voluntary principle, for we find that its general law is to provide for those who can pay for the provision, but that its whole structure is such as to leave no room for the argument that the agency of government paralyses its exertions; inasmuch as it evidently does not contemplate or tend towards supplying on a large scale the wants of the really poor; it leaves indeed for them a decent margin as a subsidiary appendage, but applies its main efforts merely towards organising a system, of which value received shall be the law, and in which the wine and the milk are to be bought with money and with price.*

26. Perhaps, however, there has been something of sanguine overstatement by the advocates of establishments, when they have magnified the efficacy of government aid in opposition to the feebleness of isolated and individual exertions. The truth seems to be, that we require both. The tithe system of Europe arose, it can hardly be doubted, not according to either of the extreme opinions which have been held respecting it, but from the combined action of public law and private will. We want in this day a similar concurrence. The assistance of the State should be so given as to stimulate the benevolence of individuals, not to supersede it; as the national personality and responsibilities do not supersede the personality and responsibilities of individuals.

27. The question at issue, then, is not fairly represented, when it is said that it is between what is termed

* Isaiah lv. 1.

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the voluntary principle on the one hand, and an establishment by the State on the other. In truth, it is between the voluntary principle alone on the one hand, and that principle in association with the cooperating principle of an establishment on the other. When the State has done its uttermost there is still ample scope left for the voluntary principle, or individual beneficence, both in the spiritual and in the corporal works of mercy; and that which genuine distress may supplicate, whether for soul or body, is the request of Christ. There is no example of a religious system brought to a condition of repletion by the largesses of the State. In our own times and country at least there is, by common confession, a great void, which neither public nor private exertion has yet filled. While we are told that State contributions have deadened the action of personal generosity, we are quite as free to reply, that it is the stint of right example in the conduct of the State to which we owe it, that single persons have not been effectually reminded of their duty. While it is clear that the State, as a supreme, a permanent, and a pervading power, has means of giving a degree of system and universality to its exertions, which no individual or minor association can command.

28. The objection which has now been considered is held for the most part by those who hold the scheme of what is called Voluntaryism; a term which has gained considerable currency in Scotland, but whose introduction into the controversy of Church and State

has been unfortunate. It tends to confusion rather than elucidation, for it is as inappropriate in its signification as ungainly in its structure. The principle which it designates is of the very life and heart of Christianity, and no one professing obedience to Christ can deny the imperative duty of using the utmost exertions with the freest will for the promotion of His glory in His kingdom. But that which is thus general and elementary has been applied as if it were specific and distinctive: and with excellent reason those to whom the appellation is sometimes given as a term of something like reproach or depreciation, reply,* that they glory in the name. Persons who have thus been compelled or provoked to usurp a designation to which they have no title, do, in fact, hold precisely the same affirmative principle with the advocates of a State religion. That in which they differ from us, that from which they ought to derive their distinctive epithet, if such they need, is their negative principle, the principle by which they forbid that which we would encourage, namely, the participation of the nation collectively in the glorious work of promoting the Gospel.

29. It is natural enough that those, who will admit nothing of the world to be in the Church, should also deny that anything of religion can be in the State. Founding religious societies upon the basis of personal experience, certain classes regard the generality of baptized persons, who do not live according to their

*Wardlaw's Lectures, i. p. 38.

obligations, as actually out of the Church; and thus regarding the Church as in a separate precinct, and the State as essentially though not nominally heathen, they are consistently led to regard any incorporation of the Church with the State, or of the State with the Church, as an unnatural attempt at the combination of spiritual life with spiritual death. In short, where men hold these two opinions: first, that the Church, which is the body and spouse of Christ, is visible; and, secondly, that it includes not all who are baptised in its communion, but only a certain select number out of them then it seems to me to be a logical consequence, that they should regard the connection of Church and State as adulterous and accursed, just as we should have regarded it if it had been adjusted, in all its particulars, under Nero or Domitian.

30. But it is one among the strange features of the different forms of human opinion, that the combination of a true proposition with a false one sometimes leads men to a practical error, from which the substitution of another falsehood for the truth they still retain might preserve them. Those described in the former section, together with the false doctrine that the baptism of the Church does not make a member of the Church, have the true doctrine that the Church is properly visible. Hence they say, let there be no union between the Church and the State. Now, if with the first untrue opinion they held a second, that the Church is invisible, then they would be consistent in saying, that though it would be impious, if it were

possible, to unite the Spouse of Christ with the State, a society of which, perhaps, but very few members belong to her, yet there is no impiety, or even impropriety, in uniting the external and, as it were, figurative Church, which is partly of Christians and partly not, with a State similarly composed. Thus, in the particular case, by a double error congruity is attained, and a tendency mischievous in practice is avoided And the supposition is not wholly imaginary. There are some among us whose opinions correspond to the latter as well as the former of the two classes which have just been described. But the latter class appears to be relaxing, by a parallel process, in both those tenets which I have described as erroneous; and the general mind more and more clearly apprehends, in the Church of England, the positions that the Church is visible, and that those whom she baptizes are Christians bound to obey all the commands of Christ, and therefore furnished with the means of doing so; and if neglecting them, neglecting them at their peril and to their greater and heavier condemnation. So that we may hope, together with a fuller appreciation of the truth of Christianity so far as it respects the Church, her members will likewise attain a deeper and more consistent conviction, that her connection with the State is a fulfilment and not a violation of the Christian obligations of the country.

31. Again, however, it has been largely and forcibly argued, particularly in the Scottish controversy respecting establishments, that the territorial division of