Mr. Gladstone said one thing in his speech at Widnes
on Monday night which should rejoice the hearts of all his political followers, whatever their faith. " In one sense," he said, " he was not a friend of Protestantism, for there was a great deal of it circulating in this country that he was not, and never would be, a friend of. He trusted and believed that they had a unity of belief in the blessed person of our Redeemer and of humble trust in Him ; but he contended that they were bound to deal equal and absolute justice, irrespective of any question of religious persuasion ; and as to his own persuasion,. that of the old-estab- lished Church of England, he would at once renounce it, if its interests required him to set aside the principles of common right as between man and man" Mr. Gladstone has sometimes been accused of being more of an ecclesiastic than a statesman,—that is, of having a faith whose roots do not strike deeper than the ecclesiastical organization to which he belongs. We hope this sentence will confute that calumny, and show him for what he is, a man with a faith in Christ that is far deeper than his faith in any of the organizations for preaching the Gospel of Christ.
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