The Birkenhead News and Wirral General Advertiser. — 1902-11-22 (Birkenhead, Merseyside, England)

LECTURE BY TEI REV. MATTHEW STANLEY.  On Sunday evening, at Orton-road Con. gregational Church, the Rev. Matthew Stan. ley delivered the second of a series of lectures His subject was •" The function and value of dissent in religious history." At the outset be commented on the breadth of the , title of hie discourse. He did not refer to ' particular denominational dissent, but the . principles and ideas which gave birth to and sustained all type. and manifestations of dissent. Dissent was not local, nor provincial, nor national, nor European—it was worldwide. Wherever the spirit of the 'Lord was there was dissent. Dissent was note plea for unlimited freedom, nor was it in 1161101106 a plea for personal freedom at all. Any man brought up in an ecolesias' tioal atmosphere, regarding dissenters , through generations of inherited prejudice, , would think that there was very little differenc. between dissenters and Anarchists. They were, in hie opinion, • self-eapertive, ungoverned, rampant typo of people, always fretting &Waft the reins of law, and order, and demending arena) which they called liberty. That was a popular, superdeal notion, and. it was wrong. Dissenters did plead for freedom, but it was feeedem for Christ and His Spirit. They denied the rig.ht of any State or Church to put that spirit in fetters, whether they were the fetters of State control, of unalterable theological creeds, or of a dominant. priesthood. Dissenters were not in opposition to any particular church. The 'therm and attraction of the Established Church of England no one meld de--iits venerable abbeys and .timisietieeisthals, its litany and fa prayers, it. close association with an. entire history, had a charm they Would be Philiatinas 14,.deny. A-0 therefore it mind not be thought that &winters existed in order to oppose the Church of England, although their pirnciples might now and then put them into opposition to latch which that Church did. They were called Nonconformists, but they were much Igor,. They were Free Churchmen, with principles that were vital, noel-ties, and regulative, and the fact of their Nonconformity was only accidental, because they 'happened to live in England. Wherever there was a State Church and an official sainthood, there was the certainty of religious and intellectual decay. In these days every earnest religions man was searching after new light and tenth, but the spirit of a State Church ; ezedentombed within narrow definitions, by Act of Parliament,. These her ministers must vow almost before they had crossed the threshold of manhood. Virtually they swore that they would search no more, and that to the end of their days they would believe what they behaved then. Practically they took an oath which meant mental suicide. The Stake Church we. bound up in the minds of the most powerful classes with certain social arrangements which were suppoeed to be right for all time, because they had been long in existeece, and the consequence we; that the religious teacher in • Sate Church was often more concerned about social arrangements than about religious truths. Ho had worn to close his fetid, and when he began his work he found himself part of the social system for which his Church stood, and tonesquently he became • political 0 tor of new idemlboth in religion and politics. Dissenting churches could never produce these remits. They suffered from social disadvantages, and sometimes—thanks to those who kept them out of the universities for so long—they were not so enlightened as they might bexind their , ideas on theological truths were neither so broad nor so generous as could be wished. But they never foreswore their intellects. They never bound together their religious life and the social ordering of There were often deficiencies of culture,there we. often narrowness of outlook, but they never made the Church into an &pat for keeping things where they were. The Silt Christian Churches were free and indepen. dent. They were self-supporting, and self. governing. They marked the highest pert of doe moral life of their day, end they were , not official, but living. oburebes. Much had been done by the Church of England, but it had never forgotten that it was the etata Church, the °heroin of the classes, rather ' than the mason. In every great mamma it had been on the wrong aide. Bat what had dissent done? It had carried to the . ultimate lean. the principles of religions and political equality, as embodied in the prsotiicee of the early churches. It misted the : Divine right of kings and puede the Caroni, *tan; it created civil and municipal liberty; it had haPired *very greet act, and relabid. all tyranny. In consequence of this cliseenters had been * frequent condiet with the Eetablithed Church, bat it , had always been because they were struggling for principle, and Ernglend today in its finest features was the work of dissenters.