The Bishop of London (Dr. Temple), in addressing the Church
Defence Association on Tuesday, went rather too far, we think, in representing the alliance between Church and State as wholly beneficial to both. We believe that the total balance of advantage is very much in favour of that alliance; but we cannot doubt that what the late Lord Houghton used to regard as the main advantage of that alliance,—namely, the cultivation of a certain worldliness of judgment in the authorities of the Church,—involves much more disadvantage than advantage, so far as it operates at all. To preach an unworldly religion, and then set before the English people accomplished and sometimes astute men of the world as the leading exponents of that religion, is not a policy which any real believer in Christianity can approve. We do not hold that even the Bishops of the present day are, on the whole, a worldly class, and we hope and believe that the greater number of the clergy are decidedly unworldly, and in the main spiritual-minded men. But we cannot doubt that the chief set-off against the enormous benefit of an Established Church, is the infiltration of a certain worldliness of temper into the bias of those who "seem to be pillars."
Previous page
