The Council of the Society for the Liberation of Religion
from State patronage and control, held a conference at the National Liberal Club on Tuesday, with Mr. Woodall, M.P., in the chair, which was not particularly well attended, but at which those who did attend congratulated each other very warmly on the astonishing progress which their principles had made in the last fifty years since they first commenced their agitation. Mr. Woodall himself attacked the clergy of the Church of England for preaching against Disestablish- ment and Disendowment in their pulpits ; but Mr. Fisher, one of the secretaries, turned the Chairman's flank by imme- diately recommending that the dissenting clergy should use their pulpits in the same way, and by even proposing to have a special Sunday, to be called Free Church Sunday, for a con- certed assault of the kind. Of course, if any clergyman or dissenting minister really thinks that the ultimate principles of right are deeply implicated in this controversy, he is only living up to his own. ideal of duty by dwelling on his view of it in the pulpit ; but we cannot say that we respect the judgment of the man who thinks so, on whichever side he may happen to be., There are such numbers of excel- lent men on each side that it is not possible for a sober- minded man to hold that either view is un-Christian ; and if that is so, it is a great mistake to turn worship turbid by political controversy. For our own parts, we greatly doubt the enormous progress of the Disestablishment and Disendow- ment movement. It has of course, many more advocates than it had, but it excites less enthusiasm ; and the democracy looks coldly on movements of this kind. Disestablishment's most earnest advocates are to be found in the middle-olass. The masses prefer State patronage,—if not State control,—for their own beliefs.
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