foreign to us. We shall continue to possess a Parliament, headed, in the country's actual government, by a premier who is dependent on a parliamentary majority. We shall be a commonwealth, as, indeed, we have already been, and still are—the great Commonwealth of England.
As Yellowly's chief sympathies lay in forecasting the future of his class, so Reed's lay in that of his Church. He foresaw the progress of religion generally in reaonableness and good common sense, and he was persuaded that his national Church would, as became her, head the movement far more effectively than she had yet been able to do. But in order to ascend to all this honoured position, she must throw off various worldly incumbrances, and betake herself much more to the simplicity and the open and inclusive doctrinal teaching of Scripture. The bishops must surrender the stumblingblock of their political power. He would not abandon the convenience and defensive strength of a learned, exemplary, and honoured episcopate; but the Church must drop out Apostolico-Episcopal Succession, that cherished myth of the past, which history has at length dissipated. In these ways might a great national Church be reconstituted, attracting into its wide and generous fold the great body of the people, and reducing outside dissenting extremes to a comparatively small surrounding, whose antagonisms, mutual and general, might well form the best set-off to the moderation and good sense of the main body.
