the sunlight of a generous and lofty reliance upon Christ and his Church! Sweetly and innocently oblivious of the State system, with which Mr. Gladstone is in this country identified, he gives expression to opinions in regard to the Christian church in the colonies, which the most ardent admirer of Voluntaryism may endorse. He argues that civil freedom is closely allied to ecclesiastical, and shows how the "introduction of the principle of selfreliance in the management of their temporal affairs" had, “by the force of irresistible analogy," taught the colonists to "introduce the same principle of self-reliance into the management of their spiritual concerns." Again, he instances the case of the Canadian bishoprics and clergy. The Parliamentary grant of £16,000 a year, which had been administered to them by the agency of the Propagation Society, was withdrawn. Deep was the lamentation pronounced by the friends of Establishments. They affirmed that the cause of Christ in that colony would grievously suffer. But did Episcopacy collapse ? Did the society die? No. When the people found that the State would not do the work, they did it themselves. They rallied round the society and the institutions of their Church; and what was the consequence? When the grant was withdrawn the income of the society was £5,000 or £6,000, which, with the grant of £16,000, made some £21,000 altogether. "At the period of which I now speak," said Mr. Gladstone, in 1856, "the income has passed £60,000 a year, amounting to ten times the free and independent income which it possessed at the time when it was accustomed to lean upon Parliament." Meanwhile, funds had been collected for the endowment of the Canadian bishoprics. had been provided for without the aid of a shilling from home, and the arrangements for a third were then nearly completed. And what was the moral with which Mr. Gladstone adorned this tale? "It shows," he said, "that the Colonial church has emerged from a state of childhood to a state of manhood. It shows that in the future the energies which have raised it up to that point will, with the blessing of God, carry it a great deal further that it will itself become a centre of missionary labour for other lands; and, reproducing a fair likeness of the Church of England in the distant parts of North America, not only emulate the parent Church, but provoke that Church to an emulation of zeal and progress."

Two

These principles have long been uttered by the avowed advocates of Voluntaryism, but they derive new significance when falling from the lips of State Churchmen; and their results will be far wider than is contemplated by those who thus adopt them. The Earl of Shaftes bury may think of Voluntaryism as an auxiliary to an Establishment, "without which an Established Church would be dead and lifeless;" he may "maintain, that if the Church is to have full effect, full vigour and vitality of action, it must be constantly refreshed and sustained by the full development of the Voluntary principle," and that without it, "the fixed principle becomes a mere skeletona caput mortuum a dead thing without a reality;" but the

matter will not end here. Every effort to create or sustain free institutions will give zeal and strength for fresh action, and will also inspire a consciousness that the secular appliances on which they before relied are incongruous and embarrassing; and that the true power of the Christian Church is to be found in the exercise of those great spiritual forces which are not carnal but mighty. To employ worldly apparatus for the support of spiritual institutions is to exhibit the anomaly which has been well characterised as "Faith on crutches."

But despite the indifference, if not contempt, with which the Episcopal Church long regarded Voluntaryism, the spiritual life of that body is breaking through the bonds of precedent, formalism, and worldliness, and adopting various methods of free action. Indeed, it is confessed that these resources are the only ones now available for the support of the great aggressive efforts necessary to meet the spiritual wants of an increasing population. The Bishop of London recently warned a thousand of his clergy against cherishing the hope of any augmentation of State assistance. "To my mind," he said, "the one great lesson which all these inquiries into secular matters connected with our Church force upon us is this-that the days are gone by when the Church of England can look to be propped up by the adventitious aid of secular authority, if it be not true to itself, and to its heavenly Master, and to the souls He has committed to it; and yet that it is not therefore less prosperous and strong." The Bishop of Oxford has deprecated any application of the public resources to the purposes of Church extension, since this might repress the spirit of liberality now called forth, "by pointing the minds of men to the wrong quarter to which to look for relief." "If the Church of England is to stand," says the Spectator, sooner or later we must come to a general voluntary contribution for its partial support; and sooner is better than later—indeed, postponement may be irremediable." "Now, my plan," says the Rev. James Skinner, of St. Barnabas, Pimlico, "is to restore the maintenance of the Church to that original dignity to which we owe all our endowments-to let it rest upon the piety of her ministers. I am not romancing. I am speaking with more than five years' experience of what I am advising; and I contend that by leaving people to follow the inspiration of God's good Spirit in the matter of giving money just as they must be left to follow it in the exercise of prayer, and faith, and love, and holiness, you will sooner solve the difficulty of Church endowments and Church-rates than all the wise statesmen of the world, whom it will perplex to the end of time."

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It is the glowing recognition of the power of the Voluntary principle which has so greatly affected public opinion on the question of Church-rates. Not many years ago, their abolition was the forlorn hope of a few, now it is only a question of time. Nor is this result attributable only to the antagonism of Nonconformists, but to the conviction that is deepening in the public mind, that the day of

compulsion in matters of religion has gone, and that the voluntary sacrifices of the lovers of religion are adequate to its support. "I wish," said the Rector of St. Martin's, Birmingham, in January, 1859, "to see every Nonconformist in the kingdom fully and finally exempt from payment of Church-rates." In the recent debates, Sir John Pakington defended their maintenance on the ground that they were the oldest impost upon land in the country; but Sir Richard Bethell replied, first, that "they were not an impost upon land at all;" and next, that he objected to them because they were imposed 1,400 years ago, "because they were the legitimate offspring, the direct progeny of that old wicked principle of intolerance which compelled men in ancient times to adopt one mode of faith, one belief, one form of worship, and condemned them, if they resisted, to burning and torture. At this very moment," he said, "the common law professed to treat the whole nation as if it were of the same faith, and bound to resort to the same parish churches for the purpose of worship. In fact, it was this presumption which formed the foundation on which Church-rates rested. The Dissenter would not thank them for toleration, nor would he think the principle of religious equality completely established until he was relieved from every rag and vestige of the old system. He trusted that no Dissenter would accept this miserable compromise this attempt to create harmony between two things that were utterly irreconcileable."

The entire sufficiency of Voluntaryism to meet the necessities of the case, is gradually being admitted by those who are the warm friends of the Church of England. "If," said the Times, “the zeal of those who profess allegiance to the Church, who adhere to her communion, and enjoy her ministrations, is so very slack and lukewarm that they will not join voluntarily to maintain the fabric in which they meet, we should all be glad to see some organization which would awaken their zeal and enliven them to their duties. We believe, however, this unwillingness to have been very much overstated. When we see landed proprietors in every part of the kingdom building churches of extravagantly expensive architecture out of their own funds-when we find proprietary chapels arising always upon the edge of the wave of advancing population, and built, not only as a religious work, but also as a good money specalation, we are inclined to doubt whether there is not something of the love of persecution lurking in the declaration that churchmen are unwilling or unable to sustain their own churches. It certainly is not so with those sectarians into whose pockets the pro-Churchrate churchmen find a pleasure, more than commensurate with the sum obtained, in dipping their hands."

Again, the same journal asserts that "not a church in the land will be the worse off for the extinction of Church-rates. Be it town or country, a trading or a farming population, rich or poor, in a gay watering-place frequented by tens of thousands, or in some hamlet deep in mountains, wolds, or on Salisbury

Plain, every church will find a patron and a friend ready to spend time, labour, and money in preserving it from further decay, and rendering it more worthy of Him whose house we believe it to be. There will be more liberality than now, inasmuch as now all feel that there is a compulsory provision obliging upon all, and that this must be made to do all its work before an appeal is made to the people. So we give up this appeal."

We may now give some of the results which, despite all disadvantages, have been secured by the efforts of Voluntaryism. For instance, we may point to the town of Liverpool, where may be witnessed side by side the total inadequacy of a State system, and how Voluntaryism has had to meet the growing exigencies of the people. Two parish churches, containing some 2,600 sittings, and educating some 450 children in the schools, form the whole State provision for the religious education of 400,000 souls! Voluntaryism has done the rest, by the erection of nearly sixty Episcopal churches, with accommodation for 60,000 attendants, and instructing 26,000 children in the day and Sunday schools, and some 100 Nonconformist and Roman Catholic churches, with sittings for more than 100,000 people, and educating altogether 55,000 scholars.

The principle of Voluntaryism has received general and marked illustration during the last fifty years, in the way of church building, both in and out of the Establishment. Mr. Horace Mann, in the Census Report of 1851, alludes to the fact, that latterly a conviction had become prevalent in the minds of Episcopalians that "the relief of spiritual destitution must not be exclusively devolved upon the State," and that it is the duty of Christians, individually, as well as in their organised capacity, to minister to the religious necessities of the land. Accordingly," he remarks, a spirit of benevolence has been increasingly diffused, and private liberality is now displaying fruits, in daily rising churches, almost as abundant as in ancient times-distinguished, also, advantageously from earlier charity by being, it may fairly be assumed, the offspring of a more enlightened zeal, proceeding from a wider circle of contributors." This statement is substantiated by the following table :—

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Thus we see that when the Establishment relied upon the State for the erection of new churches only 500 were provided, much more than half the outlay of which Voluntaryism supplied; but that no sooner did Episcopalians look to the piety and fidelity of their own members for aid, than their resources were found sufficient to enable them to erect an average of two churches every week, for twenty years, or 2,029 in all, at a cost of more than £6,000,000 sterling, a rate which has, we believe, rather increased than diminished since;

besides very large sums which have been contributed for the rebuilding, restoration, or improvement of ancient buildings. Nor let it be forgotten, that in these efforts at self-expansion, Episcopalians have had to contend with some difficulties unknown to other bodies. "Canonical and customary regulations" have hampered them. 'Among the many excellencies of the Church of England," says the Quarterly Review, "that of elasticity cannot be reckoned, and unless she were prepared to sacrifice the character of her system, there would always be some limit where concession must cease, and enthusiasm would fret." "The Church Building Acts are in the most deplorable confusion," wrote Viscount Downe to Archdeacon Allen, "and the Church Building Commission gives as much trouble as it can, and as much expense. Instead of facilities being given to church builders, every obstacle is placed now by law and by the Commission in one's way. And doubtless Dr. Hook, then vicar of Leeds, entertained a similar opinion, when he found that, though willing to divest himself of half his income in order to create and endow new parishes in that town, he had to obtain an Act of Parliament for the purpose, at a cost of no less than £1,400, notwithstanding that the House of Lords remitted half its fees.

In various other ways, also, Voluntaryism has been made available to supply the deficiencies of the State-church system, and its resources manifest an expansiveness which appears very much to have astonished those who thus appealed to them. "Is the House aware," said Mr. Walpole, then Home Secretary, in February 1859, when introducing his bill for the alteration of the Church-rate law, and in which he intended partly to rely upon Voluntaryism: "Is the House aware that every year £10,000 is applied from the Queen Anne's Bounty for the benefit of the Church, and that the benefactions which are made to meet it are four times the amount, or £40,000 a-year. In the diocese of Winchester alone £200,000 has been contributed by the Church for Church purposes, and it has been met by benefactions voluntarily offered to the extent of £1,500,000. When the right hon. gentleman the member for Carlisle and myself sat in the Ecclesiastical Commission, it was proposed that we should give £37,000 for erecting parsonage houses, and for other Church purposes. The Ecclesiastical Commissioners applied that sum in the manner stated, but at the same time resolved to ask for benefactions to meet their contribution; and the result was that Voluntary efforts were made to the extent of four times the original grant. Again, when the Ecclesiastical Commissioners found themselves with a surplus, they took advantage of the experience they had acquired in the matter of the parsonage houses, and determined upon applying their surplus only in consideration of Voluntary benefactions being made to meet it. What was the result? In 1857 their surplus was £5,000, and they were enabled to contribute towards the augmentation of small livings to the extent of £12,000. In 1858 their surplus was £18,000, and I believe that I do not overstate the fact when I say they were able to contribute £50,000. In the present year their