The Sun.
London, England, 1868-10-14 00:00:00

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'AN ELEC7ION ADDRESS BY 711 E DEAN

OF CARLISLE.

(PROM A CORRESPONDENT.)

THE Dean of CARLisLn has issued an election
address. It is rather a novel incident for an eccle-
. siastical dignitary to do this. It is an incident con-
cerning whose decorum there may be more than one
opinion. But the incident is a fact, and as Dr.
CLOSE has chosen, as he says, to take part in this
" strife of tongues," he must not expect exemption
• from criticism. The Dean asks the electors of
- Carlisle to support the Conservative candidate
- entirely upon the Irish Church question. He con-
tends at the outset that though the English and Irish
Churches differ on several points, they arc one body;
but forgets to add that the " identity" and " unity" of
which he speaks date from the year 1801. He concludes
by declaring that if the property of the Irish Church
is handed over to the Romanists, she will have to say
with DAVID, "I paid them the things which I never
took ;" but forgets to state that Mr. GLADSTONE has
expressly declared that 113 has no such intention.
Between this historical blunder at the beginning and
this political blunder at the end there is a long argu-
ment full of logical blunders. There is one which
we will take the liberty of exposing.
Dean CLOSE says that " any nation without some
such political recognition of some form of pure
Biblical Christianity is, as a nation and in its national
character, a nation without GOD." The Dean has, at
least, " the courage of his convictions." It will be
seen that not only is a nation " godless " which is
without a State religion, but which is without the
Dean's religion. On the one hand, the colonies are,
as he affirms, " godless " because, though they have
a Protestant Church, it is not established ; on
the other, all Roman Catholic countries and
Russia are "godless" because, though they have an
Established Church, it is not Protestant. We must
infer that he would compel the Australians to esta-
blish a State Church in their country, and he would
have the POPE and the CZAR and the Spanish
Government establish a Protestant Church, though
Protestantism is not believed by an appreciable
fraction of the population. The Dean is perfectly
consistent, and he is one of the few men who would
carry out their; convictions to the extremest conse-
quence. The principle which justifies the forcible
establishment of a Protestant Church in the
Roman Catholic Irish nation would equally justify
the forcible establishment of the Protestant Church
in Roman Catholic Spain and " orthodox " Russia.
We admit this conclusion on the Dean's premise.
But then we deny his premise. The premise is that
a nation must be "godless " which has no Established"
Church, and he does not shrink from saying that the
United States, Canada, and Australia are, "as a
nation," "godless" • Now, let it be clearly understood
that the question at issue is not the advantage or
disadvantage of a State Church, but simply whether a
nation without one is also without GOD ; i.e.,
does not recognise GOD in its legislation.
One would have thought that the answer to this
question was to be found best in the statute-book. If
we find there that a nation has been diligently en-
deavouring to ameliorate the condition of its poor, to
protect a weaker class against a stronger, to make
sacrifices either of power or of money on behalf of a
principle which it believes to be right, then we should
infer that such a nation was by no means "god-
less," whether it happened tohave a State Church ornot.
Turning to our own statute-book, we find
innumerable sanitary Acts, which the upper and
middle classes have passed for the benefit of the
lower; repeated Factory Acts, by which the operatives
have been protected against the greed of the manu-
facturers ; we find that the English nation cheer-
fully paid twenty millions sterling to free her slaves,
and cheerfully surrenacred her rule in the lonian
Islands, and thereby diminished the number
of her strong places in the Mediterranean,
Decause the islanders called. upon her
to withdraw. We do not deny that there have
been some
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pook with les
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1.11/VIIIMCIN CZt Luing w uucy 02ic aletates of justice

and humanity.
The other point in our argument is that all these
praiseworthy acts have been committed since the
nation became " godless." It may be news to Dean
CLOSE, but the statement is not the less true,
that England is already " godless" if the main-
tenance of a national religion be essential
to national godliness. As Dean ALFORD
has shewn most admirably in the Contem-
porary Review (which his brother Dean would
do well to ponder), the State abandoned the principle
of a national religion directly it admitted to office in
a State a man who did not profess that religion. In
Other words, directly a Dissenter was allowed to enter
Parliament, or to hold the office of mayor, the
State surren:'.ered all that :'-or which Dean
CLOSE is so earnestly contending. Assuming
Dean CLOSE'S premise, Sir ROBERT INGLIS and
Mr. HENRY DRUMMOND were perfectly correct
in their assertions. They declared that if the
proposed " relief " were given, the State would no
longer be a religious body. They would have con-
tinued to prostitute the sacraments in order to
maintain the old condition of things. They cared so
much forthe State, so little for the individual, thatthey
would have supported the religiousness of the first
at the cost of any amount of hypocrisy and sacrilege
on the part of the second. It is quite true that we
still have an Established Church; yet we have it not
on the principle for which Dean CLOSE argues,
but because it is thought expedient that out of the
five hundred and odd different communions into
which England is divided, the State should favour
one. We do not say that this is not wise ; the
wisdom or otherwise of the arrangement is not the
question before us. We simply tell Dean CLOSE
that if that nation is "godless" which has no State
religion, he must at once re-enact all the penal laws
against Nonconformists, and must forbid them to
hold every public office, from that of Lord Chan-
cellor to that of pauper nurse. This work, in addi-
tion to the establishment of a Protestant Church in
Russia and Spain, will require all the energies even
of the energetic Dean of CARLISLE.

IF we are not greatly mistaken we shall very
speedily have some respectable quarrels on our
hands. The Indian frontier difficulty, which was
first announced in this journal, is becoming more
serious every day. The New Zealand disturbances,
though probably exaggerated by the correspondent
of the Times, will require attention. And now
we learn simultaneously that the Christian
religion has been forbidden in Japan, and that
serious outrages on missionaries have taken place at
Wuchang, in China, calling for the immediate inter-
ference of the British Government. It is not sur-
prising that Orientals are little partial to the
Christian religion. Their experience of it has
been anything but pleasant. Sir JoHN BOWRING'S
hymns and red-hot cannon bails at Canton
were scarcely likely to make the Chinese partial to
the new religion, even if the eagerness with which
we Christians forced the opium traffic upon the
country, to the ruin of the inhabitants, had not pre-
viously disgusted them with Christianity. The
Taeping rebellion must have still further pre-
judiced the Celestials against our faith, for
they could not be expected to distinguish
between orthodox opium - smuggling, bom-
barding, English Christians, and heterodox
rebellious, devastating, Taeping Christians. Japan,
doubtless, has taken warning from the example of
China, and being threatened with a civil war like
that which has for more than ten years devastated
the Celestial Empire, is now determined to put down
at the outset the religion which, in the minds of
Orientals, is, thanks to us Occidentals, associated
with treason, rebellion, and rapine. Still, of course,
we shall not allow Christian missionaries to be ill-
treated, nor submit to Christian residents in Japan
being prohibited the use of their religion. Even the
long-suffering unexcitable Lord STANLEY will not
thus consent to be smitten