been meagre enough; but under this official ineffectiveness there had been a real movement towards “Life and Liberty.”  The Conference taught the Established Bishops of England and Ireland that the Bishops of Free Churches—­Scottish, American, Colonial—­were at least as keen about religious work and as jealous for the spiritual independence of the Christian society as the highly placed and handsomely paid occupants of Lambeth and Bishopthorpe.  Bishop Hamilton of Salisbury (whom the Catholic-minded section of the English Church regarded as their special champion) “thought that we had much to learn from contact with the faith and vigour of the American Episcopate”; and Bishop Wilberforce thus recorded his judgment:  “The Lambeth gathering was a very great success.  Its strongly anti-Erastian tone, rebuking the Bishop of London (Tait), was quite remarkable.  We are now sitting in Committee trying to complete our work—­agree to a voluntary Court of English Doctrinal Appeal for the free Colonies of America.  If we can carry this out, we shall have erected a barrier of immense moral strength against Privy Council latitudinarianism.  My view is that God gives us the opportunity, as at home latitudinarianism must spread, of encircling the Home Church with a band of far more dogmatic truth-holding communions who will act most strongly in favour of truth here.  I was in great measure the framer of the “Pan-Anglican” for this purpose, and the result has abundantly satisfied me.  The American Bishops won golden opinions.”

And so this modest effort in the direction of “Life and Liberty,” which had begun amid obloquy and ridicule, gained strength with each succeeding year.  The Conference was repeated, with vastly increased numbers and general recognition, in 1878, 1888, 1898, and 1908.  The war makes the date of the next assemblage, as it makes all things, doubtful; but already Churchmen, including some who have hitherto shrunk in horror from the prospect of Disestablishment, are beginning to look forward to the next Conference of Bishops as to something which may be a decisive step in the march of the English Church towards freedom and self-government.  Men who have been reared in a system of ecclesiastical endowments are apt to cherish the very unapostolic belief that money is a sacred thing; but even they are coming, though by slow degrees, to realize that the Faith may be still more sacred.  For the rest of us, the issue was formulated by Gladstone sixty years ago:  “You have our decision:  take your own; choose between the mess of pottage and the birthright of the Bride of Christ.”

IV

LIFE AND LIBERTY