Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 24, 2025
He was irritated by what seemed to him the petty and inconsistent divisions of Canadian party life: "In a community like this, where there is little, if anything, of public principle to divide men, political parties will shape themselves under the influence of circumstances, and of a great variety of affections and antipathies, national, sectarian, and personal.... It is not even pretended that the divisions of party represent corresponding divisions of sentiment on questions which occupy the public mind, such as voluntaryism, Free Trade, etc., etc.
The worshippers are humble people artisans, operatives, small shopkeepers, &c. A few of the hottest original partisans were the first to leave the chapel after its opening. There is a Sunday school connected with the body, and between 40 and 50 children and youths attend it on the average. Voluntaryism in its most absolute form, is the predominant principle of the denomination.
It is in this way that the Barbarians treat their bodily exercises, the Philistines their business, Mr. Spurgeon his voluntaryism, Mr. Bright the assertion of personal liberty, Mr. Beales the right of meeting in Hyde Park.
That such warnings are needful cannot be doubted; but may it not be urged that they indicate dangers incident to a course of action rather than the inevitable consequences thereof? In adapting ourselves to new conditions we must needs take risks. No British Government could stamp out voluntaryism even if it wished to do so; and none has yet manifested any such desire.
Hostility to state churches by no means implies a knowledge of the close and important connection between ecclesiastical and political questions. Men may appreciate the justice of voluntaryism in religion, and yet have rather cloudy conceptions with respect to the influence of opinions and things ecclesiastical on the condition of nations.
It is indeed certain that the Irish Church was originally founded on the broadest voluntaryism, and that such was the spirit of all its most illustrious fathers. "Content with food and raiment," says an ancient Canon attributed to St. Patrick, "reject the gifts of the wicked beside, seeing that the lamb takes only that with which it is fed."
It was utterly shameful now to hold back and not to do one's utmost for civilisation, for England, for all the ease and safety one had been given against these drilled, commanded, obsessed millions. Mr. Britling was a flame of exalted voluntaryism, of patriotic devotion, that day. But behind all this bravery was the other thing, the second thing in the mind of Mr. Britling, a fear.
If we were forced to adopt a modern designation for him, we should call him. the father of all that, since his time, has figured, anywhere in Great Britain, or in the United States, or in the British Colonies, under the name of Voluntaryism. This involves a restriction on the one hand.
These duties, if one is to gather them from the works of the great liberal party in the last thirty years, are, as I have elsewhere summed them up, the advocacy of free-trade, of parliamentary reform, of abolition of church-rates, of voluntaryism in religion and education, of non- interference of the State between employers and employed, and of marriage with one's deceased wife's sister.
It is not even pretended that the divisions of party represent corresponding divisions of sentiment on questions which occupy the public mind; such as Voluntaryism, Free Trade, &c., &c. Responsible government is the only subject on which this coincidence is alleged to exist.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking