Power of the Laity.

The laity are the only instrument by which reform can be effected. They are not free from a share of responsibility for the evils that exist. In Protestant Churches they undoubtedly possess the power to remove them. The aid of the clergy cannot be expected; it ought not in fairness to be asked; the opposition of the clergy must be overcome. The means of reform apparently available are suggested by the proposals that were made at the time of the Reformation to abolish the creeds. These proposals were not accepted. The conduct of the Reformation, which in the early days of Wyclif and Huss was in the hands of the laity, and aimed at a lay reform of ecclesiastical abuses, passed at a later period into the hands of the clergy and of politicians, and it is to them rather than to the general body of the laity that the Church of England owes the added burden of her articles of religion, and the Church of Scotland that of the Westminster Confession of Faith. If the compulsory subscription by the clergy of all creeds, articles, and standards were abolished through the united action of the laity in only one of the older Protestant Churches, consequences most momentous and beneficial might be expected, I think, to follow. The example would be catching, and would probably extend quickly to all the Protestant Churches. The intellectual division between the clergy and the laity would soon be removed, for both would rejoice speedily to forget the system of dogma that now, like a nightmare, oppress them both. Alterations in ritual necessary for the purpose of consigning those systems to complete oblivion would then be readily made.