Mr. Chamberlain made an interesting speech on Wednesday, on laying
the memorial-stone of the new Methodist Connection School in Dudley Road, Birmingham. He congratulated the Methodists on the liberality with which they had contributed to the support and propagation of their own religion, and suggested that the Church of England loses rather than gains by the State support on which she depends ; and he anticipated that the Anglican Church would gain in influence if she were ever thrown upon her own private resources. Dissenters, he said, had no reason to be ashamed of dissent, for dissent had really kept touch with the people of England, and had been the chief shelter of the principles of civil and religious liberty by which the country has profited so greatly. That is all perfectly true, and just now it is perhaps a little superfluous to insist on it. The Dissenters are extremely proud, as well they maybe, of the part they have played in defending civil and religious liberty, and in asserting popular rights. The only question that can be raised on the subject is one touching rather their spiritual than their political achievements. Have they inspired those who belong to them with that deep humility which is really of the very breath of religious life? We do not know that the Anglican Church can, as a whole, make any such claim. But, certainly if the Anglican Church has often been a little scornful of every religion which is not the religion of the State, the Dissenters have exhibited that rather exaggerated self-respect which is the natural and, up to a certain point, the wholesome fruit of the self-dependence which has been their glory.
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