Its  unity  and  personality  are  gone,  and  with  them  its
power  of  exciting  feelings  of  any  kind.  It  is  easier  to
love  or  hate  an  abstraction,  than  so  commonplace  a
framework  or  mechanism.  We  regard  it  neither  with
anger,  nor  with  aversion,  nor  with  contempt,  any  more
than  with  respect  or  interest.  It  is  but  one  aspect  of
the  State,  or  mode  of  civil  governance ;  it  is  responsible
for  nothing ;  it  can  appropriate  neither  praise  nor
blame ;  but,  whatever  feeling  it  raises  is  to  be  referred
on,  by  the  nature  of  the  case,  to  the  Supreme  Power


National  Church  to  the  Nation.  7

whom  it  represents,  and  whose  will  is  its  breath.  And
hence  it  has  no  real  identity  of  existence  in  distinct
periods,  unless  the  present  Legislature  or  the  present
Court  can  affect  to  be  the  offspring  and  disciple  of  its
predecessor.  Nor  can  it  in  consequence  be  said  to  have
any  antecedents,  or  any  future;  or  to  live,  except  in  the
passing  moment.  As  a  thing  without  a  soul,  it  does
not  contemplate  itself,  define  its  intrinsic  constitution,
or  ascertain  its  position.  It  has  no  traditions;  it
cannot  be  said  to  think ;  it  does  not  know  what  it
holds,  and  what  it  does  not ;  ^  it  is  not  even  conscious
of  its  own  existence.  It  has  no  love  for  its  members,
or  what  are  sometimes  called  its  children,  nor  any
instinct  whatever,  unless  attachment  to  its  master,  or
love  of  its  place,  may  be  so  called.  Its  fruits,  as  far  as
they  are  good,  are  to  be  made  much  of,  as  long  as  they
last,  for  they  are  transient,  and  without  succession ;  its
former  champions  of  orthodoxy  are  no  earnest  of  ortho-
doxy now ;  they  died,  and  there  was  no  reason  why
they  should  be  reproduced.     Bishop  is  not  like  bishop,

1  This  fact  is  strikingly  brought  out  in  Archbishop  Sumner's  corre-
spondence witli  Mr.  Maskell.  "You  ask  me,"  he  says,  "  wliether  you  are
to  conclude  t}iat  you  ought  not  to  teach,  and  have  not  autltority  of  the
Church  to  teach  any  of  the  dootriues  spoken  of  in  your  five  former  ques-
tions, in  the  dotjmalical  terms  there  stated  ?  To  which  I  reply,  Arc  tliey
contained  in  the  word  of  God?  St.  P.aul  says,  'Preach  the  word.'  .  ..
