The tradition of the Anglican Church was powerful. Resting on the
Church of Jerusalem, modified by the divine school of Galilee, it would
have found that rock of truth which Providence, by the instrumentality
of the Semitic race, had promised to St. Peter.


Whatever this jargon may mean, the public has allowed it to fall flat.
It seems to suggest that the Archbishop of Canterbury, by resuming the
tradition of Caiaphas, as "modified" by the Sermon on the Mount, might
oust the Pope of Rome as was foretold by the Divine young Jewish
reformer when he called the fishermen of Galilee. It is difficult to
believe that Disraeli himself was serious in all this. In the last
scene, as Tancred is proposing to the lovely Jewess, their privacy is
disturbed by a crowd of retainers around the papa and mamma of the
young heir. The last lines of _Tancred_ are these:--"The Duke and
Duchess of Bellamont had arrived at Jerusalem." This is hardly the way
in which to preach a New Gospel to a sceptical and pampered generation.

But, if the regeneration of the Church of England by a re-Judaising
process and by return to the Targum of the Pharisees has proved
abortive, it must be admitted that, from the political point of view,
the conception announced in the "trilogy," and rhapsodically
illustrated in _Tancred_--the conception of the Anglican Church
reviving its political ascendancy and developing "the most efficient
means of the renovation of the national spirit"--has not proved quite
abortive. It shows astonishing prescience to have seen fifty years ago
that the Church of England might yet become a considerable political
power, and could be converted, by a revival of Mediaeval traditions,