les: he goes to church feeling that in doing so he is not committed
to any form of belief or worship. Dissent requires some sort of faith as
preliminary to fellowship. In the Church you avoid all this: the
Puseyism of the pulpit seldom extends to the pew. Then, again, there is
a natural yearning in all minds after national union in religious as well
as political matters. The higher class of Dissenters display this
feeling in an extraordinary degree. Their chapels are built like
churches--they cling to the steeple which the stern old Puritans
considered an abomination--the meeting-house has ceased to exist. Day by
day Dissent gets rid of all its characteristics--its ministers assume a
clerical appearance--they adopt the Prayer-book as their model--they now
listen to read sermons and read prayers. Of late years their leaders
have grown rich and respectable, and anxiously disclaim all connexion
with the loud and exciting form of worship that has attractions for the
ignorant. You may safely assume that the teaching of modern Dissent is
indirectly in favour of the Establishment. Dissenters tell us they have
modified their customs in order to retain their hold upon the young of
the wealthy classes. But they cannot be retained by means like these.
It has almost become a proverb, that in the third generation they will
pass through the chapel to the church. Half the great mercantile houses
of London and the empire were founded by Dissenters whose sons, as they
have grown rich and cultivated, feel more and more the awkward isolation
of Dissent. Increasingly this feeling is spreading among Dissenters, and
the Church, if it were wise--its history is a career of blunder upon
blunder--would have laid its plans to recover such. All the levers of
society have been at its disposal. The Establishment rolls in wealth;
there is no other Church in the world so wealthy; the aristocracy are
bound to support it. Literally, there is in our land no career for a
Dissenter. Dissent is a stigma in society. Even men who have no
religious predilections would scorn the name of Dissenter. The schools,
the universities--all have wealth and honour for those who will conform;
and for those who conscientiously refuse to do so--exclusion and
disgrace.

In London, within twelve miles of the Post-office, there are some seven
hundred churches and chapels connected with the Church, and about treble
that number of officiating clergy. At St. Pau