episcopal order; and would be forward to wish them a prayer-book of their own approving, and the church discipline to which they are attached and accustomed.  Only not at the price of Mialism; that is, of a doctrine which leaves the Nonconformists in holes and corners, out of contact with the main current of national life.  One can lay one’s finger, indeed, on the line by which this doctrine has grown up, and see how the essential part of Nonconformity is a popular church-discipline analogous to that of the other reformed churches, and how its voluntaryism is an accident.  It contended for the establishment of its own church-discipline as the only true [li] one; and beaten in this contention, and seeing its rival established, it came down to the more plausible proposal “to place all good men alike in a condition of religious equality;” and this plan of proceeding, originally taken as a mere second-best, became, by long sticking to it and preaching it up, first fair, then righteous, then the only righteous, then at last necessary to salvation.  This is the plan for remedying the Nonconformists’ divorce from contact with the national life by divorcing churchmen too from contact with it; that is, as we have familiarly before put it, the tailless foxes are for cutting off tails all round.  But this the other foxes could not wisely grant, unless it were proved that tails are of no value.  And so, too, unless it is proved that contact with the main current of national life is of no value (and we have shown that it is of the greatest value), we cannot safely, even to please the Nonconformists in a matter where we would please them as much as possible, admit Mialism.

But now, as we have shown the disinterestedness which culture enjoins, and its obedience not to likings or dislikings, but to the aim of perfection, let us show its flexibility,—­its independence of machinery.  That [lii] other and greater prophet of intelligence, and reason, and the simple natural truth of things,—­Mr. Bright,—­means by these, as we have seen, a certain set of measures which suit the special ends of Liberal and Nonconformist partisans.  For instance, reason and justice towards Ireland mean the abolishment of the iniquitous Protestant ascendency in such a particular way as to suit the Nonconformists’ antipathy to establishments.  Reason and justice pursued in a different way, by distributing among the three main Churches of Ireland,—­the Roman Catholic, the Anglican, and the Presbyterian,—­the church property of Ireland, would immediately cease, for Mr. Bright and the Nonconformists, to be reason and justice at all, and would become, as Mr. Spurgeon says, “a setting up of the Roman image.”  Thus we see that the sort of intelligence reached by culture is more disinterested than the sort of intelligence reached by belonging to the Liberal party in the great towns, and taking a commendable interest in politics.  But still more striking is the difference between the two views of intelligence, when we see that culture not only makes a quite disinterested choice of the machinery [liii] proper to carry us towards sweetness and light, and to make reason and the will of God prevail, but by even this machinery does not hold stiffly and blindly, and easily passes on beyond it to that for the sake of which it chose it.