138 The Lesson of History 



of its members for the public well-being must enter into 

 public policy, whether it is a policy of a conservative 

 party or a liberal party ; but the idea of a non-ethical 

 state becomes the more difficult when advocated by 

 a writer who is a strong upholder of the state estab- 

 lishment and endowment of religion. What is his 

 ground ? Not that the Church established is necessarily 

 the one depository of religious truth, for two different 

 churches are established, in England and in Scotland ; 

 nor that it represents the religion of the majority, for 

 the Irish establishment clearly did not do that. What 

 remains ? Simply that the establishment of a Church 

 is the recognition of religion by the state — the national 

 affirmation of the existence of God and the moral 

 responsibility to His judgment, which attaches to men 

 in their national no less than in their individual acts. 

 We may ask of what essential value is this formal and 

 public affirmation by the state if it is to be attached to 

 a doctrine that ethical considerations are irrelevant to 

 the greater part of the operations in which the state is 

 engaged ? The argument which pins the state to the 

 individualistic, competitive, non-ethical view of its 

 functions can be defended on many good logical 

 grounds, but it does not go well with a passionate 

 defence of establishments as the recognition of a 

 principle which is ex hypothesi excluded." This is the 

 philosophy of the old style of Conservatism, but it is 

 already a thing of the past. And it is perhaps the most 

 striking evidence of the influence of altruistic Chris- 

 tianity that, willingly or unwillingly, the Conservative 

 party is already committed, whenever it has oppor- 

 tunity, to a programme of social, housing, and poor law 

 reform on the lines of the " Minority Report." The fact 

 is that the church or the state in a Christian country 

 which does not mould its practice on the lines of the 

 social improvement of the community, showing forth 



