mission, a hurrying back to Romanism, 'but by that principle of religious insubordination and self-dependence, which, if it refuse her tempered rule and succeed in its overthrow, will much more surely refuse, and much more easily succeed in resisting, the unequivocally arbitrary impositions of the Roman scheme.' Here we have the key-note of many of Mr. Gladstone's utterances in later years upon the subject of Rome, her pretensions and aspirations. Though frequently charged with drifting towards the Romish Church, that Church has had in some respects no more persistent and consistent opponent. In this matter he held precisely the same opinions in 1840 and 1870. It must be admitted, however, coming now to another question, that the surprise evinced by English Protestants was but natural, when one who took so high a view of the duties and privileges of the Established Church became, a generation later, an advocate for the disestablishment of the Irish branch of that Church. That surprise would probably have been less had not Mr. Gladstone written with such eloquence and ability upon the duty of maintaining the Church in Ireland as by law established, for the benefit alike of those who belonged and those who did not belong to her communion. Mr. Gladstone himself felt that some explanation was due of the circumstances which led the author of The State in its Relations with the Church to become the destroyer of the State fabric of the Irish Church.

A Chapter of Autobiography. This treatise must be read together with, and by the light of, his early ecclesiastical writings. By this means the great transition which must have been wrought in the author's mind will not seem so strange and harsh. It should be remembered, moreover, that the value of certain principles may, under given circumstances, prove evanescent. They are not eternally and immutably applicable. Founded upon, and deriving their force from, existing conditions of society, when those conditions radically change they necessarily become effete.

Some reference to Mr. Gladstone's apology for, and defence of, his later conduct in connection with the Church in Ireland will most fitly come in at this point. His treatise appeared with the following introduction:- At a time when the Established Church of Ireland is on her trial, it is not unfair that her assailants should be placed upon their trial too; most of all, if they had at one time been her sanguine defenders. But if not, the matter of the indictment against them, at any rate that of their defence, should be kept apart, as far as they are concerned, from the public controversy, that it may not darken or perplex the greater issue. It is in the character of the author of a book called The State in its Relations with the Church that I offer these pages to those who may feel a disposition to examine them. They were written at the date attached to them; but their publication has been

Church; to show from history the ground which had been defined for the National Church at the Reformation; and to inquire and determine whether the existing state of things was worth preserving and defending against encroachment from whatever quarter. This question is decided emphatically in the affirmative.' Lord Macaulay had added to the main proposition of the work another, to the effect that it contemplated not indeed persecution, but yet the retrogressive process of disabling and disqualifying from civil office all those who did not adhere to the religion of the State. Mr. Gladstone wrote to his hostile critic, disclaiming such a conclusion. He had never expressed himself to the effect either that the Test Act should be repealed or that it should never have been passed. The author had upheld the doctrine that the Church was to be maintained for its truth, and that if the principle was good for England, it was good also for Ireland. But he denied that he had ever propounded the maxim simpliciter that we were to maintain the Establishment. He admitted that his opinion was the exact opposite of what it had been; but if the propositions of his work were in conflict with an assault upon the existence of the Irish Establishment, they were even more hostile to the grounds upon which it was now sought to maintain it. He did not wish to maintain the Church upon the basis usually advanced, but for the benefit of the whole people of Ireland; and if it could not be maintained as the truth, it could not be maintained at all.

Mr. Gladstone then admits and enlarges upon the fact that while it was a duty to exhaust every chance on behalf of the Irish Church, it had fallen out of harmony with the spirit and use of the time. And establishments of religion must be judged by a practical rather than a theoretic test. In concluding his Chapter of Autobiography, the author thus puts antithetically the case for and against the maintenance of the Church in Ireland: An establishment that does its work in much, and has the hope and likelihood of doing it in more : an establishment that has a broad and living way open to it, into the hearts of the people: an establishment that can command the services of the present by the recollections and traditions of a far-reaching past: an establishment able to appeal to the active zeal of the greater portion of the people, and to the respect or scruples of almost the whole, whose children dwell chiefly on her actual living work and service, and whose adversaries, if she has them, are in the main content to believe that there will be a future for them and their opinions: such an establishment should surely be maintained. But an establishment that neither does, nor has her hope of doing, work, except for a few, and those few the portion of the community whose claim to public aid is the smallest of all: an establishment severed from the mass of the people by an impassable gulf, and by a wall of brass : an establishment whose good offices, could she offer them, would be intercepted by a long, unbroken chain of

painful and shameful recollections: an establishment leaning for support upon the extraneous aid of a State, which becomes discredited with the people by the very act of lending it: such an establishment will do well, for its own sake, and for the sake of its creed, to divest itself, as soon as may be, of gauds and trappings, and to commence a new career, in which, renouncing at once the credit and the discredit of the civil sanction, it shall seek its strength from within and put a fearless trust in the message that it bears.'

Such, then, very briefly, are the arguments which led the defender of the Irish Church to become its assailant. That a man should change his opinions

is no reproach to him; it is only inferior minds that are never open to conviction. On Church questions, Mr. Gladstone must always, and necessarily, have both his opponents and apologists. The former will urge that, having once cherished and expressed the views which he formulated in his early work upon the Church and State, he ought never to have abandoned them: the latter will welcome the change that came at an advanced stage in his career, and recognise in it the light of a nobler conviction. Both, we trust, without violence to charity, may yield the eminent statesman credit for the sincerity of his later beliefs, and the honesty of his purpose.