ABSTRACT
The idea of a national Church is strictly in harmony with such hopes and aims, implying as it does that a Christian nation should publicly confess its Christianity. Even later in the nineteenth century men who foresaw the need for the much greater extension of the powers of the State also conceived that the process would be accomplished by the joint collaboration of Church and State. The Church of England possessed neither the moral authority, nor, for that matter, the clarity of view, the impartiality or the knowledge to act as the spiritual guide of the nation in the industrial problems which were beginning to take up a large share of the nation’s attention. The activities of the politically orientated dissenters, particularly their violent attacks on the elementary education bill of 1870, demonstrated clearly that an important section of the nation passionately rejected the spiritual authority of the Church of England.
