Gradually the churches of this remarkable country are ceasing to have anything to do with religion at all. "Religion be hanged!" say those that run them. "Religion no longer appeals to the wayward, stony-hearted, over-driven, half-educated English populace. What is wanted is social brightness and warmth, the religion of brotherhood and the full belly; so that we will give magic-lantern entertainments in our churches on the Lord's Day, we will go in 'bald-headed' for pleasant Sunday afternoons, hot coffee and veal-and-ham pies, and screws of tobacco given away at the doors, wrapped up in a tract, which you are at liberty either to read or to light your pipe with." As for the English priests that had the authority of God, they are no longer sure whether they have that authority or not. Of course, they believe they have it in a sacerdotal, canonical, and private way; but not one of them dare stand up and swear by his powers publicly. The bishops are all for peace and quietness. "If you please, we are your friends, and not your masters," say they to their clergy; and their clergy, to use an English vulgarism, "wink the other eye." And the clergy, too, in turn are the friends and not the masters of common men; they are so much your friends, indeed, that, providing you mount a silk hat on Sunday and put a penny on the plate, you can depend upon a friendly shake of the hand and a kindly grin of recognition six days in the week, even though you happen to be a bookmaker or the keeper of a bucket-shop. For the Nonconformist clergy, if clergy they may be called, they speak humorously at tea-parties, they enter into hat-trimming competitions at bazaars, and they play principal guest at the tables of over-fed tradesmen. There is not a man amongst them who can say boo to a goose. There is not a man amongst them who as a social unit is worth the L150 a year and a manse, with L10 per annum for each child, that a glozing, unintellectual English congregation hands over to him. Out of the ease and security and respectability and _dolce far niente_ which the Church of England provides for a considerable proportion of her priests, she has managed to evolve a few scholars, a few men of letters, perhaps an odd saint or two, and an odd man of temperament and mark. But what have the English Nonconformists produced? Dr. Horton and Dr. Parker, and that G.R. Sims of religionists, the Rev. Hugh Price Hughes. To this distinguished triumvirate--though the English Nonconformists will hold up pious hands of horror at the notion--one may add that valiant thumper of the pulpit drum, General Booth, who is doing a work in religious decadence and bathoticism which it will take centuries to undo. Want of heart and want of mind, coupled with the blessed spirit of tolerance, have indeed played havoc with the English Churches.