The dream of many good men that the Church of
England /night one day become really national by the comprehension of 1111 the large Protestant sects, fiuds no favour with Lord Shaftes- bury. His lordship on Monday took the chair at a meeting of the Wesleyan Home Missionary Society, and selected as the appropriate -topic for his speech the advantages of Christian division. He 'had heard, he said, of the Wesleyan body joining the Church of England, but he advised them to do nothing of the sort. Their function was to keep the Church of England under check and 'control, not to join it,—to act as policemen over the shepherds, in fact, instead of working among the flock. He advised them to retain their magnificent Protestant independence. 'The reason he gave for this advice was of the oddest kind. There were, he said, a vast number of people above the lowest strata of society who never came out of the street where they were born, and could only be reached by diving into the recesses where they lived, and instilling into their minds the principles of self- 'control, without which they could not be trusted with freedom. The implication is, that the Wesleyans could dive as Wesleyans, -and dive successfully, but could not dive as Churchmen —about the strongest charge it would be possible to bring against the Church. Its logical conclusion, indeed, is not, as the Church organs seem to think, that schism is good, but that schism is bad, for we ought all to become Wesleyans. By the way, as the Church needs watching, so must the Wesleyans, and if the Independents watch them the Baptists must be their policemen, and the Campbellites must look after the Baptists, until at length the solitary Joanna Southcotian said to be alive must "keep an eye" on the last two or three remaining Sandemanians. It is a fine picture of a Christian Church, but a little too original.
Previous page
