Mr. White sees this, though he takes up his parable,
like Mr. Thomson, for Disestablishment. He had to speak on the abortive effort made by a few Liberal clergymen to obtain the liberty of preaching in Nonconformist pulpits, and he was most lively and humorous in his description of the importance of getting the free- play of national thought to enter the rather close cells of deno- minational piety. " How would you like," he asked, " to be shut up on a desert island, with nothing to read every week except the Christian World and the English Independent? Or if you are a Baptist, nothing else but the Freeman and the Earthen Vessel ?" "If it were possible, I should like to see our Inde- pendent Churches subject to a rather frequent influence from men who would remind them that ' Christendom' is a wider word than is sometimes remembered, and includes a vast his- torical development of thought, and an immense variety of modes of feeling and expression besides those exemplified in the de- claration of faith of the London Chapel-Building Society." " I quite see the necessity for discussing, as you have done so ably, the questions, How to get more polished ?" How to get better paid ?' and ' How to get buried at last in the pariah churchyard ?' but I would willingly devote a whole year, by way of a change, to the celebration of the many virtues and to the study of the many excellent methods even of the Anglican clergy." That is an admirable argu- ment for a wide Establishment, though Mr. White dexterously metamorphosed it, by one of those neat turns of the wrist of which skilful politicians are always capable, into something pretending to be an argument for the speediest possible diseatablishment and disendowment of the Church.
Previous page
