The characteristic of our day is the Broad Churchmanship, which rejects the common theology as a prejudice well fitted for certain times, but unworthy of credence now. Of this party are the ablest men in the Church; all who are disgusted with the childishness of ritualism—with the narrowness of orthodox formulas, turn to them, and hail them as the regenerators of Church and State. Such men as Dean Stanley and Mr. Maurice are a power in the land. They walk hand in hand with the poets and men of science of our time. In their teaching is gathered together much that is best and truest in the wisdom of the past. The difficulty of their position is that they are tied down as strongly as they can be to orthodoxy, and half their strength is wasted in the effort to show they have a right to be where they are. Nevertheless it is quite true that there can be no honest faith without honest doubt; that we fight our fears and gather strength; that as we know more, we feel how outworn is the old creed of Christendom. Sir J. D. Coleridge tells us the Articles are Articles of peace—that is, for the sake of uniformity a minister may make statements which he cannot believe. But a man who cannot trifle with words is denied all this liberty; he is tied hand and foot. The State gives him moral prestige, supremacy, wealth, on certain conditions. The Dissenter is free; the wildest ranter has a liberty which an Archbishop may sigh for in vain. Such is the law. A State Church such as is desired by Broad Churchmen is an impossibility. And yet in spite of the rival and differing parties in the Church, and in spite of the fact that Churchmen themselves are longing to be free of the fetters of the State, I know not that the Church of England, as regards London, was ever stronger than now. The layman has little sympathy with Church squabbles: he goes to church feeling that in doing so he is not committed to any form of belief or worship. Dissent requires some sort of faith as preliminary to fellowship. In the Church you avoid all this: the Puseyism of the pulpit seldom extends to the pew. Then, again, there is a natural yearning in all minds after national union in religious as well as political matters. The higher class of Dissenters display this feeling in an extraordinary degree. Their chapels are built like churches—they cling to the steeple which the stern old Puritans considered an abomination—the meeting-house has ceased to exist. Day by day Dissent gets rid of all its characteristics—its ministers assume a clerical appearance—they adopt the Prayer-book as their model—they now listen to read sermons and read prayers. Of late years their leaders have grown rich and respectable, and anxiously disclaim all connexion with the loud and exciting form of worship that has attractions for the ignorant. You may safely assume that the teaching of modern Dissent is indirectly in favour of the Establishment. Dissenters tell us they have