and his friends imagine that, while retaining the secular advantages of Establishment and endowment, they can obtain from Parliament the self-governing powers of a spiritual society.  I doubt it, and I do not desire it.  My own ideal is Cavour’s—­the Free Church in the Free State; and all such schemes as Mr. Temple’s seem to me desperate attempts to make the best of two incompatible worlds.  By judicious manipulation our fetters might be made to gall less painfully, but they would be more securely riveted than ever.  So in this new controversy Mr. Temple stands on one side and I on the other; but this does not impair my respect for a man who is ready to “lose the world for an idea”—­even though that idea be erroneous and Impracticable.

To “lose the world” may seem too strong a phrase for the occasion, but it is not in substance inappropriate.  Mr. Temple has all the qualifications which in our Established Church lead on to fortune.  He has inherited the penetrating intelligence and the moral fervour which in all vicissitudes of office and opinion made his father one of the conspicuous figures of English life.  Among dons he was esteemed a philosopher, but his philosophy did not prevent him from being an eminently practical Head Master.  He is a vigorous worker, a powerful preacher, and the diligent rector of an important parish.  Of such stuff are Bishops made.  There is no shame in the wish to be a Bishop, or even an Archbishop, as we may see by the biographies of such prelates as Wilberforce and Tait and Magee, and in the actual history of some good men now sitting on Episcopal thrones.  But Mr. Temple has proved himself a man capable of ideals, and has given that irrefragable proof of sincerity which is afforded by the voluntary surrender of an exceptionally favoured position.

That the attempt to which he is now devoting himself may come to naught is my earnest desire; and then, when the Church, at length recognizing the futility of compromise, acquires her complete, severance from the secular power, she may turn to him for guidance in the use of her new-born freedom.

III

PAN-ANGLICANISM

It is an awful word.  Our forefathers, from Shakespeare downwards, ate pan-cakes, and trod the pantiles at Tunbridge Wells; but their “pan” was purely English, and they linked it with other English words.  The freedom of the “Ecclesia Anglicana” was guaranteed by the Great Charter, and “Anglicanism” became a theological term.  Then Johnson, making the most of his little Greek, began to talk about a “pancratical” man, where we talk of an all-round athlete; and, a little later, “Pantheist” became a favourite missile with theologians who wished to abuse rival practitioners, but did not know exactly how to formulate their charge.  It was reserved for the journalists of 1867 to form the terrible compound of two languages, and, by writing of the “Pan-Anglican Synod,” to prepare the way for “Pan-Protestant” and “Pan-denominational.”  Just now the “Lively Libertines” (as their detractors style the promoters of “Life and Liberty”) seem to be testing from their labours, and they might profitably employ their leisure by reading the history of their forerunners half a century ago.