248 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL CHAP. 



have to submit to the probation of five years' service under 

 a rector, which would sufficiently test their capacity and 

 suitability for the office. All livings now in the gift of 

 Government or of public bodies should be thrown open to 

 public competition by annual examinations, the details of 

 which need not now be considered. 



It will doubtless be further objected, that the scheme 

 now advocated is Utopian, and aims at an ideal perfection 

 which could not be realized even were public opinion ripe 

 for any such revolution ; and also, that it will be repulsive 

 to the feelings of a large number of persons by placing 

 religion and religious teachers in a subordinate position. 

 To this I would reply, that a few years ago, before the 

 Irish Church had been disestablished, and when household 

 suffrage and the ballot were still ideal propositions which 

 our Parliament would hardly seriously discuss, any such 

 proposal as the present one would have been thoroughly 

 Utopian : but I cannot admit that it is so now. The 

 body which has set up the cry for disestablishment and 

 disendowment of the Church of England is a more 

 powerful and a more united one than that which inaugur- 

 ated any of the other great reforms ; and the probabilities 

 seem to me to be great that they will attain their object 

 in less than half a century. If so, it is not Utopian 

 to discuss the subject in all its bearings ; and although 

 my scheme may aim at an ideal perfection which it is 

 not in existing human nature perfectly to attain, the 

 question to be considered is whether this ideal is a just, a 

 true, and a noble one ; if it is so, we shall assuredly do well 

 to keep it in view and so legislate as not to prevent our 

 successors from ever attaining it. Neither do I believe 

 that such a scheme can be in any way degrading to 

 religion ; it will, on the contrary, keep up a connection 

 between religious teaching and the State, and by dealing 

 out equal justice to all creeds, will go far to do away with 

 that sectarian animosity which more than anything else 

 really degrades religion. As knowledge and true civiliza- 

 tion spread more widely, it is to be expected that religion 

 will become more and more a personal matter, without 

 necessarily losing any of its influence on the human mind ; 



