doubted that, if he lived long enough, he might yet leave his mark, in his own way, amongst his fellows, and upon his time.
Reed, as I have said, took the lead in religious discussion. Churchman as he was, he was opposed to all privilege, and hoped there would some day be realized a great inclusive national Church, based directly and wholly on Scripture, and free alike from any political pecuniary or ecclesiastical privilege or endowment, which other religious bodies could not equally attain. Eeligious interests represented, at best, only sections of the people. The State alone was representative of the whole people, and therefore the State was and ought to be supreme. In those various senses he approved an "Established" Church, and its ultimate appeal to the impartial and consistent dealing of the high national courts. The practice of dissenting bodies of, so to say, contracting themselves out of the ordinary law was, in Reed's view, greatly to be deprecated, as being a disadvantage to all parties, productive of tyrannical and unsteady ways, and promotive of religious dissension generally.
Such was Reed's motto. No religion, he would say, could afford to dispense with either. He regarded extremes in religious doctrine, sentiment, and ritual as mainly answerable for the prevailing scepticism in this age of education, with its inevitable attendants, free thought and criticism, because of their tendency
