Mr. Milner White, writing to Thursday's Times, bitterly
complains of the clergy of Southampton for turning their pulpits-into electioneering platforms ifor 'the denunciation of Liberal candidates, and the same charge is brought, we sevagainst an Eastbourne clergyman*. whom the Bishop of Chichester defends, asserting that he had not transgressed the bounds of moderation in pleading for his Church. The situa- tion is undoubtedly a difficult one. It is hardly to be desired even, that the Clergy should be silent on what they regard as a great moral issue ; and, at the same time, nothing can be more foolish or more wrong than the assumption of a tone which sets all Liberals,—even though they be, like Mr. Milner White, Churchmen and opponents of Disestablishment,—against them, and which identifies the Church with one: party in the State.. The proper course for the Clergy in dealing with the ques- tion is no doubt to avoid all invective and all acrimony; to set forth. what they conceive to be the true historic claims of the Church and the nation; to compare the embarrassed, condition of the nation on all solemn occasions, if ever the Church-had shrunk into a sect, and were no longer entitled to speak for the- nation, with its condition now, and to appeal to the reason and conscience of Dissenters in relation to the numberless • poor whom Disestablishmeut and Disendowment must deprive of very high privileges. There are not wanting examples of a reverent and wholly religious treatment of the subject. For instance, one of our own frequent correspondents, Mr. Harper, the Vicar of Selby, appears to us to have placed the issue before his hearers with.an.eloquence and dignity that leave little to be desired.
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