ph of the Federal
arms.

ARCHBISHOP TAIT[19]

England is now the only Protestant country in which bishops retain
some relics of the dignity and influence which belonged to the
episcopal office during the Middle Ages. Even in Roman Catholic
countries they have been sadly shorn of their ancient importance,
though the prelates of Hungary still hold vast possessions, while
in France, or Spain, or the Catholic parts of Germany a man of eminent
talents and energy may occasionally use his official position to
become, through his influence over Catholic electors or Catholic
deputies, a considerable political factor. This happens even in
the United States and Canada, though in the United States the
general feeling that religion must be kept out of politics obliges
ecclesiastics to use their spiritual powers cautiously and sparingly.
England stands alone in the fact that although the Protestant
Episcopal Church is, in so far as she is established by law, the
creature and subject of the State, she is nevertheless so far
independent as a religious organisation that she retains a greater
power than in other Protestant nations. State establishment, though it
may have depressed, has not stifled her ecclesiastical life, and an
interest in ecclesiastical questions is shown by a larger proportion
of her laity than one finds in Germany or the Scandinavian kingdoms. A
man of shining parts has, as an English bishop, a wide field of
action and influence open to him outside the sphere of theology or
of purely official duty. And the opportunities of the position
attain their maximum when he reaches the primatial chair of
Canterbury, which is now the oldest and the most dignified of all the
metropolitan sees in countries that have accepted the Reformation of
the sixteenth century.

Ever since there was a bishop at Canterbury at all, that is to say,
ever since the conversion of the English began in the seventh
century of our era, the holder of that see has been the greatest
ecclesiastical personage in these islands, with a recognised
authority over all England, as well as an influence and dignity to
which, in the Middle Ages, the Archbishops of Armagh and St. Andrews
(primates of the Irish and Scottish Churches) practically bowed,
even while refusing to admit his legal supremacy. To be the most
highly placed and officially the most powerful man in the churches of
Britain, in days when the Church was better organised, and in s