Excerpt from The Danger and the Evils of Disestablishment and the Duty of Churchmen at the Present Crisis: A Speech of the Bishop of Peterborough at the Peterborough Diocesan Conference in the Drill Hall, Peterborough, on Wednesday, October 14, 1885 I say under ordinary circumstances and in ordinary times this would have been once more my duty. But these are not ordi nary times, nor do we meet under ordinary circumstances. We meet not only in the midst of the excitement and the turmoil of one of the fiercest political contests that ever divided or dis tracted this country, but in the very centre and crisis of what has been truly described as the widest and deepest political revolution that we have known for the last two centuries. The centre of political power, and therefore the motive power in large measure not only of the political but of the social life of this great nation, has suddenly shifted; it has passed com pletely and for ever from the hands which have held it for nearly two generations to other and as yet untried possessors. Now, whether that change be the unmixed good or the unmixed evil that different persons are proclaiming it to be, or whether it be, as I believe, neither all good nor yet all evil, but just of that mixed nature which marks all human life and all human history, one thing at least is clear - namely, that it closely concerns and must profoundly affect every one of the institutions of this country. For it is clear that such a change at once and necessarily places every one of our institutions on its trial. The new electors have the right to say, and, what is more, it is their duty to say, of every one of these, We have not created this; we have hitherto had no share in, no responsi bility for, its existence or its management; now we have both, and if we would be faithful to our new trust as citizens we must examine them each and all, in order to mend or end themaccording to Our judgment and our conscience. Every such great change, then, as that we are now witnessing is in truth a fire which must try every man's work. Whether it Wlll in this case consume only the wood, hay, and stubble, or burn up more precious things than they, remains to be seen, but that it will burn on and on until it has done its Divinely appointed work is absolutely certain. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.