God as you: perfectly, incessantly. But it cannot be: thanks be to God that I am enabled to do it at all!"

Certain letters of Mrs. Trimmer's to a lady afflicted with Unitarian doubts are also gratefully convincing of her devotion to the Church of England. One is given here with little abridgment, that Mrs. Trimmer's sublime patience with the doubter and sublimer impatience with the waste of time and energy controversy involves, may be fully known.

"I can assure you, my dear, dear madam, that you are much mistaken in supposing that the difference of opinion which I conceive to subsist between us on some doctrinal points has lessened my esteem of you. On the contrary, I entertain a high opinion both of your piety and charity. But give me leave to remind you that this difference of opinion is no new thing betwixt us. I cannot now point to the expressions which formerly appeared to me exceptionable; but I recollect that your answer convinced me that we did not think alike on the point of our Saviour's divinity. I conceive Him to have had an eternal existence. You speak of Him as the first of created beings ; neither did we think alike concerning our Lord's human nature. Of course it is not to be wondered at that we should not perfectly agree in opinion respecting the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Of the peculiar tenets of the Socinian heresy I must confess my own ignorance. The system of religion taught by the invaluable catechism of that Church into which I was received at my baptism appears to me, from a diligent study of the Scriptures, so perfectly accurate, that I have never found a doubt arising in my mind that could lead me to have recourse to other systems for satisfaction.

The books you were so obliging as to send for my perusal. . . have always been represented to me as Socinian books. I could not therefore avoid the idea that you had adopted these opinions in some degree, and on the occasion which has lately occurred it would not have been consistent with the sincerity I profess, or the

full consent to the doctrines of the Established Church which I avow, to have concealed my sentiments. At the same time I wish to avoid controversy, for my opinions have taken too deep root to be eradicated and I know by experience . . . that it does not lie within the compass of my ability to convince you. We will therefore, if you please, end the subject here, and leave our cause in the hands of that blessed Redeemer who, I trust, will convince us of our errors and guide us in the right way, if we pursue our search after the truth with humility of mind, and a sincere desire to do the will of our Heavenly Father. S. T."

If the English Church in the eighteenth century had done nothing else but produce two such daughters as Hannah More and Sarah Trimmer, sufficient would have been accomplished to refute the statement that the Church in that age was dead. Even in the earlier years than those of the activity of these foundresses of Sundayschools, sons and daughters of the Church had been as bees in the great hive of religious learning, storing up mental sustenance for many generations yet to come. But in the later time her divine motherhood yearned greatly after the lost, the degraded and the ignorant, and Hannah More and Sarah Trimmer were the instruments, under God, of that motherhood for the covering of the nation.

CHAPTER VII

CHURCHWOMEN IN LITERATURE

MARIA EDGEWORTH, JANE AUSTEN, MRS. SHERWOOD, MRS. JAMESON, LADY EASTLAKE, CHARLOTTE BRONTË, MRS. SEWELL, MISS SEWELL, A.L.O.E., MRS. SIDNEY LEAR,

66

MISS CHARLOTTE YONGE, EDNA LYALL.'

A QUESTION vexing not only to Christians but to all true educationists, of whatever school of religious thought, is what are the books proper to youth, and how far is it advisable to allow growing sons and daughters to browse in the general field of literature?

This question presented itself in quite early days of novel-writing to the comprehensive intelligence of Mrs. Catherine Macaulay. Her response is an aid to the solution of the problem.

Mrs. Macaulay, while commending some works of fiction, notably Don Quixote, for the perusal of the young, objected that their representation of love as an unconquerable and all-conquering passion rendered the majority of novels unfit for the reading of the immature. Though an admirer of Miss Burney, whose characters were "just to a degree that surprises when it is considered they are drawn by a very young person, she believed the conduct of Evelina in giving up a large fortune for the sake of marrying the heir of a family (whose absurd pride induced them to regard her with contempt), and her subsequent madness, would "fill a young person's mind with too vast an idea of the power of love."

Mrs. Macaulay commended rather several novels " not devoid of the power of pleasing and improving, though

written by persons several degrees inferior to the capital authors.

Among these authors-inferior to the first rank of literary workers-whose work has produced good and lasting results upon many generations of the young, stands a host of women of the Church of England who have employed and do employ their abilities in inculcating the best religious principles and the highest moral aims by the means of fiction. The leader of this host for the nineteenth

century is Miss Maria Edgeworth.

Maria Edgeworth's bright, prompt, practical genius, quick sympathy and fertile invention gave to adults in Castle Rackrent and in Tales from Fashionable Life much innocent diversion. These novels and her innumerable stories supplied also to English readers a knowledge of Irish character of the kind that needs, even now, to be better understood and which, at the time of its representation by Maria Edgeworth, was, unfortunately, for the heart-union of two kingdoms, entirely unappreciated by the predominating partner in the firm of the British Isles.

But the work for which Miss Edgeworth, as a Churchwoman, is most to be commended, was her Moral Tales and other stories for children. She lived in an age of many revolutions, not the least of which and certainly the one most beneficial to human kind, was that inaugurated by the badly-balanced but remarkable philosopher, Jean Jacques Rousseau. Rousseau was the opponent of scholasticism and formalism. He believed that human nature was not in itself corrupt, and that children needed to have their natural dispositions educated by kindly fostering, not perverted by harsh repressions. He was himself a victim of evil habits, which he attributed to false methods of training in youth. It was the conscious aim of Maria Edgeworth, of her father and of their friend, Thomas Day, author of Sandford and Merton, to provide for the young of the better classes in England books that should delight and amuse while they instructed and developed. The Moral Tales, although the first of their kind in the English language, are so remarkably well done, that even to-day when

a sermonizing flavour quickly disturbs the digestions of readers of fiction, both old and young, the pill in the jam is swallowed quite gratefully. When it is remembered that Maria Edgeworth had no models for her special form of literary work, but herself produced the models, it is to be admitted that her talent was of a supreme order, and that it was employed as nobly for the race and as profitably for the Church of which she was a member, as it is possible for such talent to be employed.

Towards the latter part of her life she used her pen very diligently on behalf of the sufferers by the Irish famine, and was gratified by the receipt of contributions for "Miss Edgeworth's poor "from admiring readers in all parts of the world. Archbishop Whateley appreciated Miss Edgeworth's work, both in its literary and philanthropic aspects, and he gave her much help in the organization of the relief she was the instrument of providing. It was a constant regret of hers that the English so little understood the Irish character. The fact that she was a Protestant and the greater number of the poor she befriended Roman Catholics was no impediment to her sympathy. That "moderation in all things" which becomes a Churchwoman was manifest in her. Although angry with the priests for influencing the parliamentary elections—she held it to be an unprincipled thing for them to persuade tenants to vote against landlords who stood for Parliament, simply on the ground of their Protestantism-she would never call herself Orange. She considered the militant Protestantism of Orangemen a disloyalty, in some directions, to the Irish nature.

When over seventy years of age she had a severe illness, from which it was thought she would not recover. But her strong constitution and cheerful spirit prevailed. Writing afterwards of the time when she lay anticipating her summons, she declared, "I felt ready to rise from the banquet of life where I had been a happy guest. I confidently relied on the goodness of my Creator.”

The spirituality of Miss Edgeworth was less obvious than that of those seventeenth century saints, Lady Warwick,