he National Church of England has never, perhaps, occupied so
peculiarly isolated a place in Christendom as at the extreme end of the
last century and through the earlier years of the present one. At one or
another period it may have been more jealous of foreign influence, more
violently antagonistic to Roman Catholics, more intolerant of Dissent,
more wedded to uniformity in doctrine and discipline. But at no one time
had it stood, as a Church, so distinctly apart from all other
Communions. If the events of the French Revolution had slightly
mitigated the antipathy to Roman Catholicism, there was still not the
very slightest approximation to it on the part of the highest Anglicans,
if any such continued to exist. The Eastern Church, after attracting a
faint curiosity through the overtures of the later Nonjurors, was as
wholly unknown and unthought of as though it had been an insignificant
sect in the furthest wilds of Muscovy. All communications with the
foreign Protestant Churches had ceased. It had beheld, after the death
of Wesley, almost the last links severed between itself and Methodism.
It had become separated from Dissenters generally by a wider interval.
Its attitude towards them was becoming less intolerant, but more chilled
and exclusive. The Evangelicals combined to some extent with
Nonconformists, and often met on the same platforms. But there was no
longer anything like the friendly intercourse which had existed in the
beginning and in the middle of last century between the bishops and
clergy of the 'moderate' party in the Church on the one hand, and the
principal Nonconformist ministers on the other. Comprehension--until
the time of Dr. Arnold--was no longer discussed. Occasional conformity
had in long past time received the blow which deprived it of importance.
Again, the Church of England was still almost confined, except by its
missions, within the limits of the four seas. Pananglicanism was a term
yet to be invented. The Colonial empire was still in its infancy, and
its Church in tutelage. There was a sister Church in the United States.
But the wounds inflicted in the late war were scarcely staunched; and
the time had not arrived to speak of cordiality, or of community of
Church interests. It was from Scottish, not from English hands, that
America received her first bishop.

Perhaps, in the order of that far-reaching Providence which is traced in
the history of Churches as of States, it may, after all