There have been times when the religious life of England has been utterly divorced from the Church. Such were the times when George II. said all the Bishops were infidels; such were the times when the clergy read to their congregations the Book of Sports, enforcing on their hearers dancing, jumping, archery, Whitsun ales, May-poles, and Morrice dances on a Sunday; such were the times when the Methodists were expelled Oxford, and when old John Newton wrote, that besides himself, there were only two pious clergymen in London. It is impossible to overrate the obligations of this country to Dissent. It saved England from Popery. It laid the foundation of the mightiest republic the world has yet seen. It crushed the despotism of the Stuarts, while the Church was indecently declaring that a royal proclamation had the force of law. It gave us civil and religious liberty; the wonderful change for the better which within the last thirty years has come over the Church life of this country is due to the fact that, rivalling the Establishment in zeal and good works, has been an ever-growing, intelligent, and educated Dissent. What are the doctrines of orthodox Dissenters? I reply, as regards Baptists and Congregationalists, they are very much the same. The real question at issue, whether adults or infants are the proper subjects of baptism, and whether the rite should be administered by baptism or immersion, really being but of little more importance than that of the Big Endians and the Little Endians of Gulliver. The Congregational Union issue a statement called “The Principles of Religion,” which they publish, not as a bond of union or as a series of articles to be subscribed to, but as a summary of what is commonly believed amongst them. In this document they state they believe the Scriptures of the Old Testament as received by the Jews, and the books of the New Testament as received by the Primitive Christians from the Evangelists and Apostles, to be divinely inspired and of divine authority; they believe in one God as revealed in the Scriptures as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; in the fall of man; in the existence in man of “a fatal inclination to moral evil utterly incurable by human means;” in God, before the foundation of the world, designing the manifestation of his Son in the flesh for our salvation, to attain eternal salvation for us. They believe that the Holy Spirit is given to quicken and renew the soul of man; that all who will be saved were the objects of God’s electing and eternal love; in the perseverance of the Saints; in the perpetual obligation of baptism and the Lord’s Supper; in the coming of Christ to judge all flesh; that the righteous will receive life everlasting, and that the portion of the wicked will be everlasting punishment. As I have stated, such is a rough outline of the common belief in Congregational and Baptist Chapels. It is to be questioned, however, whether it would receive the unanimous