The Rev. J. Guinness Rogers preached a strong sermon last
Sunday evening (the 7th inst.), at the Clapham Congre- gational Church on Mr. Gladstone's letter, taking as his text St. Paul's exhortation to the Galatians, "Be not entangled again in the yoke of bondage." The positive drift of the sermon was that Mr. Gladstone's plea for unity had "mistaken the mechanical for the dynamic force which was behind the gospel of Christ." If Mr. Rogers only means that in attaching so much importance to the recognition or non-recognition of Anglican orders by a Church which holds the Anglican Church to be heretical, Mr. Glad- stone appears to subordinate matters of substance to matters of form, we should agree with him. But when he adds that anything tending to reunion "could not take place without certain concessions on the part of the Anglican Church. and if submission were made to the Pope, it would be admitting in the face of Christendom that the Reformation was an egregious mistake and an impertinent anachronism," wo cannot help regarding his address as itself an anachronism unless he can produce proof that any such submission is really contemplated by any important number of the Anglican clergy. Is there the smallest evidence of this P Mr. Guinness Rogers and Dr. Parker seem to us to have got Romanising on the brain.
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