So rapid has been the course of events in late years—I might single out the last ten, or the last five, or (quite by exception) the last year of all—that Church-people must prepare themselves, I feel sure, for a speedy, a scarcely gradual, demolition of all that has been distinctive, all that has been exceptionally advantageous, in their position. An eminent man and excellent Bishop, who was laid in his grave last Friday, was wont to say, _If I live ten years_, _I shall be the last Bishop of Peterborough_. It is more than probable that some of my younger hearers this evening may live not only to see what we call the Church of England thrown altogether upon voluntary offerings for its maintenance—in which case some of them may remember in old age the first collection made in the Parish Church of Doncaster for the repairs of its fabric and the expences of its services—but also to find it at least an open, perhaps a very doubtful, question, to whom shall belong the Churches themselves and the glebe-houses—whether indeed there shall be left to the old Church of England, as we still fondly call it, any vestige of that legal standing which has made her hitherto the calm shelter of her children, the admiring wonder of foreigners, and the mark of obloquy or envy (as the case might be) to thousands of her domestic enemies. I am far from regarding this prospect—be it far off or near—with unmixed alarm or dismay. I never believed that the Establishment, as such, was Christ’s Church in England, or that the withdrawal of the favour of the State would be the putting out in our communion of the Divine Shechinah. It is not so much for the Church that I fear: for I firmly believe Christ’s words, _Lo_, _I am with you alway_, and doubt not that the old, the everlasting benediction is able to repeat itself in many new, many diverse forms. I do fear something for the State, when it ceases to have a religion. I do fear something for the average tone of religion in our cottages and in our palaces, when there is no longer one form of worship which has upon it the stamp of pedigree and of custom; when it is an evenly balanced question with every man and with every family, _Whither shall I go this day for God’s worship_? _whither_, _or whether any whither_? I do fear that there will be more and more in many houses of a cold indifferent scepticism, a Christless education and a Godless life. I do fear that more and more may reach old age ignorant of a Saviour, and go to their graves without any sure and certain hope of a resurrection to eternal life.