The War and Unity | Page 8

Christians which I have
specified comes nearer home and should press upon our minds and
hearts more strongly. It is a practical one in every English town and
every country parish, and almost everywhere throughout the world
where the English language is spoken. Moreover, even the most loyal
members of the Church of England, in spite of the points of principle
on which they are divided from those other English Christians,
resemble them more closely in many respects in their modes of thought,
even on religion, than they do the members of other portions of the
ancient Catholic Church from which they have become separated. And
in addition to the distinctly religious reasons for considering the
possibility of drawing more closely together and even ultimately
uniting in one communion these different denominations of British
Christians, there is a patriotic motive for doing so. Fuller religious
sympathy, more cooperation, between the members of these different
denominations could not fail to strengthen greatly the bonds between
different classes amongst us, and to increase the coherency of the

whole nation and empire.
It would be unwise, if in proposing steps towards reunion, difficulties
and dangers connected with them were ignored; and I believe it to be
my duty frankly to refer to some which suggest themselves to one
looking from a Churchman's point of view. There are two chief barriers
to the union of members of the Church of England and English
Nonconformists that must be mentioned.
(1) That which I will refer to first is the connexion of the Church of
England with the State.
This connexion is not, I think, such a hindrance to religious sympathy
as it was, but it would be untrue to say that it is none. And there is of
course the danger that if disestablishment became a political question,
and especially if it involved the deflection of endowments which have
long been used, and on the whole well-used, for the maintenance and
furtherance of religion to secular objects, feeling between the majority
of Churchmen and those who in consequence of their views in the
matter became opposed to them might be seriously embittered. Yet
there is good ground for hoping that the question of the relations of
Church and State and all matters connected therewith will in the years
that are coming be faced in a calmer spirit, and with truer insight into
important principles, than too often they have been in the past. It should
certainly be easier for those who approach them from different sides to
understand one another. Particular grievances connected with
inequality of treatment by the State have been removed; while a broad
principle for which Nonconformists stand in common has come to be
more clearly asserted, through their attaching increasingly less
significance to the grounds on which different bodies amongst them
were formed, as indicated in the names by which they have been
severally known, and banding themselves together as the "Free
Churches." But in the Church of England also in recent years there has
been a growing sense of the need of freedom. It is better realised than at
one time that in no circumstances could the Church rightly be regarded
as a mere department of the State, or even as the most important aspect
of the life of the State. However complete the harmony between

Church and State might be, the Church ought to have a corporate life of
her own. She requires such independence as may enable her to be
herself, to do her own work, to act according to the laws of her own
being. This is necessary even that she may discharge adequately her
own function in the nation.
It is not part of my duty now to inquire in what respects the Church of
England lacks this freedom, or whether such readjustments in her
connexion with the State can be expected as would secure it to her,
implying as the making of them would that, although she does not now
include among her members more than half the nation, she is still for an
indefinitely long time to continue to be the official representative of
religion in the nation. But I would urge that when these points are
discussed the question should also be considered whether, in a nation
the great majority in which profess to be Christian, the State ought not
to make profession of the Christian religion, which involves its
establishment in some form, and whether there are not substantial
benefits especially of an educative kind to be derived therefrom for the
nation at large; and if so how this can in existing circumstances be
suitably done. It should be remembered that in many cases the
forefathers of those who are now separated from the National Church
did not hold that a connexion between Church