Many of these
reformers admit the vast, the incalculable influence of Mahommedanism on
the politics of Constantinople, and yet persist in acting as if
Christianity had little or nothing to do with the politics of England.
At a recent meeting of the Anti-State Church Association it was
remarked, that 'throw what we would into the political cauldron, out it
came in an ecclesiastical shape'. If the newspaper report may be relied
on, there was much laughing among the hearers of those words, the deep
meaning of which it may safely be affirmed, only a select few of them
could fathom.
Hostility to state churches by no means implies a knowledge of the close
and important connection between ecclesiastical and political questions.
Men may appreciate the justice of voluntaryism in religion, and yet have
rather cloudy conceptions with respect to the influence of opinions and
things ecclesiastical on the condition of nations. They may clearly see
that he who needs the priest, should disdain to saddle others with the
cost of him, while blind to the fact that no people having faith in the
supernatural ever failed to mix up such faith with political affairs.
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