I cannot say this to anybody without being in revolt against a great national institution. Now and then I am bound to liberate my conscience, and I tell my congregation what I think of the doctrine; but within a couple of hundred yards there are two national buildings, in which, under the authority of the State, the State clergy give thanks to Almighty God for the regeneration of every child they baptize, and in which grown men and women are taught that in baptism they were made members of Christ, children of God, and inheritors of the kingdom of heaven. The law is against me. It tolerates me, but condemns me. It barks, though it does not bite. It describes me as being among those people in divers parts of this realm who, 'following their own sensuality and living without knowledge and due fear of God, do wilfully and schismatically refuse to come to parish churches.' It has provided a Book of Common Prayer, that 'every person within this realm may certainly know the rule to which he is to conform in public worship.' I am permitted to break the rule; but the rule stands. It is the policy of the State to induce the country to accept or retain religious doctrines which seem to me to be erroneous, and an ecclesiastical polity which seems to me to be unfriendly to the free and vigorous development of the religious life. The position of a Nonconformist in this country is, to say the least, not a pleasant one. His religious work is carried on in the presence of a government which condemns his creed, condemns his modes of worship, condemns his religious organization, and sustains the authority of a hostile Church. In the United States I breathed freely."
Mr. Dale has travelled in the East and in the West.
