ABSTRACT
The dispute which is most alive to-day between State Church and Free Churches is not exactly religious: it seems to be rather ethnological or anthropological. That is to say, it may be held to represent a difference inherent in the varied nature of humanity, and to correspond to the divergent views taken of religion by two different types of mind. If there is any truth in this statement, it ought surely to be possible to recognise the fact, and to adjust our arrangements to it, as to any other of the facts of nature. The Church recognises, indeed, that every man is in some small sense a priest in his own household, and admits that in times of emergency he may act as such, up to the point of administering the minor sacrament of Baptism, provided he employs the right material and the authorised form of words.
