If there were no national and historic form of church-order in possession, a genuine Christian would regret having to spend time and thought in shaping one, in having so to encumber himself with serving, to busy himself so much about a frame for his religious life as well as about the contents of the frame. After all, a man has only a certain sum of force to spend; and if he takes a quantity of it for outward things, he has so much the less left for inward things. It is hardly to be believed, how much larger a space the mere affairs of his denomination fill in the time and thoughts of a Dissenter, than in the time and thoughts of a Churchman. Now all machinery-work of this kind is, to a man filled with a real love of the essence of Christianity, something of a hindrance to him in what he most wants to be at, something of a concession to his ordinary self. When an established and historic form exists, such a man should be, therefore, disposed to use it and comply with it. But,--as if it were not satisfied with proving its unprofitableness by corroding us with jealousy and so robbing us of the mildness and sweet reasonableness of Christ, which is our mainstay,--political Dissent, Dissent for the sake of church-polity and church-management, proves it, too, by stimulating our ordinary self through over-care for what flatters this. In fact, what is it that the everyday, middle-class Philistine,--not the rare flower of the Dissenters but the common staple,--finds so attractive in Dissent? Is it not, as to discipline, that his self-importance is fomented by the fuss, bustle, and partisanship of a private sect, instead of being lost in the greatness of a public body? As to worship, is it not that his taste is pleased by usages and words that come down to _him_, instead of drawing him up to _them_; by services which reflect, instead of the culture of great men of religious genius, the crude culture of himself and his fellows? And as to doctrine, is it not that his mind is pleased at hearing no opinion but its own, by having all disputed points taken for granted in its own favour, by being urged to no return upon itself, no development? And what is all this but the very feeding and stimulating of our ordinary self, instead of the annulling of it? No doubt it is natural; to indulge our ordinary self is the most natural thing in the world. But Christianity is not natural; and if the flower of Christianity be the grace and peace which comes of annulling our ordinary self, then to this flower it is fatal. So that if, in order to gratify in the Dissenters one of the two faults against which Christianity is chiefly aimed, a jealous, contentious spirit, we were to sweep away our national and historic form of religion, and were all to tinker at our own forms, we should then just be flattering the other chief fault which Christianity came to cure, and serving our ordinary self instead of annulling it. What a happy furtherance to religion!