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MR. GLADSTONE'S RELIGIOUS BELIEF.
The following appeared in the London Evening
Standard of the 28th November :
" PLYMOUTH, Thursday Night.
" Mr. Gladstone's attention having been called by
Mr. Finch, of Bodmin, to some statements made
against the Premier's religious opinions, by Mr.
Arundel Rogers, a Conservative candidate for
Bodmin, the right honourable gentleman has replied
through his private secretary. Mr. Rogers charged
Mr. Gladstone, though nominally a member of the
Church of England, with holding views which were
not only diametrically opposed to the teaching of the
Church of England and to the great theory and
doctrines of the Protestant religion of this country,
but which also showed a leaning towards the Church
of Rome. Mr. Gladstone had written expressly in
favour of the Pope of Rome, and had repudiated in
most distinct terms every evangelical effort ever
made in this country which had not arisen from
episcopal sources, and that his writings were those of
a man who was in spirit a Papist and not a Protes-
tant."
The reply, dated from Whitehall, was as
follows:
"Sirs-I am directed by Mr. Gladstone to acknowledge
the receipt of a letter dated the 6th
November, and signed by yourself and others, with
which is transmitted a copy of the Western Daily
Mercury, containing the report of a speech by Mr.
Arundel Rogers. Mr. Gladstone desired me to inform
you that when charges which are either in
themselves wholly extravagant or else advanced upon
vague and remote grounds, are made by persons who
have political objects in view, it is, in his opinion,
idle to enter into controversy with them, and such
appears to be the case of Mr. Rogers. Mr. Gladstone
has only to say for your information that the allegations
referred to in your letter are wholly and absolutely
void of truth I am, etc, W. B. GORDON.
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