose, and, though on exactly opposite grounds, I agree with the Archdeacon, that the relations of Church and State in England will be seriously '* impaired"—indeed, that the continued establishment of the present Church of England will be very greatly endangered. That