There is, in the intellectual sphere, something very like this in France. The course of instruction for the youth of France, in all the institutions which are sustained and directed by the State, is very elaborately and admirably organized. It used to be said of a recent Minister of Public Instruction, that it was his glory to reflect that he could sit in his bureau and read from a manual on his table the lesson which was being taught at that particular moment in all the public schools in France. Now, the French Government manuals are admirable. There has been an immense improvement in our English schoolbooks since their compilers condescended to look into the schoolbooks of France. The lesson thus given at a particular hour throughout the country would probably be in every way excellent--the best of its kind. But what is the broad result of this monstrous uniformity, this _par ordre supérieur_, in every department of a youth's education? It turns out admirable scholars, devoted to scholarship, and admirable theoretical politicians educated in the philosophy of citizenship above every nation in the world. But when a tremendous shock, as at this moment, has broken up their accustomed order, and thrown each in a measure on his own resources to choose the wisest course in perilous emergencies, an utter want of the highest faculty--the faculty of self-guidance in emergencies--is revealed; the people have been as shepherdless sheep, and for want of the higher leadership, we may say, France has been lost. We see, then, all that is fair in aspect in this vision of one happy, united, and prosperous Church in the country, leaving no room for Nonconformity; but we see too plainly the disastrous cost at which it would be purchased. And we turn to gaze upon another vision, fairer, nobler, more fruitful by far, which would realize our aspiration for the religious future of our land. The country full of a zealous and independent ministry of the Gospel, independent in the highest sense, which includes dependence on Christ; each community working out in entire freedom its conception of what a Church ought to be and what a Church ought to do, and under the guidance of one whom it recognises as Christ's minister, ordained for its service by the manifest unction of the Spirit: diversities of gifts, diversities of methods, diversities of operations, diversities of results; but each Christian company honouring the other and rejoicing in its work, recognising that each one is adding a contribution to a great whole which can be built up only of these independent cells of spiritual life; the whole spiritual body, the Church of England, having no visible form of unity, but manifesting itself spiritually in the whole social estate, the commercial, intellectual, and political activity of England; a fair image, it seems to us, whose grand and solemn aspect could only be parodied by the most elaborate and comprehensive pattern of a law-made National Church.