THE DISESTABLISHMENT OF THE ENGLISH CHURCH.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 434, 4 January 1890, Page 6

THE DISESTABLISHMENT OF THE ENGLISH CHURCH.

Not long since Mr Gladstone, when on his lecturing tour, spoke very plainly on the question of the disestablishment of the English Church. It was, however, a subject upon which, considering his advanced age, he said he did not see very well how he could take action. But ho significantly added that when the time comes, it will come to a people prepared for it. A paper remarking upon this statement of Mr Gladstone’s says: “If England’s tendency is in this direction, and doubtless it is in some respects, it is but a countermarch of political influences on the scene of transpiring events. Establishments of creeds and churches and enforcement of religious principles are not parts of the duties of civil government. Such enactments never can secure the prevalence of Christian influences. They rather become the fosterers of hypocrisy and formality.” The statement made by Mr Gladstone was a very bold one, but there is little doubt it does to a very considerable extent hit the popular taste, and ; the newspaper extract given is a reflex of the opinions held by many antagonistic to the Established Church, and of that numerous body who take no particular interest in such matters, but whose common sense, ignoring all religious sentiment, tells them that it can be no part of the duty of a civil government to adopt, establish and virtually enforce a particular religious creed or belief.

This is all perfectly right from a purely mundane point of view, but it is not an entirely satisfactory answer to the problem, notwithstanding the doubt and difficulties of finding the truth among religious beliefs and to discover the way of so comporting one’s self in this life that it shall be the absolutely true and perfect way, all of which is at present Em-rounded with a thick fog of mystery, as is evidenced by the fact that although there is only one goal to be reached, there are a thousand and one methods of reaching that goal, as taught by this, that, or the other sect or denomination. They cannot all be right, that is very certain ; they all have, it is to be hoped, a sufficient portion of tho truth to enable them to eventually arrive at the distant goal, even though they reach it by an extremely circuitous route. But after all, it must be evident to everyone that there is one, and can be only one true way, and the question may rightly be asked, has that true way been yet found ? Has any nation secured a monopoly of it ? and if so, and knowing for a surety that such was the case, would not that nation hold fast to its religious faith, and glory in the fact that it was part and parcel of its national life? The association of Church and State under the British Constitution is nob of modern date, but goes hack such a distance that no historian has attempted to fix it. The Church and State in Britain were one long before the terms Protestantism and Roman Catholicism were thought of. They were to a certain extent one before Christianity prevailed on earth. There is generally, one might almost say always, some very good and firm foundation for a nation’s institutions, the initiation of wK msaDie as to time and place, object and meaning, and there is little doubt that prior to the severance of Church and State in Britain, a searching investigation will be made as bo the cause and origin of it, and if on investigation it is found to be a vital national principle, it will be retained ; if found to rest upon a baseless foundation, it will be discarded. These colonies have proved how well the Anglican Church may do without State assistance ; but in England a good deal of reverence has become attached to the old Church, even among those who do not worship according to its canons ; and the absence of any very strong or united agitation by Nonconformists in favour of disestablishment shows that, apart from the correction of a few prominent abuses, there is no very burning desire to seriously interfere with the established order of things in relation to the national church, so long as it continues to fulfil important functions in the life of the nation. “ Auckland Star.”