CHAPTER IX.

THEOLOGIANS.

Ir is hardly possible to reckon so important a name as that of Paley as belonging to the period within which we are limited. It is true that his last publication, and one of his most important, came before the world only in 1802, but neither in his life nor his work was there any variety from the moderate religiousness and scientific dignified apologetics of the eighteenth century, to which he belonged. His first publication on Moral Philosophy appeared to some of Bentham's friends to be likely to "take the wind out of the sails" of the Utilitarian system, and alarmed them momentarily, eliciting from the philosopher himself a half cry of panic. But this alarm seems to have been without foundation. Paley's works,

whether judiciously or not we need not pause to inquire, are still text-books at the universities, but the scepticism against which he sets his forces in array was not of the kind to which we are now accustomed, which takes much of the force from his defence. They are still however eminently readable in a merely literary point of view, and extracts might be made, in which the reader would find much happiness of expression and force of illustration, without any of the disadvantages of antiquated polemics. Dr. Watson, the Bishop of Llandaff, who lived for some time, almost a neighbour of the poets, on the edge of the

EVANGELICALS.

Lake country, and in his day too defended Christianity, without perhaps any very warm enthusiasm for it, requires mention at least. Godwin dedicated to him a volume of the sermons which he had preached in the earlier part of his career, which was, perhaps, but a doubtful compliment to his orthodoxy. Dr. Horsley Bishop of St. Asaph, Dr. Beilby Porteous Bishop of London, and Dr. Marsh Bishop of Peterborough, can scarcely be said to exist save to students of the most dusty shelves in theological libraries. Dr. Hartwell Horne, the author of the Introduction to the Study of the Scriptures, is better known and holds a more living place: but even he still lingered in the eighteenth century, and cannot be called a man of his time.

It is not, however, in detached names or treatises that we find the special religious interest of the age, but in the predominating Evangelical party then in full zenith of its power in England, first in all great and good works, and attaching to itself not only the most devout but the most benevolent and philanthropic spirits of the age. The men who with the hard labour of twenty years won from England the abolition of slavery-a step which cost so much in actual expenditure, and by which the nation ventured nobly upon a great sacrifice and effort for abstract right with doubtful results-belonged, without exception, to this straitest of religious communities. These men can scarcely be said to belong to the history of literature, but they all dabbled in composition more or less, pouring forth pamphlets, speeches, pleas of every kind, masses of evidence, and appeals full of the eloquence at least of sincerity, and glowing earnestness and zeal. Among these guides and leaders, however, were some whose gift of speech was indisputable, and who have left behind them volumes of sermons and essays and church histories which have supplied reading for thousands of devout persons, and have been considered by their readers

as something almost divine-as far superior to the less sacred array of books, as heaven is to earth: for the finest poetry, the highest philosophy, is not read by half so extended an audience, or regarded with half the admiration which a popular book of sermons will call forth. To a great mass of our countrymen, even now, such productions embody all that is known of literature.

Still more was this the case in the beginning of the century, when books were neither so cheap nor so plentiful as now; and when the Evangelicals were at the height of their power. We doubt much whether any extended religious movement can ever exist, especially among the millions, which is not strongly leavened with those views which are identified with the Low Church party. The claims of Church and priesthood do not touch the heart of the populace, and we doubt greatly whether all the splendour of a restored ritual would ever have the same effect upon the English crowd as the homely excitement of a prayer-meeting, or the emotional preaching of one who acknowledges himself to have been the greatest of sinners. In the time of which we treat, the zeal of Evangelical religiousness was penetrating among the wealthy, as it had already become supreme in the lower classes. It was the time when the "Clapham Sect" was at its height, when Simeon at Cambridge was proselytising with all his might, and sending forth, in all the warmth of a propaganda, the young men whom he converted; when Isaac Milner, Dean of Carlisle, a large and jovial figure full of genial force and breadth of life, recommended the self-denying doctrines of modern Puritanism by the warmth of his bonhommie and enjoyment of that existence which he fervently believed to be a perpetual struggle against the world and sin; when Wilberforce wrote his Practical View, and prayed and fought, and jested, with the same mixture of oppressive

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doctrine and gay spirits; when brilliant parties ended with exposition and prayer, and society itself was almost persuaded in the midst of corruption and license to be converted too. Religious life has rarely gone through a more remarkable phase. It was to break up after a time, and give way to the germ of reawakening Catholicism and the attractions of tradition in the Church of England and in a less important, yet scarcely less interesting way to find an outlet, bursting its husks, and pressing into a higher air of enthusiasm, in the movement of new zeal and high-toned spiritual life, which has been connected with the name of Edward Irving. But, in the meantime, the Evangelical party was supreme, doing all the good that was being done, aiming at every benevolent enterprise and effort of salvation that came within its reach, seeking freedom for men's bodies and for their souls, and believing that it had found a way by prayer and preaching, and the glow of social piety, to reconcile the Church and the world.

The incongruous point which has always cast a certain air of unreality upon a society so truly pious and full of good deeds and great effort, is the contrast between the ascetic side of Christianity-the self-denial which was the chief of virtues, the injunctions to come out of the world and be separate, the denunciation of worldly pleasures and gaieties which were its dogmatic utterance—and the extremely prosperous, luxurious, and enjoyable life of the leaders of this religious party. When such doctrines are preached by apostles who go out scripless and shoeless, with their lives in their hands: when they are put forth by ascetics worn with toil and fasting, by men whose selfabnegation is evident, whose life has no solace but God's service, of whom we can even feel, with a high sense of fitness, that they have served God for naught and depart to their recompense in another world, having had none in this

there is nothing that jars upon our feeling of harmony and appropriateness. But when the same sentiments are preached by the happy and wealthy, men with all the enjoyments of life about them, sitting at luxurious tables, surrounded by happy families, successful in everything, moving in a circle of admiration and love and praise, yet bidding us all the time to come out of Babylon, to love not the world, to regard life as a struggle and this earth as a vale of tears, there is at the best an inappropriateness in the preaching, which, certain as we are of the sincerity of the preachers, perplexes the sympathetic and brings a laugh from the cynic. The picture of the Clapham Sect living in those luxurious villas, with everything that wealth could command, in a pleasant commotion of congenial society, hushed and sanctified by the prayer-meeting, but still full of amusing talk, of delicate flattery, of the very atmosphere of pleasure, is as bright as any picture of society could be, but it does not harmonise well with the tenets of world-renunciation and self-denial. There is no reason why they should not have been happy and enjoyed themselves,-neither was there any reason why Henry Martyn, the devoted missionary, should not have had twelve hundred a year from the Indian government. Nothing can take away from the certainty of his real devotion, his almost martyrdom, " yet the ideal would be better without" that comfortable income, as Sir James Stephen says. And so we feel that the ideal of a Church militant, of a band who in the world are to have tribulation, and who were eager in claiming for themselves all the characteristics of those who were desired in their utter humiliation and poverty to take no thought for the morrow, would have been better had they been less rich, less happily off, less safe from all the assaults of fate.

This, however, though it explains the secret sentiment, not strong enough to be called suspicion, with which this