These, like the religious liberationists, are anxious that the instrument for spiritualising life should be effective. The Reformers, though, recognise that this, the highest object of any organisation is also the object of the State, and can only be attained by means of the Constitution. Individuals may be left to provide for the wants they have recognised. The State must provide for the wants of the higher life and send out teachers to tell individuals of things beyond their ken. The Church reformers urge, therefore, that the principle of Establishment should be retained, but that abuses should be eradicated and old-fashioned methods reformed. The practical difficulties of reform are doubtless many, but they are not insuperable. Inasmuch as Burke has said, ‘What is taught by a State Church must be decided by the State, and not by the clergy,’ it is possible to conceive that the nation, and not a sect, might determine how truth should be sought and taught. Inasmuch as now it is the people who directly or indirectly appoint their rulers, it is easy to conceive how the people, and not a patron, might have a voice in the choice of the parson, and how the parishioners, and not the parson, might govern the Church and the parish. There need be no ill-paid, no over-paid, no unworthy incumbent. There need be no neglected parish, and a State Church might be as effective an organisation for promoting spirituality as the State Post-office is for promoting intercourse. Institutions have survived a greater reform than that which is required in the Church, and those who have seen the changes which the law-making department of the State has endured may without fear submit the right-making department to like changes. It is no new principle to reform the Reformed Church. By a law of Henry VIII. the king has authority to ‘reform, correct all errors, heresies and abuses,’ and the people’s Parliament now takes the place of the king. ‘The particular form of Divine worship,’ says the preface to Edward VI.’s second Prayer Book, ‘and the rites and ceremonies appointed to be used therein, being in their own nature indifferent and _alterable_, and so acknowledged, it is but reasonable, &c. &c.’ The Long Parliament changed the whole Constitution and Ritual of the Church. The Restoration Parliament undid that work. Throughout the seventeenth century the Teaching, the Ritual, and the Organisation were discussed as open questions, and the present system is the result purely of a Parliamentary decision. Three hundred years ago, to suit the new age, the new birth of learning, the Church was reformed. The present times are marked by changes as great as those of the Renaissance, and the Church remains unchanged. As was the Church of the sixteenth century, so is the Church of the nineteenth century.