The Bishop of Carlisle, addressing the Diocesan Conference on Tuesday,
dealt chiefly with the subject of Church defence. All methods of Church defence were not good. There were folly, rancour, and ignorance on both sides. But when all allowance had been made for the purity of motive of many advocates of disestablishment, the attempt to sever things secular from things spiritual, things civil from things religious, seemed to him a grievous mistake and a far-reaching injury. The mischievous antagonism of Church and State, fostered for so many centuries, was responsible for many of the evils and troubles of to-day; and as he read the signs of the times he was more and more convinced that what man needed was not less of God in politics and Parliament, but more ; not a further severance of Church and State, but a closer and more intimate union. But they would have to enlarge and purify their conceptions both of Church and State; they would have to bring the State nearer to God and the Church nearer to man.
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