exhibition of an active and definite religious life. A strong pressure from without bound together a heterogeneous mass. In the region of theology I apprehend that what is termed Anglicanism began with Hooker—an authority still so high amongst us that none disown him, and a writer whose work is said by Walton to have attracted the laudatory admiration of the reigning Pope. But the body to which Hooker belonged also contained Cartwright, and contained, too, men of the same opinion. These internal differences ripened after a time into convulsion, tyranny, and revolution. I cannot severely blame those who overset Episcopacy for their oversetting, nor those who brought it back for their bringing it back. The contending elements could not live together in the same dwelling upon tolerable terms. Every effort was made to devise schemes of comprehension, and every effort failed. It was better, I suppose, that the rival partisans should part than that they should carry the country onward from one revolution to another. They parted in Scotland by casting out Episcopacy at the Revolution. They parted in England legally at the Restoration, and morally when a series of subsequent experiences had shown that the system then established by law was the only one in which the bulk of the nation could be content to abide (applause). ‘But what was the operation thus effected? It was a drastic process, but a process far less drastic than those of the sixteenth century. On the one side or the other it so far enabled the Church of England to fulfil the conditions of a corporate life and unity that it has now been maintained during two centuries and a quarter without either the unmitigated dualism or the agonies of convulsion which had marked the previous experience, and with this general result: that at the present hour the hopes of the Church of England are higher and more buoyant than perhaps they have ever been (applause). It has been very far indeed from an heroic history. Not only defect but scandal has abounded. These things, however, are beside the present purpose, which aims at pointing out that when uniformity was finally brought by law into the Church of England, still much room for diversity was left—room enough to invite polemical criticism, but perhaps not more than, on the one hand, the inestimable value of the principle of liberty required, or than, on the other hand, the teaching office of the Church could without vital injury allow. She is still working out her system by experience, but still not without this note, that the strife of parties, although softened of late, is still somewhat sharp within her. When it is said that the Church is comprehensive, the true meaning seems to be that her history, which has, of course,