XIV DISESTABLISHMENT AND DISENDOWMENT 253 



bring them back to the fundamental purposes they were 

 originally intended to fulfil, and which the conditions of 

 modern society — its terrible contrasts of profuse wealth 

 and grinding poverty, of the noblest intellectual achieve- 

 ments with the most degrading ignorance, of the most 

 pure and elevated morality with the lowest depths of vice 

 — render perhaps of more vital importance to our national 

 well-being than at any previous epoch of our history ? 



Shall we preserve and re-create, in accordance with the 

 principle of religious liberty, or shall we utterly abolish 

 our great historic National Church ? 



