



xiv DISESTABLISHMENT AND D1SENDOWMENT 249 



and an organization which provides for the diffusion of 

 those moral and social teachings which are the highest 

 products of the age, must necessarily aid in the develop- 

 ment of that religion which is the truest reflex of man's 

 higher nature. 



Advantages of the Scheme. 



It now remains only to point out a few of the advant- 

 ages which would result from the adoption of the scheme 

 here advocated. 



It will be generally admitted that, were the English 

 Church to be disestablished and disendowed, the Church 

 buildings to be devoted to sectarian or secular uses, and 

 the Church property applied in almost any way that can 

 be suggested (other than that here proposed), a void 

 would be left in the social organization of the country that 

 could not be easily filled up. The clergy of rival sects, 

 all equal and equally without authority in the eye of the 

 law, could not possibly fulfil the various social and moral 

 functions even of the present established Church, still 

 less could they ever attain the standard of usefulness which 

 could be easily reached by men in the position I have 

 indicated in the Church of the future. What that 

 standard might soon become it is not only difficult to 

 exaggerate, but difficult even adequately to realize, 

 because no institution equally well adapted to produce 

 great results has ever before existed. If we were to say 

 that its beneficial influence upon society would be equal 

 to that produced by the whole of our best literature, 

 many would at first think it an exaggerated estimate. 

 But a little consideration would, I think, convince them 

 that it is on the contrary far too low. For literature only 

 reaches certain defined and very limited classes, consisting 

 largely of men who least require the lesson it conveys, 

 while the great mass of the population know no literature, 

 or only that of the cheap newspaper ; and the teachings 

 of modern science and philosophy, as well as the instruc- 

 tion to be derived from history and biography, would be 

 to many of them as startling as the revelation of an 

 unknown world. Most of these would be reached by the 



