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Untitled Article
with a brief statement of our general views of Church Reform , considered as a national and not a sectarian question . The Established Church has signally failed of accomplishing its professed objects .
The only tolerable defence of an Establishment that we have ever met with , rests on the allegation of its being a system of religious and moral instruction . Much has been said of the deplorable state of ignorance , impiety , and vice , into which a nation would be plunged if it were destitute of , or should lose , the blessing of an Established Church . Now this is all theory and
speculation / as the anti-reformers say . Indeed we , practical persons , may go a step further , and point westward across the Atlantic . — - Nowhere in the world does religion thrive more than in America . True , we shall be told that America is no rule for us , because America is a republic . As the same reasoners , however , hold that republicanism is a demoralizing principle , if not absolutely
Atheistic , we contend that our argument ( as against them ) is strengthened by this fact , and that , d fortiori , religion must flourish under the British constitution , were there . no Established Church . But the question of success or failure in the professed objects of that Church , is a plain question of fact , and very easily decided . What has the Church done , as the spiritual instructor of the nation ?
In the first place , it has driven about half the population out of its own temples into those of Dissent . Certainly a majority of the nation does not attend the established worship . We believe it also to be true , that a majority of those who attend any worship at all habitually , may be found every Sunday at chapel . Then ,, again , a much larger proportion of the one than of the other are
mere formalists ; persons who bring their bodies to a place of worship , but who , if they have any souls at all , leave them in their workshops or counting-houses , or at any rate take no concern about them : who feel no interest in the service at which they assist , and assist in no other way than by occupying twenty inches
of pew during twenty minutes of sermon , and twice or thrice as much of liturgy and psalm . The various religious associations are gauges of the zeal of sects and parties . Accounts are published annually of the money subscribed to these societies . They demonstrate the Church to be far behind the Dissenters in zeal .
Now , for a National Institution , a majority of the population not attending its teachings , and the minority which does attend comparatively uninterested and inert , is what we call a failure . What else should it be called ? The gradation of dignity in the Church has been celebrated for
providing moral guides to take charge of all ranks of society . And which class of the community has chosen to play with it at this game of follow my leader ? The middle ranks constitute the main body of Dissent . The Independents and Methodists in England , like the Catholic priesthood of Ireland , show how the
Untitled Article
806 Church Reform .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1833, page 806, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2628/page/2/
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