Hence the interest of employers of labour. But you will say, 'Such a body as that must be on the eve of dissolution!' No. One bond unites the incongruous elements; vested interest-more irreverently designated loaves and fishes. How great is the religious discord promoted by this gigantic anomaly, who can describe? It must be seen and endured to be understood in all its bearings. An Established Church minister will not enter a nonconformist pulpit-a nonconformist minister must not enter a church desk. In the country parishes the church clergyman and his flock look with disdain on the dissenting minister and his congregation. It needs indeed some strength of mind to be a dissenter in the rural districts, because it implies ostracism from the best society. The rich man's child, the poor man's child, will alike suffer from a Christianity which is vindictive or a charity which is sectarian. Why do I mention these things?-to amuse you, or to derogate from your admiration of episcopacy, or to discount my native land? I should scorn to minister anything to sectarian rancour, or to vilify my own country to strangers. I am speaking to you of a political institution, of a Church in the meshes of the State. I refer to these things only that you may have an idea of the influence exerted in English politics and society by a gigantic vested interest which from end to end of England prompts and fosters unchristian enmity, bigotry, and strife. Whittier's poem. X. WHITTIER'S POEM. Your poet Whittier has prophesied in noble numbers against the hierarchs of such an institution. Now too oft the priesthood wait Not on them the poor rely, Who, with fawning falsehood, cower Oh! to see them meanly cling Tell me not that this must be, Free the needed truth to speak, Right the wronged and raise the weak. Not to fawn on wealth and state, Not to peddle creeds like wares, Not to print the new life's bliss Not for words and works like these, Priest of God, thy mission is, But to make earth's desert glad, In its Eden greenness clad. And to level manhood bring And the Christ of God to find In the humblest of thy kind. State and Free religions contrasted. XI. STATE AND FREE RELIGIONS CONTRASTED. Yet in the face of these things there are men, and able men, who argue in favour of a state religion. The Bismarckian principle has been ably propounded in England, and the right of the state to control the faiths taught in it has been supported by arguments that would have justified the Inquisition. Even among yourselves have arisen people to assert that the legislature ought to enact the existence of a God. I have often thought that the God whose name is not mentioned in the American constitution is more revered by the American people than is in England the God who shares with her Majesty the Queen the headship of the Church. I may be wrong, but my own observation is that religion is here more earnest, more vivid, more energetic and sacrificing and less sectarian, than in any other Anglo-Saxon ccmmunity, and I attribute it to the perfect level of religious status and to the absence of what is termed the patronage of government. XII. PRIVILEGE IN ENGLAND. in Eng Such then is the nature of vested interests. Privilege I have said enough to warn you to be jealous land. of their establishment and growth among you. They are silent and secret in their increase. Crescit occulto, velut arbor ævo. Strong I say, in an old country, is vested interest; great also is the power of PRIVILEGE. Privilege in Germany controls governments, rules society, commands the army, suppresses the people; and in that very Germany now so preeminent, privilege, waxing unendurable, will yet be dethroned by a liberal revolution. 'But,' you say, 'what of privilege in |