The Oxford laymen have formed a league for resisting Dis-
establishment and Disendowment, which we wish they could have inaugurated in a less aggressive spirit. Their first pub- lication is called "Aggressive Irreligion : an Appeal against the Liberation Society," and is an attempt to prove that the Liberation Society has got out of the hands of the great Non- conformist leaders,—which may be true,—and has got into the hands of men who take up an aggressively irreligious position, which does not seem to be true at alL Doubtless the scheme recently promoted by the publications of the Liberation Society for the Disendowment of the Church was in a very marked degree unjust, and was denounced by a good many of the religious Nonconformists. But unjust as it was, there was nothing to show that its injustice was due to "aggressive irreligion," and it is always a mistake to bring charges against your opponents which you cannot sustain. It is, indeed, a mis- take which we should have thought it most unlikely that an executive of laity would fall into. It savours a little of the odium ih,eologieum, and not at all of lay prudence.
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