The place of the Church in the Constitution is forgotten; so when there is a complaint that impurity is sapping the strength of the nation, or that cheating is ruining trade, or that selfishness is making men scamp work, it is not the clergy who are called on to do their duty and make a cure, but a new society is formed or a new law is demanded, and the clergy are not even rebuked for neglect. No one seems to expect that a Church, nominally co-extensive with the nation, which is established to spiritualise life, should do its work. The position is indefensible. Those politicians who are moved only by agitation may say, ‘The condition of the Church is not one of practical politics,’ and pass on. The greater number realising that the ultimate conflict is between those who would govern with God and those who would govern without God, and anxious that the Church should be effective for its purpose, are quietly making up their minds to one of two solutions--Disestablishment or Reform. The present means for making the people virtuous or honest fail. ‘Disestablish,’ urge the Liberationists. ‘Let the clergy of the Church be stirred by competition and roused by interest, and we shall have better results.’ ‘Let the connection with the State continue,’ say the Reformers; ‘let the abuses be eradicated, but leave the teachers of the nation to be moved by duty and not by bigotry or sectarian rivalry.’ These two solutions for making effective the means of developing honesty offer themselves for examination. It is worthy of remark that the common arguments for Disestablishment, except those urged by the opponents of all religion, hardly touch the principle of Establishment. Secularists urge that religion being useless and spirituality a fancy, it is no business of the State to do anything to spiritualise the life of its members as a means to increase virtue. Their position is unassailable, and the day on which the nation decides that God has no relation to life, the Church as a spiritualising agency must be disestablished, its buildings turned into lecture-halls, and its endowments devoted to the reduction of the national debt or to the teaching of art and science. The position of the Secularists is occupied by few. The ordinary advocate of Disestablishment is anxious that the life of the nation may be spiritualised, but he sees that the Church is ineffective, he marks its abuses, its rivalry with the sects, and its assumption of superiority. He argues that its ineffectiveness and its assumption are due to its connection with the State, and urges that Disestablishment alone will sweep out the abuses. He condemns abuses but he cannot condemn a principle which affirms the duty of the State to teach the higher life, because he himself has probably approved the principle as a supporter of Education Acts, liquor laws, and other legislation of a like aim.