Though the speakers to the resolutions were all laymen, the
Bishop of Ripon and the Dean of Carlisle moved and seconded the vote of thanks to the chairman. The Bishop of Ripon's speech contained a passage for which thousands of loyal Church- men will be deeply grateful. He repudiated the designation of denominational as applied to the national Church, and pointed out that her essentially undenominationa1 character is the glary of the Church of England. This is a truth which needed expression, and we are delighted that it should have come from one of the leaders of the Church. If Churchmen are not, as we believe they are not, willing to see the Church denationalised and turned into an episcopal sect, they must maintain her comprehensive, and therefore essentially made- nominational, character. It is because the Church can embrace Christian men of so many shades of religious opinion that she has, in spite of present dangers and difficulties, so great a future before her. If the Church is to remain the Church of the nation, she must retain in the future as in the past the policy of the "open door,"—" the liberty of prophesying," to use Jeremy Taylor's phrase. And what policy could be more consistent with the will of the Divine Founder of our faith ?
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