The Archbishop of York delivered the Presidential Address at the
Church Congress at Middlesbrough on Tuesday. Before attacking his main theme, "How is our ancient Church to give its witness in the life of the modern world ? " Dr. Lang dealt with Establishment and the marriage laws. He admitted that many of the arguments in favour of Dis- establishment were obvious and formidable, but the heart of the matter was this : Was the nation, or was it not, in its corporate life to have a religious basis, to acknowledge God ? If it was, it could only be by the Establishment of the Church. There was no alternative between the existing Establishment and the disappearance of religion from the public and cor- porate life of the nation. _The principle of Establishment;
however, was not only challenged by political action from without, but by Churchmen from within. Men demanded wider powers of self-government within the Church, and were apt to say, " If these powers are incompatible with Establish- ment, Establishment must go." But this incompatibility bad yet to be proved. The lack of a satisfactory Court of Final Appeal in affairs ecclesiastical was most unsatisfactory, but impatience was no remedy. Here, as in the sphere of the marriage laws, where the strain in the relations between Church and State threatened to become acute, and where the State had already departed from the principles of the Church —principles which the Church could not surrender—what was needed was not a rupture but a readjustment.
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