religion is in its own nature most sociable. It cannot abide in a state of seclusion. It languishes and dies if it has not free vent. Its only healthy existence -is that of a permeating spirit which appropriates and quickens all that it touches. The whole life of man is essentially religious; and politics, the sphere of just relations between men, especially become religious when conducted in a Christian spirit. Nothing can be more fatal to mankind or to religion itself than to call one set of things or persons religious and another secular, when Christ has redeemed the whole. It is especially erroneous to suppose that the clergy alone represent religion. They have their special function, which, rightly exercised, should be the highest of all. But others have also their vocation and ministry. Every calling which is so exercised as to become a service to God and a spiritual benefit to man is a sacred ministry, and he who works in it is a minister of Christ. To attempt, therefore, to treat clergymen and pastors as the sole ministers of religion is to take the heart out of the Christian community. Such a tendency is sometimes spoken of as that which exalts the church. In reality what it does is to exalt the clergy, at least in appearance, beyond their just measure; but the church it enfeebles and destroys.

It is, further, assumed that the clergy, or the worshipping body taken by itself, bear witness in their isolation for the liberty of conscience. The great Popes and Archbishops of the Middle Ages, it is said, were the only men who resisted kings and emperors, and who asserted a spiritual power in opposition to the

selfish and worldly power then ruling in secular affairs; and, it is implied, this selfish and worldly spirit will always remain dominant in secular affairs, while the succession of these great clerical potentates, and of their protest for liberty of conscience, falls now to synods and church-assemblies: these are needed in modern times, it is supposed, to resist the tyrannical materialism of secular government, and to maintain spiritual freedom. But it may well be doubted whether the clerical power was ever the sincere advocate of liberty of conscience. What the great Popes of the Middle Ages aimed at was not liberty of conscience for the worshippers, but a vast imperial dominion for themselves and the clergy, a dominion having very little that was religious in it, but using religion as the instrument of its power. Even if we concede that there was something favourable to liberty in the claims. of clerical independence in the Middle Ages, such claims have almost ceased to have any spiritual value since the laity awoke to a sense of responsibility at the Reformation. They have served for the most part, whether abroad or in Great Britain, in Roman Catholic or in Protestant countries, merely to consolidate and enforce the existing system; their advocates have contended zealously for their own rights. In doing this they have sometimes incidentally served the cause of freedom. But it would be difficult to point out at Trent or at Dort, at Westminster or at Edinburgh, an occasion in which they had sincerely asserted individual or general liberty.

That which seems to be aimed at in all the assertions

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of the need of ecclesiastical separation is that there is a sphere in which law and government have no right to interfere, but in which individual men, or companies of men freely associated, must think and act for themselves. There are many departments of human life in which this is the case; and religious conviction, though a pre-eminent, is by no means the only instance. But let it be asked, as to any of these spheres, from which of the two powers, from the clergy or the general government, has the chief danger to liberty arisen? The answer must in almost all cases be, From the clerical side. In the Middle Ages the Albigenses and the Waldenses were slaughtered by lay swords, but under clerical incitement. So it was with the persecution of the Lollards and of the Hussites, with the massacre of St. Bartholomew, with the expulsion of the English Puritan ministers in 1662, and of the French Protestants in 1687. It has been in the repression, not in the exaltation, of the clerical and ecclesiastical power, that the best hope of liberty has lain. If we take the analogy of other departments of life, in which there should be immunity from minute police regulations, the answer becomes plainer still. The family life, literature, science, art, trade, are instances of this. Political experience has shown that it would be very wrong that the government should interfere in the conduct of family life as was attempted in some of the Greek Republics, where the time of marriage, the number of children, even the meals which the citizens should take in common, were prescribed by law. But in modern times it is the clerical, not the lay power from which

there has been the danger of interference with the sacred freedom of family relations. It would, again, be monstrous for the government to prescribe what books should be written or read. The censorship and the prosecution of authors for anything but libel and a few marked offences against the community have disappeared. It is the clerical power at Rome, and the governments influenced by it, which have, in modern times, presented the most flagrant instances of such - attaints upon freedom. It would be wrong, again, for the government to interfere with the pursuit of knowledge, to forbid enquiry, to encourage some and discourage others of the fields of human thought; and the same thing may be said as to art. But if the history of these departments of life be examined in such a record. as that of the History of Rationalism 1, it will be seen that the false notions with which clericalism had overlaid them have almost always been the retarding element in their development. And, as regards trade, while governments have often, through a mistaken notion of advantage to the community, or to particular classes within it, fettered commercial intercourse, it is the clerical influence which for ages made the larger operations of commerce impossible by declaring that the taking of interest was by the law of God forbidden.

It is a discovery of political science that with all these departments of life the central government should interfere as little as possible. Does that mean

1 History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe.' By W. E. H. Lecky, M.A. Longmans.

that it should not assert its supremacy over them, and should refrain from making laws for them? By no means. Its true function in these departments of life is to guarantee their free and beneficial development, to establish general laws in accordance with their recognised requirements, to intervene when their machinery has got out of gear, or when new conditions arise, and to present an impartial tribunal for the settlement of disputes. No one thinks it necessary that each of these departments should have a separate organization endowed with indefeasible rights. They are none the less free because the central government assures their just internal relations and their free development. Precisely the same may be said of the organization for public worship. The central government has at times, no doubt, interfered with it unduly. But what it ought to do, and has for the most part done, is to guarantee its harmonious exercise according to the convictions of those for whom it exists. And this it has for the most part done in England with general approval, in contradistinction to the usurped authority of the Pope over the nation, and also to the no less usurped authority of the clergy over the laity.

If it be asked whether there must not be a special system of law for clerical discipline, the answer is, that the analogy may be followed of professions like the army and navy, or of special systems of law such as those by which Admiralty suits are decided; and that, as in those cases, it is well to have the advice of experts. But, since clerical discipline is a much less