THE 
 
 HURCH REVIVAL 
 
 S. BARING -GOULD 
 
BX 5099 .B3 1914 
 Baring-Gould , Sabine . 
 The church revival 
 
Digitized by 
 
 the Internet Archive 
 
 
 
 in 2015 
 
 
 
 https://archive.org/details/churchrevivalthoOObari 
 
THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
THE 
 
 CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 THOUGHTS THEREON 
 AND REMINISCENCES 
 
 >/ BY 
 
 S. BARING-GOULD, M.A. 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE TRAGEDY OF THE (LESARS," ETC. 
 
 " Ecclesia videtur sicut luna deficere, sed non deficit ; 
 obumbrari potest, deficere non potest" 
 
 S. Ambrose, Hex. IV. 2 
 
 WITH EIGHTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
TO 
 
 TWO FRIENDS OF MY OWN GENERATION: 
 THE REV. J. T. FOWLER, HON. CANON OF 
 DURHAM AND HEBREW LECTURER TO THE 
 UNIVERSITY OF DURHAM, M.A., HON. D.C.L., 
 F.S.A. J AND THE REV. J. M. GATRILL, LATE 
 VICAR OF ALL SAINTS', STAN WAY 
 
PREFACE 
 
 I HAD no intention, in writing my Reminiscences, and 
 Thoughts on the Church Revival, of having them pub- 
 lished before my death. When this appears I shall be in 
 my eighty-first year, and I have passed through many ex- 
 periences during the second stage of the Church Revival. Memoirs 
 and Recollections have been issued from the press relative to 
 the first, or Tractarian stage, but none, so far as I can learn, 
 that concerns the second epoch, that termed, first, Puseyite 
 and then Ritualistic, except detached Biographies, and records 
 concerning particular churches. 1 
 
 I say that I did not desire to publish, but leave my MS. to 
 appear later, because I was reluctant to hurt the feelings of 
 sons and grandsons of some of whom I have had to say hard 
 words. But I have been strongly urged to produce the work 
 at once, because of late there has been a recrudescence of seces- 
 sions to Rome of young clergy, impatient at the slow progress 
 of the movement — above all at the favour shown to, and the 
 advancement made to responsible positions in the Church, of 
 men whose grasp on the fundamentals of the Christian faith is 
 more than doubtful. 
 
 In this book I desire especially to show the younger clergy 
 that the trials and discouragements through which loyally- 
 minded Churchmen had to pass formerly were far more serious 
 than any which they are called upon to endure at the present 
 day. 
 
 If I have had to deal somewhat severely with the Bishops of 
 the Victorian period, it must be borne in mind that they laid 
 themselves out for condemnation. When one looks back on the 
 
 1 I must, however, except Mr. Overton's excellent book, The Anglican 
 Revival (London, 1897). H is. however, very brief, and more than half 
 is devoted to the Tractarian movement. 
 
 vii 
 
viii 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 hearts they broke, the hopes they extinguished, the bitterness 
 of soul they engendered, the wreckage they wrought in the 
 Church of England, wheresoever work was being done for God 
 not exactly after the pattern with which they were familiar 
 and in the fashion that they approved, and how they were able 
 to throw a bomb and thrust in a torch to destroy loyal work, 
 then the fire kindles and one speaks with the tongue. That 
 they did not understand the movement towards fuller doctrine 
 and more reverent ceremonial may well and readily be conceded, 
 but that which cannot be excused is where they endeavoured 
 to hinder or wholly prevent the Church from recovering her 
 voice in Convocation, and in Synodal action, in a word from 
 recovering her vitality, and also for obstructing the commissioning 
 of Bishops to act as heads of Missions beyond the bounds of our 
 Colonies, and for endeavouring to rivet on them the chains of 
 the Royal Supremacy and the Judgments of the Court of the 
 Privy Council. 
 
 A friend once showed an old Turk an engraving of Noah's 
 sacrifice, highly idealised. The Ark, looking like a mastless 
 old three-decker battleship, was in the background, and the 
 elephants, giraffes, lions, tigers and lambs were represented 
 walking lovingly in conjunction out of the sally-port, like a 
 lady's seminary taking a constitutional. " Ah ! " said the old 
 Turk, " if only we had a photograph of it as it really was ! " 
 In the future, maybe, we shall have the Victorian archbishops 
 and bishops idealised, delineated like apostles in stained glass 
 with haloes about their heads. I see from an article in the 
 Dictionary of National Biography that the halo is beginning 
 to form even about Archbishop Thomson. Already Bishops 
 Sumner, Bickersteth, Thorold, etc., have undergone beatifica- 
 tion at the hands of admiring but uncritical biographers. 
 
 I have ventured to sketch some of these men. I do not for 
 a moment mean to imply that they did not act conscientiously. 
 I believe that Annas and Caiaphas were sincerely conscientious 
 men. Only they knew not what they did. That is their excuse. 
 
 I find that among the younger clergy there is a growing 
 impatience at the galling link between Church and State, and 
 the impotence in which the Church is placed to select her own 
 officers and manage her own affairs ; and there is a readiness to 
 accept Disestablishment at almost any price. 
 
 I do not wonder at it. From the time of the English Revolu- 
 tion, insult and outrage have been assiduously offered to the 
 
PREFACE 
 
 ix 
 
 Church, and every effort has been made to depress and cripple 
 her, and force her to work as her taskmaster orders, in chains, 
 and with the irons eating into her very soul. 
 
 One of our present bishops is reported to have said : " When 
 I travel I always get into a carriage in the middle of the 
 train, and I take a middle compartment, and plant myself 
 in the middle seat, and trust the rest to Providence." This 
 represents precisely the policy of a great many — not all — of 
 our prelates. They do not want to lead, they do not want 
 either to come in at the tail, but to occupy a position that 
 exposes them to no danger or discomfort. What they look for 
 is to be safe — safe in the middle compartment, with a buffer on 
 each side, so that whatever might befall the train in which they 
 travel — the Church of the Land — they personally will not suffer. 
 
 In the first two chapters I have endeavoured to trace the 
 history of the parties in the Church to their sources, and to 
 show how that Puritanism was a foreign element introduced 
 into England. I have endeavoured also to show how that the 
 Church has been like a cask half-full of generous wine, into 
 which the State, like a dishonest host, has poured so as to fill 
 the cask the water of Latitudinarianism charged with evil, as 
 much as it would hold ; and how that the Church movement has 
 been the fermentation of the noble liquor, endeavouring to clear 
 itself of its impurities. 
 
 As a history of the Church in the Victorian age, my Reminis- 
 cences will not serve. They are rather a collection of disjointed 
 notes on various matters connected with the movement, than 
 anything of the nature of a consecutive history. I have dealt 
 mainly with such events as came under my own immediate 
 notice or with which close friends had been associated. 
 
 Here and there I have incorporated into the text passages 
 from articles I had contributed to the Guardian. 
 
 I have ventured also to reproduce certain caricatures that 
 appeared at intervals, also satirical verses that circulated, some 
 in print, and some in MS. ; moreover I have given the texts 
 applied by the late Dr. Littledale to the Victorian Bishops. 
 All these items, trivial and even flippant, deserve preservation 
 as illustrative of the feelings and passions excited on one side 
 as on the other by the Church Revival j and such in a few years 
 would be difficult, almost impossible to recover ; and this must 
 serve as my apology for their introduction. I may, like Autolicus, 
 be a snapper up of unconsidered trifles, but it is precisely these 
 
X 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 trifles that tell most of the temper of the times when they were 
 cast aside. 
 
 Vive, vale : si quid novisti rectius istis, 
 Candidus imperti ; si non, his utere mecum. 
 
 I have to thank three old friends, of the same age as myself, 
 for their advice in the compilation of this book, and for having 
 read it over in MS. They are not, however, to be held responsible 
 for my statements, censures, or opinions. I must also thank 
 several laymen and clergy who have furnished me with details 
 relative to the imprisonment of clergy under the P.W.R. Act. 
 Also Mr. Mowbray, for kindly permitting the reproduction of 
 one of the plates of Deformation and Reformation, drawn by 
 his father in the forties. 
 
 S. Baring-Gould 
 
 Lew Trenchard, Devon. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE SWAMPING OF THE CHURCH 
 1547— 1660 
 
 A survey of the history from the death of Henry VIII — Edward VI — 
 The First Prayer Book — Protector Somerset and the Council — Influx of 
 foreigners — Revision of the Prayer Book — The unpopularity of the Reform 
 — Tyndale's Bible — The Homilies — Insurrection — Preaching forbidden — 
 Censorship of the Press — Foreign reformers in England — Reformers on 
 the Continent — Their advice solicited and tendered — The Second Prayer 
 Book — Accession of Mary — Ejection of married incumbents — Death of 
 Mary and accession of Elizabeth — Return of the exiles — Inundation 
 of foreigners — The Prayer Book of Elizabeth — Peter Martyr's advice — 
 Foreigners' advice still sought — Puritan demands — The XXXIX Articles 
 — Oath of Supremacy — Visitation of England — Small number of clergy 
 ejected — Most of Marian priests remained in their cures — Little outward 
 difference in the conduct of worship — Confusion — Encouragement of 
 Puritan clergy — Unworthy Bishops — Difference between condition of the 
 Church under Elizabeth from what it was under Edward — Emmanuel 
 College — Two currents between the same banks — The turn of the tide 
 — Bancroft, Jewel and Hooker — Differences of use — Contrasts — Iceland 
 — Abuses — The lectureships — Encouragement given to Puritans — Attempts 
 to restrain them — The classes — Prophesyings — Millenary petition — Pre- 
 sentations of clergy by churchwardens — Petition of February, 1640 — 
 Appointment of committees — Ejection of clergy — in Monmouthshire — in 
 Devon — Religious anarchy — Devastation of churches — The Directory — 
 Destruction of organs — Conformists — The Covenant — Presbyterianism 
 established — Independency — The Tryers — Severity towards the deprived 
 clergy — Reykjahlid Church . . . . . . pp. 1-27 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 THE SWAMPING OF THE CHURCH (continued) 
 
 FROM 1660 ONWARDS 
 
 The Restoration of 1660 — Pepys — Savoy Conference, 1661 — Black 
 Bartholomew — Number of those ejected and of conformists — Difficulties 
 of the bishops — Conformists did well for themselves — Conceived prayers 
 — Dean Granville — Test Act — Neglect of order not due solely to the con- 
 
 xi 
 
xii 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 formists — Ejections in Cumberland and Westmorland — Restoration — 
 Revolution — William III and his Bishops — Commission of 1689 — Lower 
 House of Convocation refuses all modification of the Prayer Book — Sub- 
 serviency of the Bishops — Reign of Queen Anne — Influx of foreign Cal- 
 vinists — Favoured with deaneries, canonries and livings — Ennoblement of 
 Huguenots — The Channel Islands — Invasion from Switzerland — Calvinists 
 from the Palatinate — Influx of Scotchmen — Invasion of the Church by 
 them — and by Irish Protestants — Submergence of the English Church. 
 
 pp. 28-49 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 A REMNANT 
 
 Livings in private patronage — Orthodox clergy regarded with suspicion 
 — Convocation silenced in 171 7 — No preferments for the Orthodox clergy 
 — They were to be found in country livings — The Church waterlogged — 
 A blank in Church history — Character of the Hanoverian Bishops — Two 
 elements in the Church — The Taliacotian process applied to her — The 
 squatters — Foreigners in the ministry — The Church not radically corrupted 
 — The Cagots — Faithful clergy remained — The thread of Catholicity 
 unbroken — The Catholic -minded Bishops and clergy of the reigns of 
 James I and Charles I — Post-reformation screens in Devon — in Somerset — 
 The Communion Service sung — The orthodox at the Restoration — Arch- 
 bishop Sharp — The Catholic element during the Hanoverian night — 
 Bishop Wilson — Writers — The Apostolic Succession — Declaration of clergy 
 and laity after the Reform Bill — The Exeter synod — Belford Regis — The 
 great default of the High Churchmen of that day — Those in my own 
 neighbourhood — No Church so badly oppressed as that of England — The 
 Tract writers — The Rev. Charles Baring-Gould — The Rev. F. Parker — 
 Coryton — Madam Gould and Charles Baring — Sir Roger de Coverley — 
 Mr. and Mrs. Fowler — Latent Catholicism — Publication of the Christian 
 Year — Nelson's Fasts and Festivals — The Hellenising of the Jewish Church 
 under Antiochus Epiphanes — The Abomination of Desolation — Revival 
 under the Maccabees — The Analogy ..... pp. 50-77 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 THE EVANGELICAL MOVEMENT 
 
 The foreign element in the Church — The fundamental doctrines of 
 Calvinism — The Omphalopsychae — The undenominational temper — The 
 old sense of duty — Failure of orthodox teaching — The Evangelicals rill 
 the gap — Exaggerations of doctrine — Sensible conversion — Emancipation 
 from responsibility — Mr Mozley on this teaching — The doctrine of the 
 utter degradation of man — Mussulman and Calvinistic Predestination — 
 Opposition to the world — Whitefield's preaching — Romaine — The elder 
 Evangelicals — Later, more narrow — Their imperfect conception of the 
 Church — Oppose Church developments — Contrast in the Colonies — 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 xiii 
 
 Australia and South Africa — Verbal inspiration — The Nemesis of Faith 
 — Their doctrine unscriptural — Idea that Rome is Babylon — Results — 
 Preaching everything — Neglect of parochial work — Falling off when 
 Evangelicalism became fashionable — Attempt to revise the Prayer Book — 
 Lord Shaftesbury — Diary of John Louis Mallet — The Baring family — Mrs. 
 Wall — Mr. Evans and Mr. Snow — Mrs. Wall's brothers — Rev. Mr. Cun- 
 ningham — And Denman — Meets Lord Lansdowne — Gets snubbed — Top- 
 lady — Self-deception — Hood and Rae Wilson — Rev. Mr. Simcoe — Visit 
 to a Calvinist incumbent — Islington and Clapham — The Clapham sect — 
 What idolatry really is — Tenets of Calvinism generally given up — What we 
 owe to the Evangelicals — Sunday Schools — Hymns — Fervour in preaching 
 — Objections to Colonial bishoprics — Removed — These become a prey to the 
 C.M.S. — " Returned Empties " — Feebleness — How Evangelicals regarded 
 by Dissenters — Craving after popularity — Need of the party still in the 
 Church — One party incomplete without the other . . pp. 78-1 11 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 THE CHURCH IN COUNTRY PLACES 
 
 Statistics of non-residence in 1807 — In 1835 — The occasion for non- 
 residence — Pluralism not confined to England or Hanoverian period — 
 Difficulties in the way of residence — Grant of 1818 — Tithe Commutation 
 Act — Patronage — Family livings — Froude on the clergy of his day — 
 Unfair judgment — The practice in country parishes — Parson Teasdale — 
 The " Velvet Cushion " — Praed's testimony — Pluralists — Lord Courtenay 
 and his livings — The curate — Two classes of clergy — Washington Irving's 
 account — Systematic pillage of livings — The parish of Lydford — Parson 
 Elford — Caddy Thomas and his pupil — East Mersea — Hannah More's 
 testimony — Dean Hole's — Stamford — Change in the Church — Belford 
 Regis — Preparation for Confirmation — A visitation at Farnham — Con- 
 firmations and Ordinations — Sheepstor — Infrequency of the Communion 
 — Types of old parsons — One Cornish, the other Yorkshire — Easter 
 decorations — Condition of the churches — A church near Cambridge — 
 Ruinous condition of the churches — Lew Trenchard Church — The service 
 — The hunting parsons — Parson Endacott — The Bishops — A procession 
 — Another at Lyndhurst — Behaviour of Bishops — Clergy in procession — 
 The north end — Reduction of sleeves among the Bishops. pp. 11 2-1 39 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 THE CHURCH IN TOWNS 
 
 Town churches kept clean and comfortable — Attitude in prayer — 
 Grant of 1824 for church -building — Ugly churches — Appropriated pews — 
 The pew-opener — Pulpits — Three-deckers — Proprietary chapels — A me- 
 chanical contrivance — Windows — Galleries — David Copperfield — Bilder 
 aus London — Rage for attending church — Fashionably dressed men — 
 
xiv 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 All men want to preach — Charity school children — Beadles — Interior 
 arrangement of churches — Irving — His meeting-house — His personal ap- 
 pearance — His mode of conducting service — Irvingism — Prophecy — Dr. 
 Cumming — Certain proprietary chapels — Pulpit contrivances — Charles 
 Honeyman no caricature — Dress of the clergy — Uniform — Cassocks — 
 Long coats — Now cut short — Importance of a distinctive dress — Adoption 
 of moustaches — Sermons — Tediousness — Too long — Condensation needed 
 
 pp. 140-156 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 THE TRACTARIAN MOVEMENT 
 
 Dealt with briefly — A lull — Dr. Arnold's idea of a Church — Dr. C. Lloyd 
 — The Reform Bill — Alarm — Hadleigh meeting — Mistaken action of the 
 Bishops — First appearance of the Tracts for the Times — Their purpose — 
 Palmer's Origines LiturgiccB — Awakening interest in the Prayer Book — 
 The Oxford Movement — Tract on Reserve — Alarm provoked — Tract 
 Ninety — Its purport — Injudiciousness of its publication — The Remains of 
 R. Hurrell Froude — Severe set-back to the Movement — The Romanizers — 
 Secessions — Jubilation of the Evangelicals — Charges of treachery — Were 
 they justified ? — Many doctrines ignored or depraved by the Evangelicals 
 — The Cambridge Camden Society — Its seal — Close thereon — The cult of 
 the ugly — Love of deformity — Ridicule — Was it possible to effect a Revo- 
 lution ? • pp. 157-170 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 THE VICTORIAN BISHOPS 
 
 The Victorian bishops — Men of family — Or family tutors — How Charles 
 Sumner got preferment — Helped on his brother — Disraeli on the Peel 
 bishops — Wilberforce of Oxford — Lord John Russell — His appointments 
 — Bishop Blomfield — Lord Palmerston puts appointments into the hands 
 of Lord Shaftesbury — Bishop Jackson — Bishop Baring — Bishop Ellicott 
 — Archbishop Thomson — Bishop Villiers — Bishop Waldegrave — Bishop 
 Pelham — Mr. Swinburne on a bishop in the Northern Province — Bishop 
 Selwyn — Bishop Jeune — Bishop Perowne — Bishop Philpott — Bishop 
 Wigram — Bishop Thorold — Tait, Bishop of London — A Presbyterian at 
 heart — Believes it his mission to put down Ritualism — Becomes Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury — His Bill taken out of his hands by Lord Shaftesbury 
 — On his death-bed tries to undo some of the mischief he had perpe- 
 trated — Bishop Bickersteth — Lord Beaconsfield's bishops — Magee — Bishop 
 Ryle a persecutor and a Zwinglian — Bishop Fraser — An inexhaustible 
 talker — Specimen by Mr. Swinburne — Covering-up of blots — Men of 
 genius not wanted — Only ordinary men approved of — What the Palmer- 
 stonian bishops resembled — Ignorance of one of them — Colonial bishops 
 — Anecdote of one — Treatment of Ordinands formerly — Bishop Bickersteth 
 again — In the Archdiocese of York — The Vicar of Topcliffe — Instance of 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 xv 
 
 the Archbishop's practice — Appearance — At Sheffield — Dealings with 
 myself — Bishop Claughton — Marries a daughter well — A famous photo- 
 graph — The Bishop of Colombo — Bishop Ciaughton at a farmhouse — 
 Bishop Wordsworth — Bishop Phillpotts of Exeter — Not liked in the dio- 
 cese — Some anecdotes — Our present bishops . . . pp. 1 71-210 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 ROUGH WEATHER 
 
 Broad Church and Latitudinarian hostility — Appointment of Hampden 
 to Hereford — Of Lee to Manchester — Bishop Phillpotts on the Tracts — 
 Surplice riots — Helston — Judgment of the Bishop — S. Sidwell's — Surplice 
 riots there — Eldad chapel — S. Peter's, Plymouth — The Vicar of S. Andrew's 
 — Public meetings — Cholera — The clergy and Sisters — Renewed attack — 
 Mr. Spurrell's pamphlet — Confirmation at S. Peter's — Attack on the 
 Sisters — Meetings to denounce Confession — Charges against Mr. Prynne 
 and the Sisters — Investigation — Character of the witnesses — Latimer's 
 attack — Trial — Prynne's effects sold — Rev. John Mason Neale — Sackville 
 College — Visited by Bishop Gilbert — Mr. Neale inhibited — Riot at the 
 funeral of Mrs. Aulchim — Miss Scobell — Riot at Lewes — Change of feeling 
 after twenty years — Inhibition removed — Margaret Street Chapel — 
 S. Barnabas, Pimlico — Riots — The Rev. W. J. E. Bennett forced to 
 resign pp. 21 1-23 1 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 STURM UND DRANG 
 
 Riots at S. George's-in-the-East — Those at S. Matthias, Stoke Newington 
 — Hostility, why roused — Attempts to condemn Eucharistic doctrine — 
 The Denison case — The Bennett case — The Ornaments Rubric — Consti- 
 tution of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council — Beale v. Liddell 
 — Martin v. Mackonochie — The Purchas case — The Public Worship 
 Regulation Act — Convocation disapproves — The Episcopal veto — Lord 
 Penzance appointed Judge in the new Court — The Ridsdale case — Im- 
 prisonment of clergy — S. James's, Hatcham, and Mr. Tooth — Imprisoned 
 — Released — Renewed riots — The Bishops surrender their power to the 
 Secular Judge — Miles Platting and Mr. Green — Imprisoned — Resigns 
 the living — Dispersion of congregation — End of the tyranny — S. 
 Margaret's, Liverpool, and Mr. Bell-Cox — Imprisoned — Discharged 
 — Bill of Costs — Plan of spiritually starving parishes — Inaugurated by 
 Bishop Baring — Rev. Dr. Dykes — S. Raphael's, Bristol, and Dr. Ellicott 
 — Bishop of Lincoln's case — The Church Association — Case of Mr. 
 Mackonochie — Imprisonment of Mr. Dale — 1874, the year of stress — 
 Secessions — Frightened condition of the Bishops — Change of feeling — The 
 opinion of the Archbishops in 1899 — What should have been the policy 
 of the Bishops — " Who killed devotion ? " . . . pp. 232-265 
 
xvi 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 . . S. SAVIOUR'S, LEEDS 
 
 The story of a pioneer Church — The " Bank " district at Leeds — Popula- 
 tion — Infidelity — Immorality — Dr. Hook divides Leeds into thirty parishes 
 — The Rev. G. Elmhurst — Dr. Hook's work and character — A penitent's 
 offer — Original scheme — Consecration difficulties raised by the Bishop — 
 Lucy's cross — The church services — Not ritualistic — Insufficient endow- 
 ment — Dr. Hook's objections — The Rev. Richard Ward — The Rev. R. 
 Macmullen — His sermon — Inhibited — Secedes — The Bishop obliges Mr. 
 Ward to resign — The Rev. A. P. Forbes becomes Vicar — Mr. Minster — The 
 Bishop raises objections — Dr. Hook hostile — The Irish Fever — The cholera 
 of 1849 — Rev. J. H. Pollen comes to help — Mr. Minster attacked — Conduct 
 of Bishop — Bishop Longley objects to Mr. Pollen — Mr. Minster's health 
 fails — Bishop objects to Confession — Secession of schoolmistress — The 
 Gorham Judgment — Mr. Ward inhibited — Also Mr. Pollen — The clergy, 
 summoned to Ripon — The Commission — All the curates inhibited — Ad- 
 dress by congregation — Secession of clergy — Mr. Beckett remains firm — 
 Preferment of Bishop Longley — Dr. Pusey arrives — Appointment of Rev. 
 J. W. Knott — A Revivalist — Resigns — Appointment of Rev. R. Collins — 
 Period of stagnation — His death — Appointment of Rev. J. Wylde — Peace 
 and progress — A saying of Dr. Newman .... pp. 266-289 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 S. JUDE'S, BRADFORD 
 
 Contrast between S. Saviour's, Leeds, and S. Jude's, Bradford — The 
 town of Bradford — Its vicar — A Parochial Union formed — Its object — 
 Broken up — Migrates to S. Jude's — Seats made free and unappropriated — 
 Mission by Canon Body — Inhibition of Rev. A. H. Mackonochie — Increase 
 in the number of communicants — And in amount of the offertories — A 
 Sisterhood introduced — Mission chapel of S. Mary Magdalen — Resignation 
 of Vicar — His return — Opposition — How overcome — A layman's Move- 
 ment pp. 290-296 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 AGITATION AGAINST CONFESSION 
 
 The Boyne Hill case — Investigation — Punch on the Bishop of Oxford — 
 The Road murder — Constance Kent — Agitation of 1873 — Ignorance of 
 how to deal with souls — Project of the 403 — Bishop Jackson and the 
 curtains — Dean Goulburn — Agitation of 1877 — The " Priest in Absolu- 
 tion " — Lord Redesdale in the House of Lords — Thanked by Archbishop 
 Tait — Remedy proposed by the Pall Mall Gazette — Reason of opposition — 
 McNeile on Confession — Secrecy necessary — Dr. Littledale quoted — Proper 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 xvii 
 
 place for hearing Confessions — Bishop Festing — Fear lest it be made 
 compulsory — Ignorance of clergy — The doctrine and practice of the 
 Church — Compromise at the Reformation — Sackingen — The three parts 
 of true repentence — Abuse — Neale at Amiens — Conference at Leeds — The 
 Church Times on the Seventh Commandment — Danger of men treating 
 their own souls — Missions, their work in awakening souls. . pp. 297-308 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 SECESSIONS 
 
 Allowance made for discouragement — Hostility of the Bishops — Too 
 early loss of heart — Condition in the German bishoprics in the eighteenth 
 century — Episcopal encouragement of Rationalism — The parish priests 
 save Christianity — Mistake as to the functions of a Bishop — His three 
 powers and duties — The Bishops oppose the Church Revival — The Jeru- 
 salem Bishopric — Protests against it — The Gorham Judgment — The Privy 
 Council no mouthpiece of the Church — Secessions caused by its judgments 
 — The Wakefield Bridge cross — Motives for secession — Lack of immediate 
 success — How secessions are now regarded — Romanist statistics — Unreli- 
 able — Desire for emancipation from responsibilities — " 'Verts" not morally 
 improved — Desire for an authoritative voice — Does the Papacy provide 
 this ? — The text Tu es Petrus, etc. — The Papal system based on a suc- 
 cession of frauds — The Canon of Sardica — The rescript of Valentinian III 
 — Forged Decretals — The directing and authoritative voice convicted of 
 falsehood — Personal difficulties — Admiration for high ritual — Leo X — 
 Desire for definite dogma — Seceders mainly from Dissent and Evangelical- 
 ism — Convictions — The Romanizing element — Roman usages uncongenial 
 to the English ........ pp. 309-337 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 PROGRESS 
 
 Tithe Commutation Act — Church rates abolished — Progress in Cornwall 
 — Conversions — Causes — Dissenting chapels — Morals in Cornwall and 
 Wales — A family living — A change there — Bridestowe — The Rev. Hinds 
 Howell— Mary Tavy— Bratton Clovelly— Plymouth— Exeter— Cambridge 
 — The Rev. Mr. Dodd — Liverpool — The three phases of the Revival : 
 (1) Appeal to the cultured and noble, (2) Appeal to the middle classes 
 (3) Appeal to the working class— The Church and the workers— The demon- 
 stration of June 21, 1 91 3— What it revealed— The Movement sporadic— 
 The Roadmenders — Increase of the Episcopate — In the Colonies — And at 
 home — Convocation — Church Congresses — Pan-Anglican Synods — Sister- 
 hoods—Brotherhoods—Guilds—The Church of England Men's Society— 
 The English Church Union — Church-building — Tokens of retrogression — 
 Cooling down of enthusiasm — Strictness of the early Tractarians and 
 
xviii 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 Evangelicals — Modern relaxation — Cheapening of the clergy — Dissenters 
 entering the Church — Church music — Hymnals — The Archbishops' letter 
 to Leo XIII — Church progress in the United States — Stagnation — The 
 Irish Church — The Bay of Naples ..... pp. 338-367 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 THE BROAD CHURCH 
 
 Modern condition of doubt — Latitudinarianism — Endeavour of the 
 party to accommodate doctrine to modern notions — Difficulties about 
 inspiration — At the Reformation a basis sought to oppose the infallibility 
 of the Church — This found in the infallibility of Scripture — Church and 
 Scripture both fallible and infallible — A breakdown of faith — The power 
 of Christianity is in a Person — The Person of Jesus Christ — Criticism — The 
 memorabilia of the Apostles — The Incarnation — The Virginal Birth — 
 The Atonement — To whom it appeals — The Sargasso Sea of the Church 
 — The Broad Churchman has no message — To the sick and suffering — 
 Sterility of the party — In the mission field — Among the poor — Necessity 
 for a Creed — The Evangelische Kirche of Germany — Tubingen — Vagueness 
 popular — Religion in the back-seat — Arnold — Maurice — Stanley — Confes- 
 sions of a Clergyman — Prayer — Object of the Broad Church — Tarpeia — ■ 
 Rejection of Christian morality — Compromise with the world — Two con- 
 ceptions of what a National Church should be — The elimination of 
 whatever offends — With what result — Credo . . . pp. 368-390 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 VIA MEDIA 
 
 Cessation of party bitterness — Levelling up — Frog barometers — The 
 ladder system in the Church — Its advantages — Disadvantages where it 
 does not exist — Indefiniteness — And coldness — Long and short sight in 
 matters of faith — Heresy the exaggeration of single truths — Mistake of 
 having but one type of service — In watering-places — In Continental chapels 
 — In village churches — Incapacity in some to digest full doctrine — Ladder 
 system in conformity with nature — Evolution — The unchurching of 
 foreign Protestants — The via media as conceived by Dr. Newman — Did 
 not apply to the English Reformation as a position deliberately taken up — 
 The actual position of the English Church — Its Liturgy closely resembles 
 the Sarum Offices — The via-media man — The working man's dislike of via 
 media — But it suits the cultured classes — Congregational singing — Most 
 English clergy via media — Two kinds of via-media men — Advantage of 
 having moderate men in the Church — Men of one idea — The moderate man 
 in general request ........ pp. 391-407 
 
 INDEX 
 
 pp. 409-415 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 The Author Frontispiece 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 A Backwater *4 
 In the Stream 
 
 Jacobean Screen, Croscombe 5 6 
 
 (From a photograph by J. W. Phillips, Wells.) 
 
 Dr. Syntax Preaching . . . . . . .112 
 
 (From a drawing by Rowlandson.) 
 
 Confirmation in the Forties 13° 
 
 (From Deformation and Reformation, by permission of Mowbray & Co., Oxford.) 
 
 Irving Preaching 146 
 
 (From Bilder aus London.) 
 
 False Keys ......... 168 
 
 (From The Hornet, 1877.) 
 
 Archbishop Thomson . . . . . . .182 
 
 (From Vanity Fair.) 
 
 Bishop Tait and the " Black Sheep 99 . . . . 19° 
 
 (From Punch, 1874.) 
 
 Sackville College Chapel as it was in 1847. . . 224 
 
 (From a photograph by F. Frith & Co.) 
 
 At the Cattle Show ....... 240 
 
 (From Punch, 1877.) 
 
 The Rev. A. Tooth in Prison 244 
 
 (From Vanity Fair, 1877.) 
 
 " Sweetness and Light : " Archbishops Temple and 
 
 Maclagan ........ 262 
 
 (From the Westminster Gazette, 1899.) 
 
 Dr. Hook and the Hornets 276 
 
 (From a sketch by a Curate, reproduced from Stephens's Life of Hook.) 
 
 xix 
 
xx THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 Dangerous Flirtation, or Sam and the Scarlet Lady . 298 
 
 (From Punch, 1858.) 
 
 " A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing " 300 
 
 (From Punch, 1877.) 
 
 Via Media ........ 392 
 
 (From The Hornet, 1874.) 
 
ERRATA 
 
 2, line 16. For S. Paul's read Canterbury. 
 5, 10 jrom bottom. For ten read twenty. 
 44> >> 3) 7- F° r Rene read Rene. 
 204, 19. Delete , and. 
 
 326, note 1. For Pullen (F. M.), read Puller (F. W.) 
 
 327, ,, 2. For Pullen read Puller. 
 
 333, line 9 from bottom. For unintelligibly read unintelligently. 
 344, ,, 22. For 1833 read 1883. 
 
 352, ,, 6-7 from bottom. For thirty-seven read forty. 
 
 366, ,, 7 bottom. For Archiepiscoparum read Archiepiscop 
 
 370, end of note. Add See C.Q.R. xvii. 313. 
 
 370, line 10. For Bethoron read Bethhoron. 
 
 400, second column at bottom. Omit and Dismissal. 
 
THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 THE SWAMPING OF THE CHURCH 
 1547— 1660 
 
 A SURVEY, as brief as I can make it, of the history of the 
 Church in England from the death of King Henry VIII 
 must be allowed, if I am to convey to the reader a clear 
 notion of the diverse elements that existed in her, and 
 explain the rise of the Evangelical and the Oxford movements. 
 
 In limestone districts streams often sink and disappear, but 
 at a distance of some miles re-emerge into light, with increased 
 volume. It is important to trace up the diverse currents of 
 religious convictions to their sources, that for a period have 
 been below the surface invisible and unsuspected. 
 
 The exactions of the Papacy had provoked widespread 
 hostility towards Rome, and the English people were quite 
 content to be rid of the papal yoke, but had no wish to shed 
 the Catholic Faith and see the worship of the Church revolu- 
 tionized. The First Prayer Book of Edward VI issued in 1549 
 expressed the mind of the English Church; such reactionaries 
 as Tunstall and Gardiner used it without scruple. All the 
 Bishops signed it, with one exception. But under the sickly 
 young king, the reins of government were grasped by the 
 Protector Somerset, and after his execution, by Northumber- 
 land ; and both these unprincipled men were abetted by an 
 equally unprincipled Council, from which all men of Conservative 
 tendencies had been excluded. These men had a mind to enrich 
 themselves by the plunder of the Church, by appropriating to 
 themselves episcopal manors, the estates of colleges, hospitals 
 and chantries, and the glebe of parsonages ; as Henry had 
 
2 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 despoiled the monasteries, so would they despoil the Church. 
 For effecting this purpose no better expedient presented itself 
 to their minds than the Protestantizing of the Church, so as to 
 render her powerless to resist. 
 
 Accordingly refugee Reformers from the Continent were wel- 
 comed with open arms, and in order to poison the wells, Peter 
 Martyr, an Italian, who came by way of Zurich and Strassburg, 
 and who had infected the mind of Ridley, was appointed Regius 
 Professor of Divinity at Oxford in May 1549 \ an d Martin 
 Bucer, a Strassburg pastor, was planted in the professorial chair 
 of Divinity at Cambridge in the same year. Valerand Pullain, 
 a Calvinistic Fleming, came with his congregation of weavers 
 to England and was settled at Glastonbury. Pullain published 
 a Calvinistic form of worship in Latin, in 1551, and dedicated 
 it to Edward VI as a model upon which the English Prayer Book 
 might be reshaped. Ochino was made prebendary of S. Paul's. 
 John Knox also had a finger in the pie. It is due to a violent 
 sermon of his against kneeling at Communion, that the " Black 
 Rubric " was inserted in the Prayer Book. 
 
 John Alasco, an apostate Bishop, uncle of the King of Poland, 
 came to England and established Calvinistic worship in the 
 nave of the church of the Austin Friars. He also was con- 
 sulted, so was Bullinger of Zurich, as to how far on the downward 
 path it was advisable for the English divines to descend. 
 " Never," says Dr. Gairdner, " was greater deference paid to 
 foreign opinion than now, in a Church which had been emanci- 
 pated from the jurisdiction of a foreign bishop." 1 
 
 Some vivisectionists have extracted the brain from living 
 animals, so as to ascertain to what extent they can live and move 
 when divested of this vital organ. It was the purpose of North- 
 umberland and the Council to have the Church so treated, all 
 Catholicity taken out of her ; and for this purpose Cranmer, 
 Holgate and others were set to revise the Prayer Book. As 
 Renan, after he had lost faith, still retained a love for Chris- 
 tianity, so did Cranmer. However harshly his foreign counsellors 
 might bray into his ears their advice all day, at night came 
 welling up the music of the ancient liturgy in his soul, and he 
 could not resolve to cast aside so much that was beautiful to 
 please his masters, the Council, and his foreign friends. 
 
 There can exist no doubt that the numerical preponderance 
 
 1 Gairdner (Jas.), The English Church in the Sixteenth Century (1902), 
 p. 291. 
 
THE SWAMPING OF THE CHURCH 3 
 
 of the population was as many to one in favour of the old 
 religion. The advanced reformers comprised but a very few 
 inhabitants in any place, town or country. Such as did exist 
 owed their views to Tyndale's Bible. Tyndale had been living 
 at Worms. He fell under the influence of the Swiss reformers, 
 whose convert he became. He translated the New Testament 
 into English, giving it a strong Zwinglian bias, and he prefixed 
 to every part, as issued, a preface vehemently denunciatory of 
 the Catholic system of orders and sacraments. The book was 
 smuggled into England in the reign of Henry VIII, and dissemi- 
 nated among such as could read, doctrines " made in Switzerland/' 
 
 However, in 1547 the Commentary of Erasmus in English was 
 ordered to be provided for every parish church, so that the 
 readers of the Great Bible might at the same time receive a 
 sober and orthodox interpretation of the Sacred Text. 
 
 In the same year the First Book of the Homilies was issued, 
 and prefaced by a letter from the King enjoining these homilies 
 to be read in all churches every Sunday, by such priests as 
 could not preach. " But it is strange," observes Strype, " to 
 consider how anything, be it never so beneficial and innocent, 
 oftentimes gives offence. For a great many, both of the laity 
 as well as the clergy, could not digest these homilies ; and 
 therefore, sometimes, when they were read in church, if the 
 parishioners liked them not, there would be such talking and 
 babbling in the church that nothing could be heard." Many 
 parishes refused to provide the bread and wine for the Holy 
 Communion under the new rite. 
 
 The English Prayer Book was unpopular; that, combined 
 with the enclosure of commons and the depreciation of the 
 standard, caused risings of the people in Devon, Cornwall, Essex, 
 Oxfordshire, Kent, Suffolk and Norfolk. 1 The condition of affairs 
 was serious, and had there been combined action among the 
 insurgents the Government would have fallen. Martial law was 
 established in London, and the insurrections were put down by 
 thousands of Flemish and German lanzknechts, and Spanish 
 arquebusmen, sent by the Council through the country to butcher 
 the unhappy peasants. The diaries of the period are full of 
 records of executions. 
 
 1 " Insurrections broke out in Hertfordshire, Somerset, and Lincoln- 
 shire ; then in Devonshire and Cornwall ; in Gloucestershire, Berkshire 
 and Buckinghamshire, Nottinghamshire, Warwickshire, Northamptonshire; 
 in Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, and Kent ; and also far away in Yorkshire." — 
 Gairdner (J.), The English Church in the Sixteenth Century, p. 266. 
 
4 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 In the last Parliament of Edward VI no members were returned 
 for the counties that were dissatisfied with the change in re- 
 ligion. The Council found it necessary to forbid all parochial 
 clergy, and even the bishops, to preach without being accorded 
 a licence by the Government, and special preachers were dis- 
 patched by the Council through the land to instil the new doc* 
 trines into the people. These men met with little encourage- 
 ment, for often the use of the pulpits in the parish churches was 
 refused them by the parsons and churchwardens. Moreover, a 
 strict censorship was exercised over the press, and nothing was 
 suffered to be published in favour of the old religion, whereas 
 liberty most free was accorded to scurrilous and indecent 
 pamphlets attacking Episcopacy, the Real Presence and the 
 efficacy of Baptism, and advocating the grossest antinomianism. 
 " The Church," wrote Canon Dixon, " was held dumb through- 
 out this period, by the positive orders of the Council." 
 
 The Reformation under Edward VI was carried through 
 without consulting Convocation, by the Protector and the 
 Council at the head of a small and detested minority in both 
 Church and Nation. " The Convocation of the Clergy had 
 nothing to do with the First Act for the Uniformity of Religion. 
 . . . Neither the First Act for Uniformity, nor any of the acts 
 that came thereafter had any such origin. Laymen were the 
 authors of these momentous measures. Laymen made the First 
 English Prayer Book into the schedule of a penal statute, and 
 from the time that they first did so, with mournful consistency, 
 a penal statute accompanied every succeeding revision of the 
 Book of Common Prayer. As little in the work itself, which 
 was thus imposed on the realm, had the clergy originally any 
 share." 1 
 
 Antonio de Guarras, a Spanish merchant living in London, 
 and speaking English perfectly, wrote his account of the acces- 
 sion of Queen Mary ; in this he says that there were but 4 per cent 
 in the country who were infected with the new religion ; and 
 he judged from London, where it had made far more way than 
 in the country. 
 
 I have already mentioned some of the foreign Reformers who 
 came to England. Cranmer had surrounded himself in Lambeth 
 Palace with a crowd of these men. Beside Peter Martyr there 
 were Julius, Tremellius, Dryander and other French Calvinists 
 pouring their insidious advice into his too open ears. Others were 
 1 Dixon, History of the English Church, iii. 5. 
 
THE SWAMPING OF THE CHURCH 
 
 5 
 
 Peter Alexander, Bernadino Ochino, who was made prebendary 
 of Canterbury, Matthew Nigellinus, and Martin Mycronius. In 
 the second year of Edward came Fagius, destined with Bucer to 
 occupy one of the professorial chairs at Cambridge. Cranmer 
 entreated Melancthon thrice to come to England and help in the 
 revision of the Prayer Book, along with Alasco, who did come. 
 Calvin also thought fit to intermeddle. He wrote to the Protector 
 on October 22, 1548, tendering his advice, or rather his dictation. 
 Dryander, a Lutheran, was placed by Cranmer at Cambridge. 
 Christopher Mount was dispatched by the Archbishop with a 
 circular letter to Zurich, written in the name of the young King, 
 in which the religious agreement between England and Zurich 
 was assumed. It suggested that a Council should be held for the 
 settlement of religion on a common basis. Happily nothing 
 came of it. Again Calvin thought fit to interfere, by writing to 
 the King in 155 1, and to Cranmer, exhorting them to get rid of 
 every trace of superstition. The objections raised by these 
 foreigners to the First Prayer Book, the urgency of the Council 
 and the " down-grade " tendency of Cranmer's mind, determined 
 the latter on a reformation of the Prayer Book. He associated 
 with himself the adulterous Holgate, Archbishop of York, 1 and 
 the Bishops of London and Ely ; and, acting on the advice of 
 Peter Martyr and Martin Bucer — but not implicitly — he produced 
 the Second Book in 1552. Bucer had recommended the pulling 
 down of all chancels. But this was not done, as " there was 
 no money in it," and it would have entailed expense in walling 
 up the chancel arches. Somerset had desired to pull down 
 Westminster Abbey and use the materials for building a palace 
 for himself, and was only bought off by the Dean and Chapter 
 by the surrender of ten manors. Then, for the construction of 
 Somerset House he destroyed S. Mary-le-Strand and the cloister 
 of S. Paul's Cathedral. 
 
 Too much credit has been accorded to Cranmer for moderation 
 in the drawing up of the Second Prayer Book of 1552: that 
 he and the other divines were Zwinglians with a strong dash of 
 Calvinism, is certain, and that they desired to revolutionize 
 the faith and worship of the Church is pretty certain. The 
 Council desired it eagerly, and was not slow to mark its contempt 
 for the book as not going far enough. But there was a force 
 
 1 Poynet, Bishop of Rochester and then of Winchester, got into a 
 scrape by adultery with a butcher's wife at Nottingham. Cranmer does 
 not appear to have thought anything of that. 
 
6 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 beside the Council that had to be reckoned with, and that was 
 the English people, who disliked the changes. In fact, the risings 
 in so many counties against the First Prayer Book, with the 
 consequent bloodshed, and the gallows set up beside all highways, 
 taught Cranmer caution, and he was afraid of giving occasion 
 for further revolts by too drastic an alteration. 
 
 The new, the second Prayer Book of Edward VI, was issued 
 without having been submitted to Convocation, on January 10, 
 1552. Happily for England and her Church, Edward died on 
 July 6, 1553, so that the new Prayer Book, every page of which 
 was soiled by the finger-marks of Bucer, 1 Peter Martyr, Pullain 
 and Bullinger, had but a brief existence. All England welcomed 
 Mary. It had been heartily disgusted with the self-seeking and 
 the rapacity of the Council, with the sacrilege and devastation 
 of the churches, and with the violent changes in religion. Indeed, 
 as Paget wrote to Protector Somerset : eleven -twelfths of the 
 kingdom were opposed to the new-fangled teaching. 2 
 
 Mary was received in London and acclaimed throughout the 
 country with transports of joy. Most of the Reformers fled to the 
 Continent, without any attempt being made to detain them. 
 When Mary came to the throne, she declared in Council, on 
 August 12, that " she meant not to compel or strain the con- 
 science of others, otherwise than by persuasion ; " and such as 
 had got to like the English service were at ease. At her accession 
 the heart of the people was Catholic, but by no means Roman ; 
 when Elizabeth succeeded, it was Protestant. There is good 
 cause to hold that the actual conversion to Reforming opinions 
 went on at a speedier rate amidst the fires of Smithfield than 
 during the oppressive rule of Somerset and Northumberland. In 
 1554 Mary issued orders for Mass to be performed in Latin, and 
 for the ejection from their cures of all married clergy. Such 
 as consented to renounce their wives were to be dealt with 
 leniently, and be transferred to other cures, unless they had 
 previously belonged to one or other of the Religious Orders. 
 The number thus deprived was about one in six. 3 
 
 1 Bucer gives us his experience as to the result of his teaching in Strass- 
 burg. He candidly admitted : " What have we done to the great edifice 
 of Christianity ? We have destroyed a great deal, but we have built up 
 nothing. We have rejected a great deal, and our successors go on and 
 reject more — the commandments of God and common morality." And 
 this was the man invited to work the same mischief in England ! On 
 further admissions of Bucer of wretched results, see Dollinger, Die Re- 
 formation, ii. 21 et seq. 
 
 2 Strype, ii. 110. 
 
 3 Frere, The Marian Reaction (S.P.C.K., 1896), p. 77. 
 
THE SWAMPING OF THE CHURCH 7 
 
 In the diocese of Canterbury 73 were expelled, but of these 
 4 were reinstated. In the diocese of Lichfield, out of 550 bene- 
 fices, the number of clergy dispossessed was 43, or one in 12. 
 In Bath and Wells, where the preferments were 390, 69 incum- 
 bents were deprived or resigned — about 1 in 5. In Norwich, out 
 of 1,120 parishes, 335 were destituted, or less than 1 in 5. In 
 the diocese of London as it is at present constituted there were 
 213 parishes : Mary deprived 36 in 4J years, being 2 out of 13. 
 There would appear, however, throughout England to have been 
 a certain number of benefices to which laymen had been in- 
 truded under the lax and immoral rule of Protector Somerset 
 and the Duke of Northumberland, and these men were of course 
 ejected. There seems to have been little or no question as to 
 the validity of Ordination under the Reformed Ordinal, though 
 in the first six months after Mary ascended the throne a few 
 clergy, in a panic lest they should be dispossessed, sought the 
 making up of any deficiency in their ordination by having their 
 hands anointed. " Reasons have already been given to show 
 that the general cause of deprivation was marriage, and in the 
 cases where no cause is assigned it is natural to suppose that 
 it was this. At any rate, there is no shadow of a hint that 
 invalidity of orders had anything to do with it." 1 
 
 It was moreover taken for granted that all these clergy were 
 orthodox and not infected with the new doctrines, and further 
 knew how to celebrate in Catholic manner at the altars. 
 
 When the news reached the Continent that Mary was dead 
 all the Reformers, who during her reign had wrangled and 
 denounced one another, came back to England, with a horde of 
 foreigners at their backs. 
 
 When these men arrived in England, they laboured inde- 
 fatigably to spread their imported opinions and to capture 
 the Church. They did not succeed in this latter attempt, but 
 they spread through the land, influencing men's minds every- 
 where against all that savoured of Catholic antiquity. 
 
 They found to their dissatisfaction that the second Prayer 
 Book of Edward VI had been already subjected to revision 
 and had been reinforced in a Catholic direction, and that there 
 was manifested by the Queen no intention of lowering the tone. 
 
 In or about 1567 a veritable inundation of foreign malcontents 
 came to London, so extensive as to move the jealousy of the 
 community. The rent of houses was raised ; these strangers 
 1 Frere, The Marian Reaction (S.P.C.K., 1896), p. 109. 
 
8 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 interfered with the trade. The streets had to be patrolled by 
 the watch to prevent an outbreak of the 'prentices against them. 
 The ports and havens were crowded by them. They founded 
 colonies everywhere. The Bishops of London, Winchester and 
 Lincoln greatly favoured them, as introducing a further in- 
 fusion of heresy to strengthen the amount already found in the 
 land, and with which these prelates were in sympathy. They 
 were hardly settled in England before they were torn into factions 
 fighting one another over theological points of no profit either 
 spiritually or morally. 
 
 The restoration of the Prayer Book with its alterations at 
 once called forth their animadversions. Peter Martyr and 
 Bullinger wrote giving the perfidious advice to the Puritan 
 clergy who had returned, that they should conform in part only 
 to the liturgy, but preach against the ceremonies still retained, 
 and refrain from administering the Sacraments so long as the 
 vestments were in use. Beza also, from Geneva, put in his 
 word in 1577, writing to advise that nothing should be allowed 
 in the matter of ceremonies but what was after " Christ's ordin- 
 ance, and the assured example of the Apostles." 
 
 The Zurich letters show us that the Bishops under Elizabeth 
 were appealing incessantly for advice to the foreigners. In 
 1565-6, Home, Parkhurst and Grindal sought to justify them- 
 selves to Bullinger and Gualter for having accepted bishoprics 
 with the obligation to wear habits and use ceremonies to which 
 these foreigners objected. Can anything be conceived more 
 humiliating ? They wrote their apologies also, in conjunction 
 with Coverdale, to Beza, Farel and Vinetus at Geneva : " An 
 unleavened cake instead of common bread ; the Communion 
 taken on bended knees ; a square cap, bands, gown and tippet 
 out of doors ; the surplice and cope in divine worship, such is 
 the picture of the Church ! They who refuse it are deprived. 
 . . . Publish a treatise to instruct both our Church and the 
 Saxon Churches. Admonish our bishops by a printed letter not 
 to persecute Joseph for his coat . . . communicate this letter to 
 all your brethren." 1 Nor did Knox and the Edinburgh assembly 
 abstain from uncalled-for — not to say impertinent interference, 
 by sending a letter " to the Bishops and Pastors of England," 
 deprecating the " Roman rags and dregs of the Roman Beast " 
 still found in the Church (December 27, 1566). 
 
 Beza wrote to Grindal advising that the English Church 
 1 Zurich Letters, ii. 121. 
 
THE SWAMPING OF THE CHURCH 
 
 9 
 
 should combine with the Scottish Kirk in accepting the Helvetian 
 
 Confession, approved by the Geneva Community. 
 The four demands of the Puritans were these : 
 (i) Equality of all ministers. The title and office of Bishop 
 
 to be allowed to remain, but only as synonymous with Pastor 
 
 or Teacher. 
 
 • (2) All members of the Church to be subject to the discipline 
 of the Consistory. 
 
 (3) The break with the past, with the historic Church, to be 
 made absolute. The clergy who had been ordained under 
 Henry VIII and Mary to be ejected from their cures, and every- 
 thing in the Communion service that recalled the Mass to be cast 
 forth. 
 
 (4) Nothing to be tolerated in public worship that had not 
 been expressly enjoined by Scripture. 1 
 
 Elizabeth had a very difficult part to play. It was her idea, 
 as well as that of her advisers, that the Church should be National 
 and all-comprehensive. It must contain those who clung to 
 Catholic order and tradition, but those also who had been infected 
 with the tenets of the foreign Reformers. Accordingly, at the 
 revision of the Articles of Religion under Elizabeth the articles 
 dealing with doctrines about which was dispute, as those on 
 Justification by Faith and Predestination, were couched in such 
 terms as seemed to favour the opinions of the Reformers, but 
 qualifications were added that somewhat neutralised their force. 
 Articles xi, xii, and xvi were cast to these fanatics to mumble, 2 
 whilst the faithful were given their Liturgy and rites to satisfy 
 their conservative instincts. 
 
 Certain Articles of Religion were, in point of fact, much like 
 Caliban with Trinculo under his gaberdine, having a forward 
 and a backward voice, at one and the same time. 
 
 At the outset of the reign of Elizabeth, the clergy as a body 
 objected to any change in the services of the Church and any 
 tampering with the Faith. This was shown by the protest of 
 Convocation in 1559, and by the resolute opposition maintained 
 by the Bishops in Parliament. The Supremacy and Uniformity 
 
 1 Paget (Dean), An Introduction to the Fifth Book of Hooker's Treatise 
 on the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (Oxford, 1899), pp. 52-3. 
 
 2 The Convocation of 1573 which recast the Articles framed this Canon 
 for their interpretation by all preachers : "In the first place they shall 
 provide that they never teach aught . . . which they desire to be devoutly 
 held and believed by the people save that which is agreeable to the doctrine 
 of the Old and New Testament and which the Catholic Fathers and ancient 
 Bishops have gathered from the said doctrine." 
 
10 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 Acts and the revived and amended Edwardine Injunctions were in 
 force by Midsummer 1559. A Royal Commission was appointed 
 to visit both provinces and to impose on all the clergy an oath to 
 accept the Supremacy of the Crown, to use the Prayer Book alone 
 in public ministration, and to observe the Injunctions. The 
 Visitors were empowered to deprive of their benefices such clergy 
 as refused the oath. 
 
 This oath was administered throughout the country during 
 August, September and October, 1559. A large number of clergy 
 in the North put in no appearance. We have a complete list 
 of them in the North, and a list of those who took the oath 
 survives for five dioceses in the South. These show that nearly 
 half the clergy absented themselves from the Visitation. Such 
 as did appear and took the oath were mainly Henrician or 
 Marian appointments who submitted to the change. 
 
 At the time of the Visitation of the Diocese of York there 
 were 35 livings vacant. The absentees from it, of men who 
 could not make up their minds to take the oath, numbered 152. 
 Of these only 5 were deprived ; the others succeeded in swallowing 
 their scruples. 
 
 In the diocese of Durham there were 180 incumbents, and 
 of these 35 absented themselves from the Visitation, but of 
 these 35 only 3 were deprived. 
 
 In the diocese of Carlisle there were 100 clergy, 35 absented 
 themselves, and of these 2 were deprived. 
 
 In the diocese of Chester there were 250 incumbents, 90 ab- 
 sented themselves, yet not one was deprived. 
 
 There were, however, in the whole Northern province 22 men 
 who had been ejected from their livings under Queen Mary, 
 and these were now reinstated. 
 
 Those who evaded subscription at the Visitation either in 
 the next few months took the oath or were passed over. No 
 great diligence was used to enforce subscription. Nicholas 
 Sanders in 1571 drew up a list of those clergy who had refused 
 subscription and were ousted from their cures. He made the 
 number to be 480 ; but his list of names has been minutely 
 investigated by Dr. Henry Gee by the aid of the Registers, and 
 he shows that Sanders included laymen, and that a goodly number 
 of those he gives as ejected cannot be traced at all in any register. 
 
 The ascertainable number of clergy deprived for all causes 
 between November 17, 1558, and November 17, 1564, is about 
 400 ; but then in the later period the deprivations were of Puritans 
 
THE SWAMPING OF THE CHURCH 11 
 
 who refused to make use of the Prayer Book in their public 
 ministrations ; and Dr. Gee says that on a review of the whole 
 evidence it is impossible to conclude that many more than 200 
 Papist clergy were deprived within the period 1558-64, because 
 they would not conform to the Prayer Book and accept the 
 Royal Supremacy. 1 
 
 Camden says that out of 9,400 parishes only 189 priests refused 
 to conform to the English Liturgy, but of these were 50 Preben- 
 daries, 15 Presidents of Colleges, 12 Archdeacons, 12 Deans, 
 6 Abbots and 14 Bishops, of parish priests only 80. According 
 to Collier, the total number was 229, that would give 120 parish 
 priests. 
 
 Now what do we gather from this, but the fact that the vast 
 majority of the beneficed clergy who had sung Mass during the 
 reign of Queen Mary in Latin, wearing the Eucharistic vestments 
 continued during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, singing Mass in 
 English, perhaps to the setting of Merbecke, more probably to 
 the old inflections to which they were accustomed, accommodating 
 thereto the English words as best they might — just as I have 
 heard done in Germany among the Old Catholics, just as is done 
 still in Iceland, where the melody is that of the Pre- Reformation 
 missal, but the words are in the vernacular. 
 
 So also these priests throughout the length and breadth of 
 the land would use the vestments, lights, ceremonial to which 
 they had been accustomed, where no rubric directed to the 
 contrary. 
 
 An instance of the manner in which changes were accepted 
 without much difficulty is to be found in the fortunes of S. John's 
 College, Oxford, that had Sir Thomas White as its founder in 
 the reign of Queen Mary. He accepted the English Prayer 
 Book, and provided for the performance of Divine service in 
 the college chapel, with no sign of violent breach with the past. 8 
 
 How great and how piteous the confusion was in the English 
 Church may be gathered from a letter of Mendoza to the king of 
 Spain, in 1567. He wrote that it would be a difficult matter to 
 reduce to one form in England the diversity of belief and teaching 
 
 1 Gee (Dr.), The Elizabethan Clergy and the Settlement of Religion, 1558- 
 1564 (Oxford, 1898). This admirable work gives the names of all who 
 were deprived, and approximately all the Marian clergy who conformed. 
 
 2 There still remain in the vestry of S. John's College two tunicles and 
 a white cope of the same set, the orphreys of two chasubles, cut out of 
 the vestments probably late in the seventeenth century, and a magnificent 
 cope of blue and gold. 
 
12 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 that existed therein, for " in every parish church a different 
 service is held according to the bent of the minister ; " and 
 this is confirmed by an account published somewhat later, by 
 J. Howlet, at Douay, wherein he says : " Although the world 
 knoweth that the Order set down in the book [of Common Prayer] 
 be commonly broken by every minister at his pleasure, and 
 observed almost nowhere, yet small punishment hath ever 
 ensued thereof." Robert Parsons, in a pamphlet published in 
 1580 against the Roman Catholics attending the reformed ser- 
 vices in their parish churches, says of the clergy that " They 
 deall too chyldishilye, when they say, their service differeth in 
 nothing from the ould Catholicke service, but onelye because 
 it is in English : thereby thinking to make the simple people to 
 have the lesse scruple to come to it." This must have been 
 where the English Liturgy was sung with much of the old cere- 
 monial, with lights and vestments, and where the Holy Table 
 stood altarwise, as it did everywhere except where the new 
 hot- Gospellers held sway. 
 
 Bucer long before, in November 1550, writing to Hooper, 
 complained : "In many places the Lord's Supper so takes the 
 place of the Mass, that the people do not know in what respect 
 it differs from it except that it is celebrated in the vulgar tongue." 
 
 Neal, in his History of the Puritans, says : " The service per- 
 formed in the Queen's chapel and in sundry cathedrals was so 
 splendid and showy that foreigners could not distinguish it from 
 the Roman, except that it was performed in the English tongue. 
 By this method most of the popish laity were deceived into con- 
 formity, and came regularly to church for nine or ten years." 
 
 But a change ensued. For the most part the Elizabethan 
 Bishops were an unworthy set, avaricious, unscrupulous, and 
 some of them unlearned. These men encouraged and advanced 
 clergy infected with Calvinism ; and Burleigh, Sir Christopher 
 Hatton, Lord North, Leicester, Walsingham throughout favoured 
 such as had been abroad and there contracted Zwinglian and 
 other heresies ; so that as the old Marian clergy that had con- 
 formed died, into their places were thrust either directly by these 
 noble patrons, or mediately through the Bishops, men who had 
 no savour of Catholicity about them. 
 
 We read and hear of " The Elizabethan settlement " as 
 though religion in her reign had settled into something like the 
 form that the Church afterwards assumed. But the condition 
 under Elizabeth was actually one of unsettlement — of the clash- 
 
THE SWAMPING OF THE CHURCH 13 
 
 ing of jarring and irreconcilable ideas, " a time of sharp con- 
 fusion and inconsistent hopes." The men whom Leicester and 
 Walsingham imported into the Church brought their foreign 
 heresy with them j they did not find it ingrained therein. It 
 was with the Anglican Church, not what would be scrofula in the 
 human system, lodged in the blood, affecting the glands and all 
 the vital organs, but as a superficial disorder, that may sadly 
 disfigure for awhile, but can be subdued by judicious treatment. 
 It was an episode in the history of the English Church, as was 
 Arianism in the Universal Church fifteen centuries ago. The 
 Elizabethan bishops, men returned from abroad, had left their 
 hearts behind at Zurich. They had no belief in Episcopacy, 
 and would, if allowed, have swept out of the Church all marks of 
 Catholicity. They expressed a wish to get rid even of the sur- 
 plice, and they put a disingenuous gloss on the Ornaments rubric, 
 openly proposed the abolition of the Cross in baptism, objected 
 to chanting and to organs, and followed Ridley's practice of 
 turning the Holy Table lengthwise, 1 so that the priest might 
 stand at the north side, facing south, a quibbling compliance 
 with the rubric of 1552, defeating the real purport. 
 
 A great distinction must be drawn between the condition of the 
 Church in the reign of Edward VI, and in that of Elizabeth. 
 In the former period the Church was subjected to outrage and 
 profanation by the rulers of the State, men destitute of religion, 
 lusting after spoliation, who would carry off the copes to make 
 coverlets for their beds, and chalices to decorate their side- 
 boards. But under Elizabeth the fermentation was within. 
 The disciples of the foreign Reformers were ordained priests, 
 consecrated Bishops ; and it was they who set zealously to 
 work to devastate the Houses of God in the land, and render 
 the worship of God indecorous. Let me take one instance. 
 Emmanuel College, Cambridge, had been founded by Sir Thomas 
 Mildmay to become a nursery of Puritanism. The college had 
 been a Convent of Preaching Friars. Their chapel was now 
 converted into the dining-hall, and a fireplace erected where 
 had been the high altar. The old refectory, pointing north and 
 south, was made into the chapel. In the latter no surplices 
 were worn at any service. " In Emmanuel College they receive 
 the Holy Sacrament sittinge upon formes about the Communion 
 table, and doe pull the loafe one from the other after the minister 
 hath begon. And soe the cupp, one drinking as it were to 
 1 At least he did so on Easter Eve, 1 551, in S. Paul's Cathedral. 
 
14 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 another like good fellows, without any particular application 
 of the said words, more than once for all." 
 
 There were thus in the Church of England as established, two 
 currents flowing between the same banks, of diametrically 
 opposite colour. It is so during a certain portion of the course 
 of the Danube: one stream is brown and charged with mud, 
 the other issuing from the great source of Bleubeuren is limpid 
 and of a singularly blue and heavenly tinge ; after these streams 
 have united, for some miles they can be discriminated, flowing 
 side by side but not commingling. 
 
 A certain impetus had been given to the Protestant stream 
 of feeling, through the hatred of Rome and Spain provoked by 
 the cruelties of Queen Mary, and by the risks the country ran 
 through the machinations of the partisans of Mary Queen of 
 Scots, and the menace of invasion from Spain ; but the English 
 people drew a long breath of relief when the Scottish Queen had 
 been executed, 1587, and the Armada wrecked, 1588. Then 
 came the turn of the tide. Elizabeth perfectly understood the 
 temper and mind of her English subjects. She knew that the 
 vast bulk of the nation was sober-minded and conservative 
 in religion, and that it entertained a profound distaste for the 
 violence and extravagance of the Puritans. The turn of the 
 tide was marked by Bancroft's epoch-making sermon at S. Paul's, 
 on February 9, 1589, on the divine institution of Episcopacy. 
 Hitherto the orthodox party had been without leaders. 
 But now such men appeared. Jewel wrote his Apology; and 
 Richard Hooker, feeling that some basis must be found for the 
 position of the English Church, whilst still young — he was but 
 thirty-eight years old — retired from the strife of tongues to 
 consider in quietness what had to be done, and then to do it. 
 It is rare, as Dean Paget wrote, " for the heat of controversy 
 to kindle in a man the desire not to talk but to think." Jn his 
 Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity Hooker laid down the lines on which 
 the Church is reared, against the Puritan onslaught. There is a 
 good deal in Hooker's view of the relations between Church and 
 State that is defective, but at that period the relative situation 
 of these powers was altogether different from what it is now. 
 
 Moreover the tone of feeling towards the foreign Reformers 
 was greatly altered. Beza wrote from Geneva to the college of 
 Bishops, imploring money contributions to assist the Calvinists 
 to withstand the forces of the Duke of Savoy. Fuller says : 
 " Wonder not that Geneva's wants found no more pity from the 
 
THE SWAMPING OF THE CHURCH 15 
 
 Episcopal party, seeing all those Bishops were dead who, formerly 
 exiles, in the Marian days, had found favour and relief in Geneva, 
 and now a new generation arose, having as little affection as 
 obligation to that government." 
 
 But although the Puritan reformers had invaded the ministry 
 of the Church, they were not as yet in a majority, nor as yet 
 were the people disposed to relish their ministrations. 
 
 Cambridge University had become a hot-bed of Calvinism, 
 and was pouring forth men affected in heart and mind with heresy. 
 Lord Clarendon wrote, but of a later period than the reign of 
 Elizabeth and that of James : "I must not forget, though it 
 cannot be remembered without horror, that this strange wild-fire 
 among the people was not so much kindled by the Parliament as 
 by certain of the clergy. These men having creeped into, and 
 at last driven from their pulpits all the learned and orthodox 
 clergy, had, under the pretence of reformation, and extirpation 
 of Popery, infused seditious inclinations into the hearts of men 
 against the present Government and the Church." 
 
 Side by side might be seen two parishes, in one the priest 
 holding and teaching high Sacramental doctrines and evidencing 
 them by his performance of divine worship, and a couple of 
 miles away would be a Puritan denouncing everything Catholic 
 and with his church divested of all sacred ornaments. 
 
 The condition of affairs under Elizabeth cannot have been 
 very different from what they are at the present day, in outward 
 appearance. Now we have a High Church with advanced 
 ritual, and hard by one with none at all. But the resemblance 
 is superficial only. Then the Catholic-minded clergy were dying 
 out ; moreover, the new generation of the same type had not 
 come on, and a flood of Puritanism was rising, soon to over- 
 whelm and sweep the Church away ; whereas now it is only 
 where some rare fanatical patron exists, or where one of the 
 Evangelical patronage boards has control, that the relics of 
 ultra-Puritanism have been left jutting out amidst a rising and 
 advancing tide of High Churchism. I do not now refer to the 
 moderate Evangelical. I give views of two churches in the 
 West of England. In one the doors are locked throughout 
 the week, the Sunday services are cheerless, the Holy Com- 
 munion is celebrated once a month only. In all others round 
 the doors are always open, matins and evensong are said or 
 sung daily, the Eucharist is celebrated, not on Sunday alone, 
 but frequently during the week as well, and the services are 
 
16 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 warm and rousing. It must have been somewhat thus in 
 Elizabethan times, with this difference, that the Catholic clergy 
 were depressed, whereas the Puritans were full of fire and 
 assurance — the reverse of the conditions at the present day. 
 
 A considerable number of clergy who had conformed under 
 Mary, or had been then instituted, remained on under Elizabeth, 
 as we have seen ; these put aside their Missals and Breviaries, 
 and used the Book of Common Prayer. We know that the lay 
 Romanists attended their ministrations till Pope Pius X issued 
 a bull of excommunication against Elizabeth (April 27, 1570) 
 and absolved her subjects from the oath of allegiance. Then, 
 and not till then, did they desert their parish churches, but few 
 clergy followed their lead. 1 
 
 I think, unless I am greatly mistaken, that we have in Iceland 
 a picture of the condition of affairs in the Church in early years 
 under Elizabeth. In Iceland the last bishop had been executed 
 by order of the King of Denmark, and thenceforth the Apostolic 
 Succession ceased. The new hierarchy in Denmark and Iceland 
 devolved from Professor Buggenhagen, who, against his con- 
 science, was compelled by King Christian to consecrate a new 
 series of bishops, though he himself was only in priest's orders. 
 
 However, of that the Icelanders knew nothing. There, only 
 the relics — and the head of S. Thorlac proved to be a cocoanut — 
 were destroyed, and images that had received idolatrous worship 
 were burnt, otherwise little was altered. The Mass was trans- 
 lated into the vernacular. The screens still divided the chancel 
 from the nave, the priest still wore the Eucharistic vestments, 
 as he does to this day ; the wafer bread is still used for Com- 
 munion, on the altar are still the lighted candles and the crucifix, 
 and the priest still sings the Mass to the old inflexions. 
 
 Now, in the reign of Elizabeth the vast majority of the clergy 
 had been accustomed to sing the Mass, to wear the vestments, 
 and preach the Catholic faith. They did not care three straws 
 for the Pope, and so they continued on. The liturgy was in 
 English, that was an advantage, just as in Iceland the liturgy 
 is in Icelandic. 
 
 But in England there was a disturbing element that did not 
 exist in Iceland — the Marian exiles returning from Frankfort, 
 
 The original Vicar of Bray is said to have been Simon Aleyn, who 
 was Vicar of Bray about 1540 and died in 1588, so that he was Vicar for 
 fifty years, in the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth. 
 There were many like him. The song relative to the Vicar of Bray was 
 composed about 1720, and refers to another conformist priest. 
 
IN THE STREAM 
 
THE SWAMPING OF THE CHURCH 17 
 
 Geneva, Zurich and Strassburg, with their heads full of desire 
 to upset everything that savoured of historic Christianity ; and 
 what remained as a link with the past they would ruthlessly 
 snap. Consequently there were two diametrically opposed 
 currents of feeling and of practice in the Elizabethan Church. 
 That it was so is shown by Cecil's report to the Queen in 1564. 
 He complained that some said the service in the chancel, some 
 in the body of the church, some in surplices and some without. 
 In some churches the Holy Table was in the chancel, in others 
 in the nave, in some set altar-wise against the wall and vested 
 with a comely carpet, in others it was without any covering. 
 Some celebrated the Holy Communion in surplice and cope, some 
 with only surplice, some with neither ; some with unleavened, 
 others with common bread. The Queen was highly incensed 
 with the Bishops for allowing such an indecent want of system 
 to prevail, and ordered Archbishop Parker to correct these 
 abuses. Under pressure the malcontents adopted measures to 
 obtain what they wanted, and that with considerable ingenuity; 
 for it was open to any discontented personages to found lecture- 
 ships in any parish, and no law existed against it, and the lecturers 
 were often firebrands, setting the parish in a blaze and ruining 
 the work of the parish priest. These men invaded the Church, 
 defied all order, and stirred up strife, till every parish was torn 
 into factions, and religion perished in controversy. 
 
 Shrewd men saw that this system was bound to lead to great 
 mischief, just as the invasion of the churches by members of 
 the Religious Orders before the Reformation had led to the 
 weakening of the influence of the curate, and had conduced to 
 laxity. In 1630, Heylin, in a sermon preached at Oxford on 
 the Parable of the Tares, said, that " the planting of pensionary 
 lecturers in so many places will bring forth those fruits that 
 will appear to be a Tare indeed ; tho' now no wheat be 
 accounted fairer " ; and he plainly stated that their object was 
 " to cry down the established clergy, undermine the public 
 liturgy and so forth." 
 
 These lecturers formed, so to speak, an order of preachers in 
 parish churches distinct from rector or vicar and curate. They 
 were often chosen by the vestry or chief inhabitants of the 
 parish, and supported by voluntary subscriptions and legacies ; 
 very often they were the chaplains of the landed gentry. 
 
 Everywhere they became an element of discord, forming 
 about themselves a party hostile to the parish incumbent, gather- 
 2 
 
18 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 ing about them all the discontented, perverse, and era vers after 
 novelty. 
 
 They became very numerous, and everywhere agitated against 
 Ecclesiastical Order. In the reign of Charles II an Act was 
 passed (13 and 14 Chas. II, c. 4) to curtail their licence. Unless 
 sanctioned by the Ordinary, and conforming to the Liturgy, 
 they were to be disabled, and suffer three months' imprisonment 
 in the common gaol ; and two justices, or the mayor in a town 
 corporate, were required, upon certificate from the Bishop, to 
 commit them accordingly. Nevertheless, where the lectureships 
 were founded by donations of pious persons, the appointment 
 of the lecturers was to be with the founders without any inter- 
 position or consent of the rectors of churches, but licensed by 
 the Bishop. 
 
 But such checks did not exist in the reigns of James I and 
 Charles I. Laud vainly endeavoured to reduce these men to 
 order ; even to the present day, such lectureships as survive are 
 often enough sources of discord. 
 
 Nor was this all. In the reign of Elizabeth, Burleigh through- 
 out favoured the Puritanical reformers — even that turbulent 
 Cartwright who was Republican in his politics as well as Calvin- 
 istic in his religious tenets. Several of the nobility also were 
 with them. They had been in terror during the reign of Queen 
 Mary lest they should be called on to disgorge some of the Church 
 plunder on which they fattened, and they desired to keep the 
 Church debilitated and distracted, lest at any time she should 
 become strong enough to reclaim some of that of which she had 
 been despoiled ; and this was not only monastic lands, but glebe 
 and episcopal estates which had also been annexed by un- 
 scrupulous laymen. These patrons, as the old Marian clergy 
 died out, nominated to cures men steeped in Genevan vinegar, 
 soured to the marrow. 
 
 There was death in the pot, because of the wild gourds shredded 
 into it, culled from the Upper Rhine, the Main, and the Lakes 
 of Zurich and Leman. 
 
 For the last forty years of the reign of Elizabeth, her efforts 
 were directed to curbing the insolence of the Calvinists. In 
 1560 she had to issue a proclamation to restrain them from 
 defacing the statuary and breaking the stained-glass windows 
 in the churches. Thirty-seven Puritan clergy in the diocese 
 of London were deprived because they refused to conform. In 
 1567 nearly a hundred men and women were seized at Plumbers' 
 
THE SWAMPING OF THE CHURCH 19 
 
 Hall and punished for holding a schismatical prayer-meeting. 
 In 1573 Elizabeth issued a proclamation against such as would 
 not conform to the Prayer Book. Led by Cartwright an attempt 
 was made to establish classes all over England, by means of which 
 the authority of the Bishops was to be undermined as well as 
 that of the orthodox clergy in their parishes. 
 
 At a meeting held in 1582 by the malcontents a Form of 
 Discipline was drawn up under Cartwright and Travers, allowing 
 no subscription to anything except some of the early Articles. 
 " Those ceremonies in the Book of Common Prayer which, being 
 taken from Popery, are in controversy, do seem that they ought 
 to be omitted and given over, if it may be done without danger 
 of being put out of the ministry. If subscription to the Articles 
 of Religion and to the Book of Common Prayer shall be again 
 used, it is thought that the Book of Articles may be subscribed 
 to, that is, unto such of them only as contain the sum of Chris- 
 tian faith, and the doctrines of the sacraments ; but neither the 
 rest of the Articles nor the Book of Common Prayer may be 
 allowed ; no, though a man should be deprived of his ministry 
 for it." 
 
 The Puritans met to hear the harangues of hot- Gospellers 
 and for what they called Prophesyings. In 1593 the Queen 
 appealed to Parliament, and an Act was passed providing that 
 those who refused to attend church and assembled for unauthor- 
 ized religious meetings should be banished the country. The 
 very fact of this Puritanical turbulence shows that there was a 
 strong Catholic element in the country and among the clergy. 
 It was the presence of this which provoked the revolt of the 
 Puritans. There is no reason to suppose that these fanatics 
 carried any large number of the people with them. 
 
 The Millenary Petition addressed to James I showed how 
 exacting the Puritan clergy had become. They desired tolera- 
 tion for non-compliance with the rules of the Prayer Book, 
 within the limits of the Established Church. Bacon was for 
 indulging them with this, but not so the King ; and in the Hamp- 
 ton Court conference which followed, it was made abundantly 
 clear that conformity would be enforced as much as possible. 
 It was by no means certain that the Puritans formed as a body 
 more than one-third of the population j which was the propor- 
 tion estimated by Molin, the Venetian ambassador in 1607. 
 The feeling of the people may be more surely gauged by the 
 presentments made by the churchwardens during the Bishops' 
 
20 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 and Archbishops' Visitations. Most of these are still preserved 
 at the Diocesan Registries, and provide the most exhaustive 
 material we possess for the internal history of the Church. A 
 writer (Mr. N. Pocock, I believe) 1 has examined those of the 
 Puritan strongholds of Norwich and Ely, with the following 
 somewhat surprising results : I. That, in the main, the congre- 
 gations over which Puritan ministers had been placed disagreed 
 seriously with their pastors, and presented them to the Bishop's 
 Court for ceremonial omissions or neglect of frequent services ; 
 2. That where there were many Puritan ministers in a neigh- 
 bourhood the opposition to their neglect in compliance with the 
 rubrics grew less between 1620 and 1630, and then ceased alto- 
 gether ; 3. That where Puritan ministers were few, opposition 
 to them continued strong even until 1640 ; 4. That during 
 nearly the whole epoch, and in nearly every county in England, 
 they had but few supporters, and the evidence goes to show that 
 until 1620 the number of their sympathizers in any one place 
 was extremely small, not attaining the dignity of a respectable 
 minority of the congregation. 
 
 This is significant. It shows that the suppression of the 
 Church by Parliament was due to a comparatively small 
 faction, and that the people, so far from objecting to the 
 simple ritual of the Prayer Book, resented its not being com- 
 plied with. 
 
 And now we pass on to the troubles between Charles I and 
 his Parliament. 
 
 In February 1640 a petition was presented to the House of 
 Commons signed by many Puritans in London and the counties, 
 describing their grievances " occasioned by the Prelates " under 
 twenty-eight heads. One was that the Bishops rendered the 
 clergy fainthearted to preach the doctrines of Free Grace, Pre- 
 destination, Election, etc. Another that they interfered with 
 the buying of Impropriations by sundry well-affected persons, 
 and placing ministers in them who preached the True Gospel. 
 Another grievance was that the prelates would not allow that 
 the Pope was Antichrist, and that salvation was unattainable 
 in the Church of Rome. The fourteenth was " The great 
 conformity and likeness both continued and encreased of our 
 Church to the Church of Rome, in Vestures, Postures, Cere- 
 monies, and Administrations, namely as the Bishops' rochets 
 
 1 "The People and the Puritan Movement," Church Quarterly Review, 
 April 1904. 
 
THE SWAMPING OF THE CHURCH 21 
 
 and the Lawne sleeves, the foure-cornered Cap, the Cope and 
 Surpluse, the Tippet, the Hood." The fifteenth complains of 
 " The standing up at Gloria Patri, and at the reading of the 
 Gospel, praying towards the East, bowing at the name of Jesus, 
 bowing to the Altar, the Crosse in Baptism and the kneeling at 
 the Communion." 
 
 The sixteenth grievance is : " The turning of the Communion 
 Tables Altar- wise, setting Images, Crucifixes, and Conceits over 
 them, and Tapers and Books upon them . . . forcing people to 
 come up thither to receive, or else denying the Sacrament to 
 them." The eighteenth grievance is that " The Liturgie is 
 for the most part framed out of the Romish Breviary, Rituale, 
 and Mass-book, also the book of Ordination, for Archbishops 
 and Ministers, framed out of the Roman Pontifical." 
 
 Sir Edward Deering, moreover, spoke four times on the subject 
 of the interference of the Bishops with godly ministers, and 
 their issuing, cum privilegio, pamphlets against Puritanism, by 
 Cosin, Do we, Heylin, Pocklington, Mead, Shelford, Swan, 
 Roberts, " and many more." 1 
 
 Only a few days after the opening of the Long Parliament, 
 November 3, 1640, the Commons appointed a Grand Committee, 
 consisting of the whole House, to enquire into the characters, 
 opinions and morals generally of the clergy, with intent of purging 
 the Church of undesirable ministers, undesirable on account of 
 their conduct, but undesirable also because hostile to the party 
 in power. A general invitation was issued to all sorts of persons 
 to get up all sorts of complaints against their pastors. The 
 numbers that poured in made it necessary that the Grand Com- 
 mittee should divide itself into four or five. 
 
 If we may trust the statements made by the Committee for 
 sequestrating livings, there were many cases in which the parsons 
 were drunkards and swearers. But also there were numerous 
 cases of " malignancy " — that is to say of believers in Episcopacy 
 and of men using the Book of Common Prayer : this sufficed 
 as a cause for expulsion. 
 
 In July thirteen bishops were impeached, and on December 30 
 following, ten of them were sent to the Tower. It is said that 
 no of the clergy of the diocese of London alone were turned out 
 of their livings in 1642 and 1643. As has been already said, 
 large numbers of the clergy were Puritanically disposed. These 
 
 1 Speeches and Passages of this Great and Happy Parliament (London, 
 1641). 
 
22 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 drew up a Remonstrance addressed to the Parliament " against 
 the whole government of the Church/' 
 
 Later they added another and a stronger petition to the House 
 of Commons, thanking Parliament for what, by purging the 
 Church, it had already done, and urging to further action — the 
 setl ing aside of the Liturgy and the rubrics ; and this was actually 
 presented at the bar of the House by their prolocutor, Dr. 
 Burgess. 
 
 To what an extent those who were employed to purge the 
 Church acted honestly and impartially, it is hard to say. In 
 different districts the clergy were perhaps differently treated. 
 Mr. W. N. Johns, in his Historical Traditions and Facts relating 
 to the County of Monmouth (Newport, 1885), gives a list of all the 
 benefices in the county from which the Committee, and later 
 Cromwell's Tryers, ejected the clergy, to the number of eighty- 
 eight, many of these as " malignants " and as " using the Prayer 
 Book." Some were expelled for drunkenness, others for "in- 
 efficiency," i.e. because they did not come up to the theological 
 standard set by their judges. 
 
 In the County of Devon, out of about 550 benefices, two-thirds 
 of the parsons were deprived. The rest conformed to the re- 
 ligion — whatever it was — of the Parliament. 
 
 For the space of two years the country might be said to have 
 been without any established form of worship. The clergy were 
 left to use the Liturgy, repeating the prayers by heart without 
 book, or not, as they pleased, and to follow their own devices 
 in other particulars. Thus, we are told, while some of them 
 continued to wear the canonical vesture, others gratified their 
 taste by preaching in a cloak, after the fashion of the Protestant 
 ministers of Geneva and France. 
 
 In the summer of 1643 it was desired by Parliament that all 
 altars of stone in churches should be taken away ; all communion 
 tables removed from the east end of the chancels and set in the 
 nave. All rails were to be pulled down, all candlesticks and 
 tapers to be removed, and all crucifixes and pictures to be 
 destroyed. 
 
 The building up of a new ecclesiastical polity was committed 
 to an Assembly of Divines that met at Westminster on July 1, 
 1643. The Directory of Public Worship, which supplanted the 
 Book of Common Prayer, was established by an ordinance 
 on January 3, 1645 ; the Christian Seasons were abolished, 
 kneeling was done away with, hats were worn during service ; 
 
THE SWAMPING OF THE CHURCH 28 
 
 in 1653 marriage was made a civil contract before a Justice of 
 Peace. 
 
 The Puritans maintained great hostility towards organs and 
 instrumental music in churches, and that it caused dissatis- 
 faction when music was put down, the organs broken up and 
 the choirs dispersed, one may judge by the diffusion of a ballad 
 composed at the time, which I have published with its original 
 air in my Songs of the West. It is too long to be reproduced here, 
 but I give a few verses. I heard it from an old blind man on 
 Dartmoor in 1883, but it has also been recovered at North 
 Tawton, as happening there, and in 1877 the Hon. A. F. Northcote 
 took it down from a pedlar at Buckingham, aged ninety years. 
 
 There's a man in Brixham town, 
 Of office, and in gown, 
 Strove to put singing down, 
 
 Which most of men adore. 
 For House of God unmeet, 
 The voice and organ sweet 
 When pious men do meet 
 
 To praise their God before. 
 
 Go question Holy Writ, 
 And you will find in it 
 That seemly 'tis and fit 
 
 To praise and hymn the Lord, 
 On cymbal and on lute 
 On organ and on flute, 
 With voices sweet that suit 
 
 All in a fair concord. 
 
 Now there be creatures three, 
 As you may plainly see, 
 With music can't agree 
 
 Upon this very earth : 
 The swine, the fool, the ass ; 
 And so we let it pass, 
 And sing, O Lord, thy praise, 
 
 Whilst we have breath. 
 
 There were some, Churchmen at heart, who conformed to the 
 Directory and to the complete transformation of the Church 
 into a Presbyterian establishment. A notable instance was 
 John Pearson. He retained his living at Torrington in Suffolk, 
 and in 1650 was appointed lecturer at S. Clement's, Eastcheap, 
 in London ; and it was to the parishioners there, during the 
 
24 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 domination of Presbyterians and Independents, that he de- 
 livered his Exposition of the Apostles' Creed. 
 
 We can perhaps understand his position, and that of others 
 like him who submitted, hoping by private advice and by public 
 instruction to keep alive some spark of the Faith, and doubtless 
 looking for better times to come ; but it was hardly honest. 1 To 
 a good many must have applied the words of Beatrice relative to 
 Benedick : "He wears his faith but as the fashion of his hat — it 
 ever changes with the next block." 
 
 The Covenant, moreover, was devised as a method of assuring 
 that the ministers were in full agreement with the religious 
 opinions of the Parliament. On September 25, 1643, five days 
 after the battle of Newbury, the Covenant was sworn to by the 
 members of the House of Commons, and was soon afterwards 
 ordered to be sworn to by every Englishman ; and it was imposed 
 on every incumbent as a test, and if he refused to subscribe 
 he was treated as a malignant, ejected from his benefice with 
 wife and children, and deprived of his goods. It was rendered 
 hard for the loyal country gentlemen to assist their pastors, as 
 the estates of malignants had been sequestered. 
 
 All who submitted to swear to the Covenant were accounted 
 friends of " the Blessed Parliament," all who refused it were 
 looked upon as " spies and betrayers of the Parliament." The 
 Covenant was ordered to be written up in every church, and 
 recited before the congregation by the minister once in each 
 year. The terms of the Covenant were emphatic enough : " We 
 shall sincerely, really and constantly endeavour, in our several 
 places and callings, the preservation of the Reformed religion 
 in the Church of Scotland in doctrine, worship, discipline and 
 
 1 There were many such men. Lewis Atterbury, father of the Bishop, 
 remained undisturbed at Milston, Pocock at Childrey, Sanderson at 
 Boothby Pagnell. Stillingfleet was actually appointed to Sutton in 1657, 
 and Bull to Suddington in 1658, all of course conforming to the Directory, 
 but hating it in their hearts. So also Thomas Fuller, the Church his- 
 torian, presented to the living of Waltham Abbey, 1649, and then that 
 of Cranford, 1658. Heylin accused him of complying with the times, 
 and South pictured him with his big book under one arm and his little 
 wife under the other, running after his patrons for invitation to dinner. 
 Hall was another Conformist, so also Westfield, Bishop of Bristol, who 
 attended the Westminster Assembly, 1643, and was allowed by Parlia- 
 ment to retain his emoluments. Simon Patrick became Vicar of Batter- 
 sea in 1658. He had been privately ordained. After the Restoration 
 he became Vicar of S. Paul's, Covent Garden, and eventually in succession 
 Bishop of Chichester, then of Ely. John Gauden was another who con- 
 formed to Presbyterianism, and was thereby enabled to retain his rector- 
 ship of Bocking. He became successively Bishop of Exeter and then of 
 Worcester. 
 
THE SWAMPING OF THE CHURCH 25 
 
 government, against our common enemies ; the Reformation of 
 religion in the kingdoms of England and Ireland, in doctrine, 
 worship, discipline and government according to the word of 
 God, and the example of the best Reformed Churches, and shall 
 endeavour to bring the churches of God in the three kingdoms 
 to the nearest conjunction and uniformity in religion, confession 
 of faith, form of church government, directory for worship and 
 catechising. That we shall in like manner, without respect of 
 persons, endeavour the extirpation of Popery, Prelacy (that is 
 Church government by archbishops, bishops, their chancellors 
 and commissaries, deans and chapters, archdeacons and all other 
 ecclesiastical officers, depending on that hierarchy) superstition, 
 heresy, schism, profaneness, etc." 
 
 Some of the old clergy counted up the words of the Covenant, 
 and found them to be 666, the number of the Beast. But what 
 is startling is that so many acquiesced in the Covenant, took 
 oath, and remained on in their cures. Thomas Fuller apologizes 
 for his conformity by saying that he knew nothing of the Covenant 
 save seeing it hung up in the Church, but he admits that he took 
 the oath in the vestry of the Savoy chapel. 
 
 By ordinance of Parliament, May 9, 1644, it was directed 
 " that no copes, surplices, superstitious vestments, roods or 
 roodloms . . . shall be, or be any more used in any Church 
 or Chapell, within the Realm . . . and that all copes, surplices, 
 Superstitious Vestments, Roods and Fonts aforesaid, be like- 
 wise utterly defaced." 
 
 By an Act of Parliament passed on June 6, 1646, the Presby- 
 terian form of Church Government was partially established by 
 way of experiment, the preamble of the Act declaring " that if 
 upon trial it was not found acceptable, it should be reversed 
 or amended," but in 1649 was declared without qualification 
 by the House, that Presbyterianism should be the Established 
 religion. 
 
 This was the year in which the Commonwealth was established. 
 In 1653, however, Cromwell dissolved the Long Parliament, and 
 on December 16 in that year became Lord Protector. With 
 him Independency had the upper hand and the Presbyterians 
 could ask for nothing but toleration. Their Directory was now 
 scouted, and complete religious anarchy prevailed. 
 
 The Protector was disposed to tolerate all sects, but not 
 Romanists, Anglicans and Quakers. 
 
 In March 1653 Cromwell, by an Ordinance in Council, ap- 
 
26 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 pointed a Board of Tryers, thirty-eight in number, of whom 
 part were Presbyterians, part Independents, and a few Baptists, 
 to which was accorded, without any instructions or limitations 
 whatever, the power of examining and approving, or rejecting, 
 all persons that might thereafter be presented or nominated to 
 any living in the Church. There was also instituted a Commis- 
 sion of Ejectors, to turn out those who, being in possession, 
 were deemed unworthy, and such as employed the Prayer 
 Book. 1 
 
 Those of the sequestered priests who were unmarried were 
 taken into the families of the country squires, where they served 
 as tutors and chaplains, and used the Book of Common Prayer 
 and ministered the Sacraments in secret. The Bishops behind 
 shut and locked doors ordained to the priesthood. The married 
 incumbents who had been ejected became schoolmasters in the 
 parishes in which they had ministered as priests. But in 1655 
 the Protector issued an edict forbidding any ejected incumbent 
 from keeping a school, acting as tutor in a private family, per- 
 forming any rite of the Church, or using the Book of Common 
 Prayer, and the major-generals were ordered to see that it was 
 duly enforced. Yet Cromwell must have felt towards his end 
 that his efforts to stamp out the Church were doomed to failure, 
 for his daughters were sincere Churchwomen, and attended the 
 ministrations and received the Sacrament at the hands of a 
 proscribed priest in a private house, and had themselves married 
 by one. 2 
 
 There is a wooden parish church at Reykjahlid by Myvatn, 
 in the north-east of Iceland. Between 1724 and 1730 ensued 
 a sequence of irruptions from three volcanic vents in the neigh- 
 bourhood. These poured forth a river of molten lava that flowed 
 down to the lake and menaced to overwhelm the church ; but 
 the fiery flood parted at the churchyard bank and encompassed 
 God's acre, spared the sacred building, save that it charred and 
 started its planks ; it slew all the fish in the lake, poisoned man 
 
 1 What the judgments of the Committee were worth may be seen by 
 that on Edmund Pocock, the great Orientalist and Arabic professor at 
 Oxford, who only just escaped expulsion from his living of Childrey " for 
 ignorance and insufficiency." And he one with an European reputation 
 for learning ! 
 
 2 Mary was married to Lord Fauconberg by the Rev. Dr. Hewit. Crom- 
 well had him executed on the pretence that he was engaged in a plot, 
 with which, in fact, he had little concern. The last Roman Catholic 
 priest who was executed for his religion in England suffered under Crom- 
 well . 
 
THE SWAMPING OF THE CHURCH 27 
 
 and beast with its mephitic exhalations, and buried wide tracts 
 of pasture. 
 
 The Edwardian and Elizabethan periods were much like this. 
 From Switzerland, the Rhine and the Main was vomited forth 
 the poisonous and desolating torrent that overflowed our land, 
 killing all spiritual religion and common morality, and substi- 
 tuting for them acrid controversy, unprofitable dogmatism, and 
 relaxation of morals. It did appear as though the Church 
 must perish, surrounded as it was by the incandescent current 
 of Calvinism. But by the mercy of God — as by a miracle — it 
 survived. 
 
 I have seen Reykjahlid. The desolating torrent is congealed 
 into fanged fragments of rock, that produce not a blade of grass 
 nor a goodly flower. It has been so in England ; the stream has 
 expended its heat, has lost its momentum, and remains a petri- 
 faction without vitality and without productiveness. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE SWAMPING OF THE CHURCH (continued) 
 
 FROM l660 ONWARDS 
 
 AT the Restoration, in 1660, the parish churches were 
 served by two classes of men : such as had received 
 Episcopal ordination and had conformed willingly or 
 reluctantly ; and such as were Presbyterians or Indepen- 
 dents or even Baptist preachers, and who had not been ordained. 
 
 Where there had been intrusion into benefices, and the original 
 rectors or vicars were still alive in 1660, these latter were re- 
 stored, and the intruders had to go. But of this class there were 
 not many. Poverty and hardship had killed most of them. 
 
 Those ordained who had conformed to the Directory now 
 made a second turn of the coat, back to the Prayer Book and to 
 Episcopacy. Some of these profited greatly thereby. They 
 could produce their letters of Orders, and show that they had been 
 canonically instituted before the Rebellion. Pearson at once 
 got preferment. He was presented to the rectory of S. Christo- 
 pher in the City, became prebendary of Ely, archdeacon of 
 Surrey, and in 1672 Bishop of Chester. 
 
 Some of those restored must have been of questionable value. 
 No inquisition seems to have been made as to whether those 
 reinstated had been deprived for their orthodoxy or for their 
 disreputable conduct. 
 
 We obtain a tolerable insight into the condition of affairs from 
 Pepys's Diary. Samuel Pepys, born on February 23, 1632-3, 
 had known nothing of Church doctrine and order. At the time 
 of the Restoration he lived in the parish of S. Olave, Hart Street, 
 London, and the incumbent was Daniel Mills. 
 
 Mills had been appointed to S. Olave 's, April 17, 1657, Dv tne 
 Commissioners or Tryers, under Cromwell's Protectorate, as a 
 godly minister. He died in 1689, a bit of a pluralist, as rector 
 of S. Olave's and also of Wanstead in Essex. He had not been 
 episcopally ordained, but was quite prepared to conform, even 
 before he was obliged to do so. Pepys wrote : 
 
 28 
 
THE SWAMPING OF THE CHURCH 29 
 
 " 1660. 4 Nov. (Lord's Day). — In the morn at our Church 
 (S. Olave's), where Mr. Mills did begin to nibble at the Common 
 Prayer by saying * Glory be to the Father, etc.' after he had 
 read two psalms, but the people had been so little used to it, 
 that they could not tell what to answer. 
 
 " 1662. 5 October (Lord's Day). — I to Church and this day 
 the parson had got someone to read, with the surplice on. I 
 suppose himself will take it up hereafter, for a cunning fellow 
 he is as any of his coate. 
 
 " 1662. 26 October (Lord's Day). — To Church and there saw 
 for the first time Mr. Mills in a surplice, but it seemed absurd 
 for him to pull it over his ears in the reading pew, after he had 
 done, before all the church, to go up to the pulpit t." 
 
 When the Savoy Conference met (April 15- July 25, 1661) 
 there were twelve Bishops on one side, and twelve eminent 
 Presbyterians on the other, and the object of the conference 
 was to consider whether it were possible to so modify the Prayer 
 Book as to satisfy the Puritans and allow them to retain their 
 cures. But it soon appeared that the differences were radical, 
 and that conciliation was impossible. The Presbyterians de- 
 manded the disuse of the title " priest," the abolition of Lent 
 and Saints' days, permission to use extempore prayers as well as 
 printed forms at the discretion of the minister, the omission of 
 the sign of the cross in baptism, and of the ring in matrimony ; 
 the discontinuance of kneeling for the reception of Communion ; 
 they also objected to Baptismal Regeneration , and Confirmation 
 as a preliminary to Communion ; they demanded as well the 
 excision of the Ornaments Rubric. They were prepared to 
 consent to Episcopacy if the Bishops were to be relegated to 
 the office of superintendents and moderators among pastors, 
 each to be primus inter pares, and that no obligation to be 
 ordained should be imposed upon those who had received their 
 mission from the Presbyterian classes. " In a word they sought 
 the triumph of Puritanism over the Church, not a footing for 
 Puritanism within the pale of the Church." 
 
 It was impossible to concede these demands without un- 
 churching the Anglican Communion, making of it a Protestant 
 sect among other sects. And it would have driven out of the 
 fold all those who belonged to the old school, regarding the 
 Episcopate and Apostolic Succession as of Divine institution, 
 and the Church Catholic as the Kingdom of Christ upon earth. 
 The Prayer Book went through its final revision in 1661. The 
 
30 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 Title itself is significant : " The Book of Common Prayer and 
 the administration of the Sacraments, and other rites and cere- 
 monies of the Church, according to the use of the United Church 
 of England and Ireland." 
 
 The First Preface was a refutation of the Puritans. The 
 Second is an adaptation from the revised Breviary of Cardinal 
 Quignon authorized by Pope Paul III in 1535 ; and this it 
 follows in all the main points. Nothing can show plainer that the 
 Reformers meant not to create a new service-book but to reform 
 the old. The words of the Preface make this clear. Four times 
 in it is the authority of the " Ancient Fathers " invoked. 
 
 In the Third Preface no hint of revolutionary change is given ; 
 indeed it does not hesitate to declare that innovations are always 
 to be eschewed. 
 
 The Act of Uniformity was passed in 1662. All ministers 
 were required to accept and employ the Book of Common Prayer, 
 and such as had not been episcopally ordained were required 
 to seek orders from the Bishop, before S. Bartholomew's Day, 
 August 24, or to vacate their incumbencies. 
 
 It has been stated by Calamy and Baxter that from 1500 to 
 2465 ministers were ejected. J. R. Green, in his Short History, 
 says that it was only one-fifth of the clergy. Burnet himself 
 doubted whether anything like the number had to leave that 
 was supposed. " The numbers," he says, " have been much 
 controverted." 1 
 
 According to Clarendon a great many of those who vacated 
 their livings did so on " bluff," hoping to get better terms, but 
 conformed afterwards when they found out that the Government 
 meant what it said. 
 
 In Ichabod, published in 1663, a work attributed to Ken, 
 figures are quoted to the effect that out of 12,000 benefices, 
 3,000 were in impropriate hands, and that there were 4,000 
 incumbents who were not resident. 
 
 If we take it that 6,000 benefices were really occupied and that 
 2,000 ministers were ejected, of whom a good many returned, 
 it would leave between 4,000 and 5,000 who conformed. But 
 this takes no account of cathedral and collegiate establishments, 
 and it is not certain that these 12,000 benefices represent all 
 that there were in the English Church at that time. 
 
 Mr. W. N. Johns, in his Historical Traditions and Facts relating 
 to the County of Monmouth (Newport, 1885), gives a list of all 
 
 1 Calamy records 2,465, but of these a large number conformed later. 
 
THE SWAMPING OF THE CHURCH 31 
 
 the benefices in the county from which the Committee and the 
 Tryers ejected the clergy. It would seem from this that 88 
 were driven out of their livings; of these at the Restoration 
 only five lived to be reinstated. 
 
 In 1660-2 the number ejected was 11, so that something 
 like 72 must have conformed. Here, as Prince Hal might say, 
 " O monstrous ! but one halfpenny of bread to this intolerable 
 deal of sack ! " Five orthodox clergy to 72 reclaimed Puritans ! 
 
 Now let us take Devonshire in the diocese of Exeter. The 
 registers have been closely investigated by the late Rev. G. L. 
 Hennessy with these results. Out of about 550 benefices in 
 Devon, 52 ministers were deprived. 
 
 There were 35 benefices jam legitime vacantes. In the city of 
 Exeter there had been 19 churches, but by Act of Parliament 
 in 1656 these were reduced to 4. This would account for 15 
 legitimately vacant. 
 
 Of the 52 deprived some were intruders, the original incum- 
 bents being still alive. One was vacated on account of Non- 
 conformity, and one on account of contempt and disobedience. 
 This leaves 462 incumbents remaining. In 1660-3 there were 
 177 ordained by Bishops Gauden and Seth Ward. These were 
 Conformists, leaving 343 in quiet possession, who had been 
 ordained before the troubles, and had conformed to Presbyterian- 
 ism and now conformed again to Episcopacy. 
 
 But that is not all. 
 
 Among the ministers who had not been ordained, some were 
 allowed from ten to twelve years' grace in which to make up 
 their minds whether to conform or not. Whether this was done 
 in other dioceses I am unable to say. The number of time- 
 servers like Mr. Mills was great — " cunning fellows as any of their 
 coate." 
 
 The Bishops could not be exacting. They were constrained 
 to fill the benefices with such men as they could get. An entire 
 generation had sprung up without having received any training, 
 any Church teaching, knowing nothing of the traditions of 
 Church service. 1 Only some elders remembered what the Church 
 had been and what Church principles were. 
 
 There had been, as we have seen, a large number of parochial 
 clergy, who had been ordained, but had been carried away by 
 
 1 From Ichabod we learn that 426 tradesmen who had been intruded 
 into livings during the Commonwealth now submitted to ordination so 
 as to retain their livings. 
 
32 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 the current of Puritanism. These had not been ejected during 
 the Commonwealth, and they now remained in their cures, 
 though out of sympathy with the rites and doctrines of the 
 Church. 
 
 Then there were the Conformists, who, to retain their parson- 
 ages and incomes, submitted to ordination, and undertook to 
 use the Prayer Book. 
 
 According to Archdeacon Basire and Dean Granville, con- 
 temporaries, a great many of these Conformists took the oaths 
 but did not keep them ; not merely neglecting to use the Book 
 of Common Prayer, but preaching against the institutions to 
 which they had sworn submission. 1 To use Dean Granville's 
 own words : " they preach with cloven tongues and walk with 
 cloven feet." 
 
 Mr. Green is probably right in his estimate that only one- 
 fifth were ejected. The two- or three-fifths that remained were 
 secretly hostile to the Catholic faith and scorned the Church 
 rites ; and the quality of those who filled up the gaps was of 
 more than dubious value. 
 
 When Nathaniel Heywood was required to conform or to 
 quit the parish of Ormskirk, he was urged to accept the first 
 alternative, but said he could not do so for conscience' sake. 
 " Oh, sir," said a parishioner, " many a man nowadays makes a 
 great gulp in his conscience — can you not make a little nick in 
 yours ? " And, in fact, many did make this little nick. They 
 conformed with their lips, but in heart they were with the old 
 Puritanism, and they performed Divine Service in a way that 
 showed that they despised the Book of Common Prayer. 
 
 From the time of Charles I to that of the reign of Charles II, 
 the bulk of the clergy had been weathercocks veering with every 
 wind ; first of all Churchmen, then Presbyterians, next Inde- 
 pendents, and finally Churchmen again, but with their Church- 
 manship so diluted as to be scarcely discoverable. 
 
 Pepys enters in his Diary, August 24, 1662, the very day of 
 " Black Bartholomew " : "To Church, where Mr. Mills, making 
 a sermon on Confession, he did endeavour to pull down Auricular 
 Confession, but did set it up by his bad arguments against it, 
 and advising people to come to him to confess their sins, when 
 they had any weight upon their consciences, as much as possibly, 
 which did vex me to hear." 2 
 
 1 Overton (J. H.), Life in the English Church (London, 1885), p. 1. 
 
 2 Yet even Pepys eventually went to Confession to Hickes. 
 
THE SWAMPING OF THE CHURCH 
 
 33 
 
 Now, we have seen, Mills had been a Puritan minister, and he 
 had just been ordained, so as to be able to retain the cure of 
 S. Olave's. With his ordination he had made a volte-face, and 
 was now desirous of using the power of the keys conferred on 
 him a few days before. 
 
 Had Edmund Calamy the Elder been willing to conform he 
 was to have been given the Bishoprics of Coventry and Lich- 
 field ; and the sees were kept open for him till December 1661 ; 
 and Baxter, an ultra- Presbyterian, might have had the Bishopric 
 of Hereford, had he been less honest. 
 
 Some of the Conformists did well for themselves : such were 
 William Outram, who died prebendary of Westminster ; such 
 also was Timothy Tully, a " bright particular star " of Pres- 
 byterianism while the Commonwealth lasted, who altered his 
 orbit, and conforming, became Canon of York. Thomas Tully, 
 another, became Dean of Ripon. Such also was John Tillotson, 
 of whom more presently. So also Richard Kidder (a Presby- 
 terian and Republican), who had held the living of Stanground 
 during the Rebellion, and was ejected from it as a Nonconformist 
 under the Act of Uniformity. But he felt uncomfortable out 
 in the cold, and conformed. William III gave him the see of 
 Bath and Wells, from which he had ejected the saintly Bishop 
 Ken. He and his wife were killed together in a storm, 1703, by 
 the fall of a stack of chimneys on the bed in which they were 
 sleeping. Samuel Parker, who had posed as a Presbyterian of 
 the straitest section, changed at the Restoration, became Arch- 
 deacon of Canterbury and Bishop of Oxford. Reynolds, a 
 staunch and convinced Presbyterian, put his convictions in his 
 pocket, conformed and became Bishop of Norwich. What could 
 be expected of such turncoats ? 
 
 This flood of Conformists, bred in ultra-Calvinism, knowing 
 nothing of the faith of the Church, ignorant as to the significance 
 of the ceremonies and sacraments of the Church, but who were 
 too worldly to endure the annoyance of expulsion from their 
 cures, racked the Church to her bones. When the Earl of Man- 
 chester told King Charles, during the debate on the Act of Uni- 
 formity, that he was afraid the terms were too harsh, and that 
 many ministers would not comply, Bishop Sheldon, who stood 
 by, said : "I am afraid that they will." And they did so, and 
 brought a muddy stream of dishonest Puritanism into the Church. 
 It was reckoned that at this time fully one-half of the clergy were 
 out of sympathy with Church doctrine and practice. They 
 3 
 
34 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 regarded the Church as an Establishment that provided them 
 with a livelihood, endured the Prayer Book, without entertain- 
 ing any love for it, and were not scrupulous to obey its rubrics 
 and conform to its spirit. Referring to the Act of Uniformity, 
 Dr. Allen said to Sheldon : " Tis pity the door is so strait." 
 To which Sheldon replied : " 'Tis no pity at all. If we had 
 thought so many of them would have conformed we would have 
 made it strait er." 
 
 The Conformists had an ingenious method of salving their 
 consciences, by putting up vastly long extempore prayers before 
 and after the sermon, hurrying over the morning and evening 
 prayers at a gabble, in the most slighting manner, and concentrat- 
 ing the whole interest of the congregation on their own effusions. 
 
 These were called "conceived prayers," and the Conformist 
 clergy made no scruple to cut down a good deal of the Liturgical 
 Office, so as to give scope for their own lucubrations. One in- 
 cumbent in the diocese of Gloucester had the audacity to excuse 
 himself to Bishop Frampton for so curtailing the Office prayers, 
 on the plea that " the length of the service hindered him from 
 praying in the pulpit as long as he would." It was not possible 
 to stop this practice, to which the old Presbyterians and Inde- 
 pendents were greatly addicted, as a means of showing them- 
 selves off to great advantage to their audience ; and the bishops 
 were afraid of forbidding it. Even so late as 1675, a published 
 sermon has a " conceived prayer " preceding it, four pages long. 
 
 In some churches, as a correspondent complained to Dean 
 Granville, the congregation loitered about outside the church 
 till the Liturgical Office had been said, when they rushed in to 
 hear the " conceived prayer." 
 
 Churchmen, like Dean Granville, looked upon these extem- 
 pore prayers as marking men to be insincere Conformists. 
 Referring to the Church prayers, they would say: "We have 
 hitherto prated, but now let us pray," or " Brethren, it is true we 
 have been praying in the voice of the Church, but now we'll pray 
 better." 
 
 Moreover, as during the time of the domination of Puritanism 
 the Celebration of the Lord's Supper, even after Presbyterian 
 forms, had become rare, it remained rare wherever there were 
 Conformists, and they allowed Communicants to walk up to the 
 Holy Table and receive standing, or else they went down into 
 the body of the church and communicated the people in their 
 places. 
 
THE SWAMPING OF THE CHURCH 35 
 
 The Test Act of 1673, which forced Nonconformists either to 
 abstain from seeking any public office or to become occasional 
 communicants had a most mischievous effect. They came, 
 but persisted in standing to receive ; and Dr. Hooke, vicar of 
 Halifax, was thought to be very uncharitable because he refused 
 certificates to such as would not kneel ; and the rule requiring 
 Communicants to kneel was generally dispensed with by clergy 
 at the time. 
 
 Another point on which the Conformists held out was against 
 the Catechizing of Children on the Sunday afternoon. It inter- 
 fered with, or supplanted the relished sermon, but it was a point 
 strongly insisted on by the Bishops. For one thing those Con- 
 formist clergy did not like the plain doctrine contained in the 
 Catechism of the Church. 
 
 The Puritans were very anxious to retain the Lecturers as 
 free lances, wherever malcontents could be found in a parish 
 who would put their hands into their pockets to find a stipend 
 for them, and thus keep up a spirit of strife and dissent wherever 
 there was an orthodox pastor. Baxter, among his proposed 
 terms of union in 1673, required " that lecturers should not be 
 obliged to read the service, or at most that it be enough if once 
 in half a year they read the greatest part of what is appointed 
 for that time." I have already mentioned the Act that was 
 passed to put them under some sort of control. 
 
 It would be a great mistake to attribute the neglect of Church 
 ordinances to the Conformists alone. The fault lay equally with 
 the poor quality of clergy who were of the Church throughout, 
 or had been recently ordained. Dean Granville writes, 1675 : 
 " As for the observation of the festivals (wherein an especial 
 part of our religion doth consist) they are notorious prophan'd 
 not only by the people, but scandalously neglected, or slightly 
 observed (as to the due performance of God's worship in them) 
 by the Priest. Ministers begin, I see, to make very bold with 
 them, and for little, despicable, temporal convenience change 
 the customary hours of God's worship and sometimes wholly 
 lay it aside, at least in the afternoon, and sometimes upon no 
 better account than that they and their people may goe to a 
 horse-race, or some such idle sport or divertisement." 
 
 The Conformists were especially bitter against those Presby- 
 terians and Independents who did not conform. They thought 
 and hoped that, had all come in, they would have been enabled 
 to capture the English Church. Dean Granville wrote in 1679 : 
 
36 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 " And of all non-conformists, I confesse I have most indignation 
 against those that can accept of a fat benefice and preferment 
 upon pretence of conforming and giving assent and consent to 
 our order, bitterly inveighing against all dissenters from our 
 rule, which they most scandalously neglect and contemne them- 
 selves, nay sometimes even persecuting well-meaning though 
 misguided soules, by virtue of the Common Prayer Book, which 
 they themselves will not observe, nay scarce ever consideringly 
 read." 
 
 In his Observations on the Grievances and Abuses in the 
 Church of England, the Dean notes first of all " that the Door of 
 Ordination was in reality made too wide, not so much by our 
 Church as by our Churchmen." And this was the case. So 
 many thousands of livings had to be filled, that the Bishops 
 and patrons accepted almost any man who offered. His second 
 grievance was that the clergy neglected the rule of the Common 
 Prayer Book after having made a public declaration of conformity 
 in the Church and having given their assent and consent to it. 1 
 
 Amidst the Dean's correspondence is a* communication from a 
 student in the Inns of Court, giving an account of the irregularities 
 in the performance of Divine Service by the clergy of London. 
 Perhaps one of the most curious was that of reading the Visitation 
 of the Sick in church instead of at the bedside of the sick man. 
 In Cumberland and Westmorland there had been twenty-eight 
 ejected. Of these some because they were intruders, and the 
 old incumbents were still alive. Calamy and Palmer give the 
 number of ministers ejected in Cumberland as thirty, of whom 
 four conformed afterwards ; for Westmorland nine, of whom 
 four conformed. "What impresses the reader is the eagerness 
 of the number of those who accepted the new ritualism and there- 
 fore were left undisturbed." 2 
 
 From Ken's Visitation Articles, issued in 1684, we learn that 
 at that date, in the diocese of Bath and Wells, there were still 
 churches in which the surplice was not worn, and where the 
 altar stood without cover or rail in the nave, where there was 
 neither chalice nor Prayer Book. In 1662 Archdeacon Basire 
 reported of Northumberland that " in many churches there were 
 
 1 Archdeacon Granville's Remains are most interesting reading, and 
 throw a great light on the condition of the Church of the Restoration. 
 They were published by the Surtees Society, 1861, 1865. 
 
 8 Nightingale (B.), The Ejected of Cumberland and Westmorland (Man- 
 chester, 191 1 ). The number 28 is taken from " a Great Catalogue of the 
 names of the several ministers lately ejected," 1663, in Mr. Nightingale's 
 book, p. 80. 
 
THE SWAMPING OF THE CHURCH 37 
 
 neither Bibles, Books of Common Prayer, surpasses, fonts, Com- 
 munion Tables, nor anything that is necessarie for the service 
 of God." In 1665 matters were not much better. In the diocese 
 of Hereford in 1675 Bishop Croft did not think it " wise to be 
 zealous for the surplice." 
 
 Dean Granville complained of his curate at Kilkhampton 
 in Cornwall " officiating without the surplice to please the dow- 
 baked people of that country." 
 
 Archdeacon (afterwards Dean) Granville, in his Visitation 
 charge, 1674, says : " I have look'don it as (a) very fatall presage 
 since the restoracion of our Church service that the Cleargy have 
 expressed noe more affection to it." No wonder, when the 
 majority were Conformists. He urged again and again : " Be- 
 sides the ordinary offices for Sundayes and Feastivalls and dayly 
 prayers throughout the yeare, there should be a conscientious 
 discharge of the duties of Catechizing, Exposition, Visitation of 
 the Sick, personal application, sermons on all festivals." Never- 
 theless " the Dayly Prayers in joined to be said in all Parish 
 Churches, are not observ'd in more than four places throughout 
 the whole Diocese. Catechizing enjoin' d on all Sundays and 
 Holy Days is restrained by most only to Lent." 
 
 On the other hand there was much earnestness manifest 
 among High Churchmen to rebuild the waste places of Zion, and 
 to restore the solemnities of Divine worship. Wherever there 
 were clergy of the old school " the full system of the Church was 
 at once restored, even before the Act of Uniformity was passed. 
 Surplices reappeared in church, the clergy once more walked 
 about the street in gown and cassock and square cap. The 
 altars were moved to the East end of the chancel and railed in. 
 The cathedrals were purified from the state of neglect in which 
 they had lain during the Commonwealth. The walls were 
 repaired, the signs of wanton destruction and desecration as far 
 as possible removed, and the choirs once more resounded daily 
 to the tones of the organs and the voices of the choristers. At 
 Durham the copes were worn, and the candles lighted ; at Ely 
 incense was burned at the celebration of the Holy Eucharist." 1 
 
 Pepys entered in his diary : 
 
 " 1660. 8 July (Lord's Day)— To White Hall chapel. Here 
 I heard very good musique, the first time that ever I remember 
 to have heard the organs and singing men in surplices in my 
 life. 
 
 1 Wakeman, History of the Church of England (1904), p. 404. 
 
38 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 " 1660. 24 July (Lord's Day). — To White Hall chapel, where 
 I heard a cold sermon, and the ceremonies did not please me, 
 they do so overdo them. 
 
 " 1661. 17 Nov. (Lord's Day). — To Church and heard a 
 simple fellow upon the praise of church musique, and exclaiming 
 against men wearing hats in church. 
 
 "18 Nov. — At S. Paul's, where I saw the quiristers in their 
 surplices going to prayers, and a few idle people and boys to hear 
 them, which is the first time I see them, and am sorry to see 
 things done so out of order." 
 
 Notwithstanding the amount of Puritanism that had been 
 imported into the Church through the Conformists, under the 
 energetic rule of the Caroline Bishops the standard of Faith and 
 practice that had been set up by the great divines under James I 
 and Charles I was being rapidly recovered. A good many of 
 those who belonged to the first period lived to a great age and 
 were able to help in the reconstruction of the Church after 
 the Restoration ; and few things are more remarkable than 
 the rise and expansion of Church feeling, and growth of public 
 worship in the reign of Queen Anne. Out of such unpromising 
 material good had come. The levelling up was in full pro- 
 gress when, with the Revolution, and the arrival of William of 
 Orange, the Church suffered severely. Indeed he put a check 
 on her recovery. 
 
 William was a Dutch Calvinist of strong anti-Catholic pre- 
 judices. He showed his disregard for Church feeling by having 
 himself proclaimed on Ash Wednesday, a day then observed 
 with greater strictness than in later times. Old-fashioned 
 Churchmen were offended at seeing bonfires blazing, wine-casks 
 broached in the streets, processions marshalled, banquets spread, 
 and at hearing the church bells ringing merry peals on the 
 first day of the Lenten fast. William ostentatiously kept his 
 hat on in church, as he had been wont to do in the Calvinistic 
 tabernacles at home, and obsequious courtiers did the same. 
 His wife, Mary, had been brought up as a Churchwoman, and 
 had imported to The Hague, Ken and Hooper as her chaplains, 
 men of definite Church opinions, who afterwards became succes- 
 sively Bishops of Bath and Wells. William entertained a dis- 
 like for them, and declared that, should he ever obtain the crown 
 of England, he would never promote such men as these. 
 
 After the Revolution he had Gilbert Burnet as his chief ad- 
 viser in Church matters, a man who had been brought up as a 
 
THE SWAMPING OF THE CHURCH 
 
 39 
 
 Scottish Presbyterian, and who in Holland had assiduously 
 attended Calvinistic worship, and even communicated in the 
 Dutch conventicles. He had been ordained in the Church, but 
 his sympathies and prejudices were those that he had acquired 
 in early days. John Tillotson was the son of a Yorkshire clothier, 
 a Presbyterian, and his intimate friends had been Socinians, 
 Quakers and Puritans. At the Restoration he had been ejected 
 from his fellowship at Clare, Cambridge, on account of his Puritan- 
 ism. But he became a Conformist, and had been made Dean 
 of Canterbury, then raised by William to be Archbishop and 
 Primate of all England. He never shook off his Puritanical 
 principles, and was largely credited with being a Socinian at 
 heart. He had no affection for the Creed of the Church, and 
 despised its ritual, which he disregarded. Wherever he could, 
 he acted as a Dissenter rather than as a Churchman. He was 
 wont to administer the Eucharist to persons sitting instead of 
 kneeling. He would saunter up and down in the church carrying 
 the Sacred Elements, and administer first to those lounging in 
 their pews, and then to those kneeling at the rails ; he would 
 not himself go within, but standing without, forced the Com- 
 municants to turn about so as to receive. That King William 
 should have offered such a man the Archbishopric is what we can 
 well understand, better than we can the dishonesty of Tillotson 
 in accepting it. 
 
 Henry Compton was already Bishop of London — a man after 
 the King's own heart, as he was thoroughly Latitudinarian. He 
 was an ex-cornet of the Royal Horse Guards, and as ignorant of 
 theology and of Church principles as a soldier might be. On 
 December 3, 1689, when William of Orange entered London, 
 he, the Bishop of London, to the scandal of Churchmen, drew 
 on top-boots, put his rapier by his side, slung pistols in his belt, 
 and throwing a purple cloak over Ins shoulders, rode, thus 
 accoutred, to meet William. Ever afterwards he bore the nick- 
 name of u Jack Boots." Stillingrleet, whose Irenicon was the 
 text-book of those who denied Episcopacy, or any form of ministry 
 to be of Divine appointment, was made Bishop of Worcester. 
 
 Tenison was another Latitudinarian on whom William could 
 reckon. He had been made Bishop of Lincoln in 1692, and on 
 the death of Tillotson was raised to the Primacy. He valued 
 the Church as a political institution, and had no regard for it as a 
 Spiritual society. He hated Convocation as truly as did Tillot- 
 son, as a manifestation of life in the Church, and he advised the 
 
40 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 King not to call it together, but to govern the Church by Royal 
 Injunctions; and this William did. "It certainly seems 
 ludicrous," says Mr. Hore, " that an Anglicized Dutchman who 
 was in his heart a Calvinist and a Presbyterian, should be re- 
 quested by an Archbishop of Canterbury to teach the Bishops 
 their duty." 
 
 As the opinion prevailed that the clergy generally were Jaco- 
 bite in feeling, the unprecedented step was taken of enforcing 
 on them an oath of allegiance to William and Mary. Eight 
 bishops and about four hundred clergy refused the oath, and 
 were deprived. Hereby a large opening was made for the ad- 
 vancement of men of Low Church and Latitudinarian views. 
 
 In the first two years of the reign of William and Mary as 
 many as fifteen bishops were appointed. Burnet obtained the 
 Bishopric of Salisbury, and Tillotson, the ex- Presbyterian, was 
 elevated to the throne of S. Augustine and Laud. Before the 
 end of the reign, the Episcopal bench was packed with prelates 
 who were Latitudinarians, men of no Church principles, ready 
 to take direction from a prince who was an adulterer, and 
 a foreigner, and not a member of the Church, and were willing 
 to carry out William's favourite device of broadening the basis 
 of the English Church so as to take in all Dissenters. 
 
 In 1689 a Bill was passed through both Houses appointing a 
 Commission to examine into the means to be adopted to effect 
 this purpose, by revising the Liturgy, the Canons, and the Eccle- 
 siastical Courts. It met in October 1689, and proposed to undo 
 everything that had been done by the Convocation of 1661 ; 
 to forbid the chanting of the Psalms, even in cathedrals ; the 
 observance of Saints' Days, the cross in Baptism, the appoint- 
 ment of godparents, all these were to be abolished. The wearing 
 of the surplice was to be made optional. The form of Absolu- 
 tion was to be modified. Episcopal ordination was not to be 
 required for the ministry ; kneeling to receive the Communion 
 was to be optional, and the Collects, as too concise, were to 
 be puffed out with rhetorical bombast. Convocation met on 
 November 20 to consider the proposals of the Commission. It 
 soon became apparent that the Lower House was opposed to 
 any alteration in the Prayer Book and in the constitution of the 
 Church. The Prolocutor, addressing Compton, Bishop of London, 
 who was in the chair, eulogized the Church in England as main- 
 taining the Faith once for all delivered to the saints, and as 
 preserving the marks of the Catholic Church throughout all 
 
THE SWAMPING OF THE CHURCH 41 
 
 ages. He plainly intimated that no alteration and watering 
 down would be tolerated by the clergy. He concluded with the 
 significant words " Nolumus leges Anglic? mutari." The King, 
 Burnet, Tillotson, Compton and other Latitudinarians speedily 
 became aware that the Lower House was not to be hectored or 
 cajoled into submission to the King and his obsequious bishops. 
 
 William, disappointed and offended, prorogued Convocation 
 for six weeks, and when these six weeks were over, seeing no 
 chance of getting his way, prorogued it again indefinitely. 
 
 The Convocation of 1689 saved the Church of England from 
 devolution into a formless, colourless, invertebrate lump. After 
 this failure to broaden the basis of the Established Church, all 
 the Latitudinarians could do — and they laid themselves out to 
 do it — was to encourage laxity in ceremonial and discipline. We 
 have already noted how that Tillotson defied rubrical order 
 in the administration of Communion. Unable to get the Prayer 
 Book altered, and angry at the opposition of the clergy, he 
 and the rest were in no mood to insist on the due observance 
 of rules which they neither obeyed themselves nor wanted to 
 see obeyed by others, and which they desired to see expunged 
 out of the Liturgy. The parochial clergy manfully resisted for 
 a while. But the dead weight of unsympathetic Bishops bowed 
 them down, and in the end they also ceased to observe the rubrics 
 and rules of the Church, when they found that in the eyes of 
 their diocesans such as did were regarded as unsuitable for 
 preferment, and the most lax came in for smiles from statesmen 
 and Bishops alike. 
 
 An example of the subserviency of the bishops appointed 
 under William and Mary was afforded at the execution of Sir 
 John Friend and Sir William Parkyns in 1696, for high treason. 
 The two knights were attended on the scaffold by three non- 
 juring clergy, Jeremy Collier, Cook, and Snatt. Before the hang- 
 man adjusted the halter, the dying men knelt, and the three 
 priests laid their hands upon their heads, and Collier pronounced 
 the Absolution, to which the other two responded Amen. For 
 this Cook and Snatt were flung into prison, and Collier only 
 escaped by concealing himself. 
 
 Thereupon the two Archbishops and twelve Bishops issued 
 a manifesto denouncing these priests, on the wretched plea that 
 the form of absolution prescribed in the Prayer Book was only 
 to be employed in the visitation of sick people. 1 
 
 1 Secret History of Europe (1715), iv. p. 241 et seq. 
 
42 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 It has been asked, whence did William obtain the bishops 
 whom he advanced to the vacant sees, so devoid of principle 
 as to use their utmost powers to subvert the Church ? He found 
 them among the Conformists. Too many of the old Presby- 
 terians, as we have seen, had been bribed to join the Church by 
 offers of mitres and decanal stalls, in the reign of Charles II, 
 and there were others who had conformed simply so as to be in 
 a position to look out for preferment. No man can betray his 
 conscience for filthy lucre and not be morally degraded thereby. 
 Such were these men. The sin of Jeroboam was that he made 
 priests of the lowest of the people. William incurred the same 
 condemnation, not that his prelates were of low birth, or were 
 ignorant men, but because of their moral baseness. 
 
 At the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, by Louis XIV in 
 1685, the French Huguenots came over to England in troops. 
 But even prior to that date the French Calvinists had swarmed 
 across the Channel and had set up their conventicles in Canter- 
 bury, Canvey Island, Colchester, Dover, Faversham, Glaston- 
 bury, Ipswich, Maidstone, Norwich, Rye, Sandtoft, Sandwich, 
 Southampton, Stamford, Thetford, Thorne Abbey, Whittlesea, 
 Winchester, Yarmouth ; in and after 1685 at Barnstaple, Bide- 
 ford, Bristol, Chelsea, Dartmouth, Exeter, Greenwich, Hammer- 
 smith, Plymouth, Stonehouse, and Thorpe. In a few months 
 in 1688 fifty thousand families left France for ever, and many 
 of them came and settled in England. 
 
 But earlier, in 1620, there was a French church in London, 
 and Pepys sometimes attended it. After 1621, in it was used 
 the English Church Liturgy translated, and Pepys noticed that 
 the pastor preached and prayed with his hat off. A royal bounty 
 was accorded to the refugees, consisting of money raised through- 
 out the Kingdom, large sums were subscribed for them in 1681, 
 and in the two or three ensuing years. In 1686 another collection 
 was made, and something like £40,000 was raised. 
 
 A Bill for the Naturalization of Foreign Protestants was 
 brought into the House of Commons on February 14, 1709, 
 and passed on March 23. Elie Bouherau, son of a pastor at 
 La Rochelle, was made Chanter and Librarian of S. Patrick's 
 Cathedral, Dublin ; he founded the family of Borough, Baronets. 
 Titles were lavished on these refugees, and livings and prebendal 
 stalls on such Calvinist ministers as would swallow their scruples 
 and submit to ordination. Daniel Lombard, who could scarce 
 speak a word of English, was given the rectories of Lanteglos 
 
THE SWAMPING OF THE CHURCH 43 
 
 and Advent in Cornwall, the former including the market town 
 of Camelford. Jacques Abbadie was made Dean of Killaloe, 
 and not thinking himself sufficiently repaid for his abandonment 
 of his cure in France, clamoured for the deanery of S. Patrick's. 
 Jacques Pineton was given a canonry at Windsor. James 
 Peter, son of the refugee Jacques Auriol, was the father of Edward 
 Auriol, Rector of S. Dunstan in the West and Prebendary of 
 S. Paul's. Thomas Roger, son of the refugee Gabriel de Quesne, 
 got the vicarage of East Tuddenham, and was made Prebendary 
 of Ely. Peter Allix was a Huguenot pastor and the son of a 
 pastor. When he came to England he submitted to ordination. 
 Woodrow wrote : " Mr. Webster tells me that . . . Monsieur 
 Allix was the first [of the pastors] who submitted to reordination 
 in England, and that he was so choaked (shocked) when he saw 
 M. Allix reordained . . . that he could not bear it, but came to 
 Scotland." Allix's son, Peter, became incumbent of Castle 
 Camps in Cambridgeshire, Dean of Gloucester, and next Dean 
 of Ely. De la Roche wrote : "A clergyman well acquainted 
 with Isaac Vossius told me that one day he asked that Prebendary 
 of Windsor 1 what was become of a certain person. He has 
 taken Orders," replied Vossius; "he has got a living in the 
 country, sacrificulus decipit popalum" 
 
 The son of Josias de Champagne was granted the deanery of 
 Clonmacnois, a grandson was made Rector of Twickenham and 
 Canon of Windsor ; Guillaume Portal received the rectory of 
 Fambridge, Essex, and Clowne in Derby. Charles Daubuz was 
 given the vicarage of Tenterden, the rectory of Shargate, and 
 the living of Goodmestone ; and his son the rectories of Danbury 
 and Woodhamferries, and after the death of his father also 
 Goodmestone. Pierre Drelincourt was accorded the arch- 
 deaconry of Leighton and the deanery of Armagh. Jean Armand 
 de Bourdieu was made snug in the rectory of Sawtry All Saints. 
 Jacques Sartres became prebendary of Westminster. Daniel 
 Armand got the rectory of Holdenby and a canonry in Peter- 
 borough Cathedral. Antoine Ligonier, a pastor, was appointed 
 military chaplain. Theophile Louis Barbaud was granted the 
 rectory of S. Vedast, London. The son of Bernard Majendie, 
 a Calvinist pastor, had a son who was put into a canonry at 
 Worcester. James Saurin, a descendant of the Huguenot 
 
 1 He was a Dutchman. He died in 1689. " A strange scholar," said 
 Charles II of him. " He believes everything but the Bible." " II mourut 
 a soixante et onze ans, n'ayant fait paraitre aucun sentiment de piete." 
 Biog. Universelle. 
 
44 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 refugee of the same name, was made Bishop of Dromore in 
 1819. Daniel Letabli&re, Dean of Tuam, Vicar of Laragh, and 
 Prebendary of Maynooth, was the son of a refugee, Rene* de 
 Lestables. Archdeacon Fleury of Waterford, Prebendary of 
 Kilgobenet, was descended from the pastor Louis Fleury of 
 Tours. Daniel Augustus Beaufort, Archdeacon of Tuam, was 
 son of a French pastor. Archdeacon Jortin was son of Rene 
 Jortin, a refugee ; beside the archdeaconry of London he received 
 the rectory of Kensington. Richard Chenevix, of another 
 refugee family, was given the bishoprics of Waterford and Lis- 
 more. A Trenche was made Archbishop of Tuam. I might 
 multiply instances. Not only was the ministry of the Church 
 invaded by Calvinist pastors, but the Huguenot refugees and 
 their families married into English families, carrying with them 
 and leavening the country with their Huguenot convictions. 
 Many of the refugees became merchant princes. In 1744 the 
 merchants of the City of London presented a loyal address to 
 the King in consequence of His Majesty's message to the Houses 
 of Parliament " regarding designs in favour of a Popish pretender 
 to disturb the peace and quiet of your Majesty's kingdom." 
 Among the 542 signatures are 94 French names, chiefly Hugue- 
 not. Several of the refugees were ennobled. The Marquis de 
 Rouvigny was created Earl of Galway by William III. Jean 
 Louis Ligonier was raised to the peerage as Viscount Ligonier 
 of Enniskillen in 1757. Edward Ligonier was created Earl 
 Ligonier in 1776. Earl Clancarty is a Trench descended 
 from the Huguenot family of Trenche. The Earl of Radnor 
 is a Bouverie, whose ancestor was Laurent des Bouveries, a 
 silk-manufacturer, who fled to England from French Flanders. 
 In 1689 was naturalized Count Schomberg, whom William III 
 at once elevated to the English peerage with the titles of Baron of 
 Teyes, Earl of Brentford, Marquess of Harwich and Duke of 
 Schomberg. His son Charles, naturalized in 1691, was created 
 Duke of Leinster. 
 
 Frederick William de Roy, naturalized in 1694, was created 
 Earl of Lifford. Armand de Liremont was given the title of 
 Earl of Faversham by Charles II. George Rene, son of the 
 pastor Aufere, had one child, Sophia, the ancestress of the Earls 
 of Yarbo rough. A Trenche was created Lord Ashtown. I 
 need not give the names of the baronets and county families 
 that come of the refugees. Sufficient is it to say that both the 
 aristocracy and the burgess class have had infused into them a 
 
THE SWAMPING OF THE CHURCH 45 
 
 torrent of Huguenot blood, carrying with it hatred of Catholicism 
 and a love of Calvinism. 1 
 
 Taking the clergy of the present day, there are under the 
 letter B such names as these : Backert, Ballard, Balleine, Baring, 
 Baumann, Baumer, Baumgarten, Beaghen, Becker, Bellamy, 
 Bennertz, Benoit, Benoy, Bergemann, Berger, Bergheim, Ber- 
 nays, Bienemann, Biron, Bischoff, Bleiben, Blumhardt, Boehm, 
 Boissier, Bonney, Bosanquet (six of these), Boudier, Bouquet, 
 Bourdillon (three of these), Boutflower, Bouverie, Bozman, 
 Breguet, Brinckmann, Buee, Buer, Busch, But chart, all French 
 or German names. Of the Des (Mullins is actually De Moleyns) 
 there are d'Auvergne, d'Easun, Death (de Ath), de Ballinhard, 
 de Bary, de Beauvais, de Berends, de Boinville, de Bourbel, 
 de Brisnay, de Candole, de Cas, de Castro, de Ceriat, de Cetto, 
 de Chair, de Coetlogon, de Courcelles, de Gruchy, de Gu6rin, 
 de Labat, de Labilliere, de la Hay, de la Pryme, de la Rosa, de 
 Matter, de Mel, de Paravicini, de Pencier, de Putron, de Quette- 
 ville, de Renzi, de Romestin, de Rougemont, de Sainte Croix, 
 de Salis, des Barres, de Silva, de Smedt, des Quartiers, de 
 Spaillier, de Trevelec, de Vine, de Wolf, de Wit, du Boe, du 
 Boulay (six of these). Some are from the Channel Islands, 
 descendants of Huguenots settled there. 
 
 If under two letters we find such an influx of foreigners or 
 descendants of foreigners, conceive what an inundation there 
 must be discovered to exist if we take the trouble of going 
 through the entire clergy list ! 
 
 But this does not exhaust them, for great numbers of 
 such as were naturalized had names so similar to those 
 of Englishmen that it is impossible to distinguish their sons 
 and descendants from native Englishmen. Thus Fletcher of 
 Madeley was a Swiss De la Flechere. In addition to this 
 many of these Huguenots who were naturalized deliberately 
 shed their French appellations and adopted genuine English 
 names. 
 
 Such names as these that follow would at once disappear 
 as distinctive : Hain (becoming Hayne), Vincent, Amory, Aubry, 
 Benet, Bernard, Bourn, Chamberlain, Carpentier (becoming 
 Carpenter), Chape 11, Combe, Clement, Crispin, David, Dufay 
 (becoming Duffey), Farman, Gaude, Gervaise, Gilbert, Godfrey, 
 Gouffe (becoming Goffe, or Gough), Heron, Huet (now Hewett), 
 Hayes, Lambert, Michael, Martin, Mariot, Marchant, Porch, 
 1 On one day, July 3, 1701, as many as 303 were naturalized. 
 
46 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 Robert, Roger, Ta vernier, Tournour (now Turner), Vivian and 
 Vincent. 
 
 Then again several of these refugees deliberately adopted 
 English names — as Taphorse, Collier, Percy, More, Nisbet, Xiel, 
 Ogilby, Paulet, Paget. In 1687 we find Page, Smith, King, 
 Lee and Wildgoose ; and in 1688 Boyd, Cooke, Pratt and Pain 
 (becoming Payne). I have not extracted a tithe of those who 
 almost at once formed families that could not be distinguished 
 by their names from such as were genuinely English. And, 
 unquestionably, there are a large number of these of Huguenot 
 origin, not recognizable as such, to be found in the Clergy List. 
 
 The Channel Islands were a harbour of Calvinism, that sent 
 its emissaries into England. At the instigation of Sir Thomas 
 Leighton and Sir Amyas Paulet, Governor of Guernsey and 
 Jersey in 1558, Queen Elizabeth permitted them to set up 
 Genevan discipline in the islands, though politically attached 
 to the diocese of Winchester, and the " Church " there was put 
 practically in communion with the French Huguenots. No 
 English bishop set foot in the islands since the transfer in Eliza- 
 beth's reign from the French diocese of Coutance to the English 
 one of Winchester, till they were visited in 1818 by Bishop 
 Fisher of Salisbury. I was several times in the islands between 
 1847 and 1 85 1, and they positively reeked of Geneva. The 
 clergy were indeed ordained, but were very much a law to them- 
 selves, and the services in the churches appeared to me — even 
 in those my young days — intolerably repulsive. And there was 
 always a setting in of clergy from the islands to England, bringing 
 contamination with them. 
 
 Two centuries ago there existed in Soho and its neighbour- 
 hood as many as twelve chapels for the convenience of French 
 Huguenots, Swiss and Dutch Calvinists. All are now gone — 
 but the descendants of these foreigners have been absorbed into 
 the mass of the English people. It was inevitable that Cal- 
 vinism should saturate and sour the soil that absorbed it. 
 In most places these refugees conformed to the Church, so far 
 as going to the services can be called conformity, but their 
 hearts were far from the Catholic faith. 
 
 There is a certain diseased condition of the blood — which 
 affects a man till he dies, and also pursues his descendants from 
 generation to generation. It does more — it is infectious and 
 contagious. And such was Calvinism. It transformed, made 
 infirm, the fair Church of England. The Huguenot immigrants 
 
THE SWAMPING OF THE CHURCH 47 
 
 speedily accommodated themselves to making way in the Estab- 
 lished Church by impregnating it with their Calvinism, and in 
 time transformed its outward appearance. 
 
 " I know that Deformed," said the watchman in Much Ado 
 about Nothing ; " a wears a lock." And the Dogberries and their 
 like knew the English Church in the early Victorian period only 
 in its deformed condition, its mouth padlocked by the State, 
 disfigured and silent. 
 
 As if it were not enough to be invaded directly from France 
 by Huguenots, the refugees in Switzerland presented a petition 
 in 1712 to Queen Anne, to be taken under her royal and gracious 
 protection, beseeching her to obtain for them the restitution of 
 their properties and privileges in France. The petition, we are 
 informed, was most graciously received, and promises were held 
 out to them — which, however, were not carried out. Finding 
 that the Treaty of Utrecht did not give them back what they 
 wanted, and the Swiss not caring to be burdened with too many 
 of them, a number of these refugees made their way down the 
 Rhine and into England. 
 
 The Laboucheres were a Huguenot family settled in Holland. 
 Pierre Cesar became a clerk in the House of Hope of Amsterdam. 
 He was sent over to England during the troubles of the Revolu- 
 tion to settle some business with the House of Baring. He fell 
 in love with Dorothy, daughter of Sir Francis Baring, and pro- 
 posed. The Baronet rejected him with scorn. " But how," 
 he asked, " if I be a partner in the House of Hope ? " "In that 
 case," said Sir Francis, "the case would be altered." Pierre 
 Cesar swept back to Amsterdam, and demanded that he should 
 be taken into partnership. This was indignantly refused. 
 " But," he said, " how if I am son-in-law to Sir Francis Baring ? " 
 " In that case, it is different." So, at one stroke he became 
 partner of the House of Hope, and was received into the Baring 
 family. Pierre Cesar and his firm worked hand in hand with the 
 Barings all through the Great War, when they stood at the head 
 of European finance. He came to England in 1816, retired 
 from business, enormously wealthy, and his son, Henry, was 
 created Lord Taunton, and became leader of the Evangelical 
 party — of course he did, for the virus of Calvinism ran in his 
 veins. 
 
 Further, when Louis XIV devastated the Palatinate, swarms 
 of the inhabitants came to England — Calvinists to a man — and 
 were most graciously received and patronized by the Queen, 
 
48 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 the nobility and the citizens of London. They were settled 
 about in divers places. Something like 6,544 persons arrived in 
 the Thames from the Palatinate in 1708 — not a great number, 
 but helping to swell the torrent of Calvinism that was drenching 
 England. But, as if this did not suffice, from beyond the Tweed 
 came hordes of Scots, perfectly ready to pocket their prejudices 
 sufficiently to qualify them to settle down on English Church 
 pastures. It had been, and continued to be, like the army of 
 locusts described by the prophet. But with the Church there 
 had not been one invasion only, but many, one succeeding 
 another. The N.B.R. pierced the wall of Severus, and a legion 
 of needy Scots rushed through the gap without return tickets — 
 the N.B.R. till comparatively recently, if it does now, issued 
 none from Edinburgh to London and back — upon the fertile 
 South with huge appetites, red heads, empty pockets and high 
 cheek-bones. Everything was grist to the Caledonian mill. 
 The invading Scots carried off whatever they could lay their 
 hands on. Nothing was beyond their reach — a Premiership, 
 a Chancellorship, an Archbishopric, a royal Princess. 
 
 We have but to look to our own day. At the present date 
 both our Archbishops are Scotchmen, and their predecessors Tait 
 and Maclagan were also of that nationality. When Archibald 
 Tait became Archbishop, some lines circulated : 
 
 Archie was a Scotchman, Archie was discreet, 
 
 Archie came to England and got the Primate's seat. 
 
 I went to Archie's land, Archie was from home : 
 
 Odd that thistles flourish best the farther South they roam. 
 
 Of a Scotch family also was Archbishop Thomson of York. 
 So is Archbishop Mackray of Rupertstown. Of bishops, besides 
 the archbishops, there are now six in England, and as many in 
 the Colonies. Taking up a recent clerical directory, I find in 
 the Church of England ministry 471 Macs. Of these, two 
 are bishops, 8 are archdeacons, 2 are deans, 30 are canons and 
 prebendaries. Of Andersons there are 260, with 2 bishops 
 and 2 canons. Of Camerons and Campbells there are 33, of 
 Cunninghams 15, 3 with canonries and 1 with an archdeaconry. 
 Of Douglases there are 40, of Grahams 44, of Hamiltons 47, 
 of Kennedys 33, of Murrays 34, of Duncans and Dunbars 25, and 
 so on. Some of these minister in their own land and some in 
 the colonies, but the majority of them are in England, ousting 
 our modest English curates from livings and benefices. Some 
 
THE SWAMPING OF THE CHURCH 49 
 
 are sons of Episcopalian Scots, more are sons of Scottish Presby- 
 terian ministers, or else of Presbyterian farmers, who have 
 crossed the Tweed with a bawbee in their pockets to see what 
 pickings were to be had either in the merchants' offices or in the 
 Church. Some doubtless are sons of Scots who have been settled 
 in England and have conformed. At an earlier period it was 
 the needy and hungry Presbyterians and sons of Presbyterians 
 who came over to England, tired of oatmeal porridge and whey, 
 and desirous of eating roast beef in English parsonages, and 
 drinking generous port. 
 
 Nor is this all. In Ireland, in the north, were colonists from 
 Scotland, Presbyterians j and these took boat across S. George's 
 Channel to lay hold of anything they could get in England which 
 Ireland did not furnish in sufficient profusion. 
 
 The migration had begun before the disestablishment of the 
 Irish Church ; it has swelled in volume since the curates " com- 
 pounded and cut." These men are voluble, insinuating, for the 
 most part ultra-Evangelical, and have been accordingly wel- 
 comed by Erastian statesmen and Broad Churchmen ; have 
 been hugged to the heart by Evangelical prelates and thrust 
 into livings, deaneries and bishoprics. 
 
 Looking into a recent Clergy List, I find seventy-four O's, and 
 of these only thirty are in Ireland. McNeile, a blustering 
 Irishman , was given the deanery of Ripon. This is the man who 
 had the effrontery to send about an advertisement of a book 
 of his as by " that great and good man Dr. McNeile." 
 
 Magee was made Bishop of Peterborough and then advanced 
 to York — a witty Evangelical. The Simeonite and other Evan- 
 gelical Trustees who have acquired the patronage of so many 
 important parishes in England are fain to import Irishmen to 
 occupy them, because the English supply is running short. 
 
 The consequence of all this overwash of seas is that the vessel 
 of Christ's Church in England had not only her hold full of the 
 bilge-water of Conformists of 1661-2, but also that she had 
 shipped seas fore and aft, port and starboard, from France, from 
 Switzerland, Germany, Holland, Scotland, Ireland, till she had 
 settled so low that it seemed probable she would founder, with 
 only a few Churchmen clinging to the rigging. 
 
 4 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 A REMNANT 
 
 MATTERS were not, however, quite so bad as they 
 appeared. Out of the livings throughout England 
 and Wales, six thousand, or about half, were in the 
 gift of private families, those of the nobility and 
 squirearchy of land. 
 
 In certain cases we know that livings were put in the market 
 and sold to the highest bidder, and were bought by unscrupulous 
 persons who perjured themselves before the bishop when they 
 took the required oath against simony. Nevertheless, the 
 vast majority of livings to which the country gentry presented 
 were given honestly, conscientiously, to men whom the patrons 
 respected. 
 
 Throughout the eighteenth century the Orthodox clergy were 
 regarded by the Court and by the Ministry with undisguised 
 suspicion, as Jacobites. It was quite true that the landed 
 gentry and the country parsons alike had no love for the House 
 of Hanover, but their Jacobitism was sentimental only, and went 
 no further than the planting of Scotch firs and drinking the 
 King's health over the water in their finger-bowls. 
 
 The Whig ministries, however, mistrusted them, and eccle- 
 siastical preferments went to clergymen who were either Lati- 
 tudinarian in their opinions, or were inoffensive nobodies. 
 
 In Convocation, the Upper House had been composed of 
 Whig Bishops appointed by William III and the Whig admini- 
 stration during the first half of Anne's reign ; and when in 1717 
 the two Houses came into collision, the Lower House being mainly 
 composed of High Churchmen, the Government prorogued Con- 
 vocation with intent not to summon it again, and in accordance 
 with this resolution, for upwards of a century it was merely 
 convened as a matter of form and not allowed to debate. Thus 
 the English Church was effectually muzzled, she could not utter 
 her voice on any point. 
 
 50 
 
A REMNANT 
 
 51 
 
 The country squires, nearly all Tories, when they presented 
 to the livings in their gift, appointed very generally relatives 
 brought up in their own political opinions, and in High-Church 
 traditions. If they had not relatives to promote, they nominated 
 men of their own political views, which at that time went hand 
 in hand with Orthodoxy, more or less theoretical, always inert. 
 The consequence was that although the bishoprics, deaneries, 
 canonries, Crown and Chancellor's livings, those to which the 
 Bishops presented, and most town livings, were filled with colour- 
 less men without definite convictions, throughout the country 
 in quiet parsonages, before whose windows hollyhocks bloomed, 
 and whose porches were wreathed with woodbine, were living 
 Churchmen, well read in the old English divines, Hooker, 
 Andrewes, Cosin, Bull — if not also in the Ancient Fathers. I 
 happen to have examined the library of one of these parsons who 
 lived in the reigns of George III and IV and William IV, and it 
 consisted of the works of these divines in ponderous tomes. 
 
 Sir Roger de Coverley is represented as taking 'great pains 
 to secure a worthy incumbent for his Worcestershire parish. 
 I do not for a moment suppose that he was unique in this 
 respect. 
 
 Looking at the Church from without, she seemed to be water- 
 logged and motionless. But such as looked deeper saw that 
 there was still life in her, though feeble. Writing of the Hano- 
 verian times, Mr. Molesworth says 1 : " Here we reach a period 
 which is a blank in our narrative, and which we must be content 
 to leave blank, for the simple reason that history traces the 
 evolution of events, and that when there is no evolution, and 
 consequently no progress, there can be no history. Even at 
 the dead period we have now reached, there was probably some 
 movement, but it was so sluggish as to be altogether inappreci- 
 able. It is true that there were archbishops succeeding one 
 another in the chair of Lanfranc, Anselm, Becket, Laud and 
 Sancroft. Carlyle asks, 'Who was the primate of England at 
 this time ? ' and he answers with bitter irony, ' No man knoweth.' 
 Nor was this far from the truth. There were contented Eras- 
 tians like Wake and Potter carrying on controversies now 
 entirely forgotten, as they well deserve to be. There were men 
 full of decencies and proprieties like Seeker, but who cares now 
 to know what Archbishops Herring, Hutton and Moore thought, 
 said or did ? I have searched carefully the seven volumes of 
 
 1 Molesworth (W. M.), History of the Church of England (1882), p. 297. 
 
52 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 Lord Mahon's history for the names of these prelates, but have 
 not succeeded in meeting with any of them. If their works ever 
 possessed any living interest or any particular value, they have 
 long since lost it. They never attempted to guide or elevate 
 the religious destinies of the nation over whose Church they 
 uselessly presided." 
 
 The same characteristics marked almost all the rest of the 
 bishops. If we wander back in search through the desolate 
 wilderness in quest of some men upholding the prophetic office, 
 we shall find none save in lowly nooks and far from towns. Those 
 clothed in purple and fine linen uselessly occupied episcopal 
 palaces ; reeds shaken with the wind were in decanal and pre- 
 bendal stalls. The debased and torpid condition of the Church 
 was due entirely to the Whigs. The Church was gagged, and 
 the lower clergy depressed ; there was nothing for them but to 
 wear out their lives in country parsonages, far from the current 
 of life and thought, elbowed into corners, trodden underfoot by 
 the plethoric, well-fed favourites of the Ministry. 
 
 From what has been said, it appears certain that in the English 
 Church there existed elements of different kinds ready to start 
 into activity when the opportunity came — the Evangelical, out 
 of the foreign Calvinistic material forced into the Church, and 
 the Catholic revival, springing out of her inherent nature. The 
 Church for three centuries was subjected to Taliacotian treat- 
 ment. The surgeon Taliacotius invented and practised a process 
 of cutting a hunk of flesh out of the person of one man, where 
 it could best be spared, and engrafting it on the body of another. 
 Thus was the Church of England dealt with. She possessed her 
 own organic, apostolic, Catholic self, patched with grafts from 
 various foreign bodies. According to Hudibras (Pt. I. cant, i) 
 so soon as the individual died from whom the flesh had been 
 taken, the grafts fell off ; and now that Continental Protestant- 
 ism is expiring and in process of decomposition, we may trust 
 that all the foreign matter which has been patched into the body 
 of the Anglican Church will likewise drop away. 1 
 
 The time at last came when the Dead Sea of the Georgian 
 
 1 Here is M. Edouard Rod's description of French and Swiss Evan- 
 gelicalism — and he is himself a Protestant. It is a " rationalizing religion, 
 a compromise between dogma and common sense, of which the dialectic 
 and exegesis are lamentably poor, of which the icy worship is only one 
 endless discourse — a string of halting metaphors — of a structure so feeble 
 that a child could break it, recited in a melancholy voice with false action 
 and whining intonation — the religion which cavils instead of loving, and 
 parcels itself out into rancorous sects." — Le Sens de la Vie (1889), p. 273. 
 
A REMNANT 
 
 53 
 
 Church was to be ruffled and lashed into waves, and become a 
 sea of storms. 
 
 The old Conformists had for the most part lost their zeal 
 and fanaticism and become Latitudinarians, but some few still 
 remained with the old venom tingling in their arteries. But 
 the first movement sprang more immediately out of the descend- 
 ants of the Huguenot refugees, the Scottish invaders, and the 
 Germans who hung on to the skirts of the Georges. 
 
 We may liken the English Church to the goodly heritage of 
 Christ in our land, held by indisputable title-deeds. To this 
 domain came troops of needy squatters from various lands, who 
 boiled their kettles on land that was not their own, tolerated 
 in kindly pity. They trampled down every green blade and 
 broke every flower ; they denied it with their refuse. But they 
 were aliens, they had no legitimate position where they lodged. 
 Their descendants, waxing wanton and insolent, laid claim to 
 the whole estate. They committed the strategical error of 
 striking for monopoly, and for ejecting the legitimate tenants. 
 This necessitated a demand for their leases. They had none to 
 show. All their claim rested on the indulgence accorded to their 
 forbears to be allowed to squat. 
 
 Meanwhile they had wrought incalculable mischief. They 
 had introduced foreign contagious diseases, had robbed hen- 
 roosts, had broken down hedges, and had contaminated the 
 wells. " Sow'd cockle reap'd no corn," said Biron in Love's 
 Labour's Lost. 
 
 It was not an infiltration but an inundation, transforming 
 the aspect and quality of the Anglican Communion. The fine 
 wine of Catholic Orthodoxy was diluted till hardly retaining 
 any of its colour, glow and vinous force. 
 
 Take a clerical directory of the present day and reckon how 
 many names of the clergy are German, French, Swiss, Dutch, 
 Jewish, or even Swedish. As to such as are Scottish, I have 
 already dealt with them. Under the letters B and C alone a 
 recent directory gives us 123 names of clergy unmistakably of 
 foreign extraction. John Henry Newman, drawing his life from 
 a mother pertaining to a Huguenot family, sucked in Calvinistic 
 prejudices. " I became most firmly convinced that the Pope was 
 the x\ntichrist predicted by Daniel, S. Paul and S. John. My 
 imagination was stained by the effects of this doctrine up to the 
 year 1843." He once preached a sermon to that effect. 
 
 Those descended from Huguenots felt an hereditary pride 
 
54 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 in the fact, and hugged their Calvinism as a precious heirloom, 
 not to be surrendered though they attended Church ministra- 
 tions, not even if they themselves ministered in the pulpits and at 
 the altars of the Church. 
 
 But, along with all this impregnation of the pure river of the 
 Anglican Church with foreign matter, it was not wholly and 
 radically contaminated. It was like a mountain stream that 
 receives mud, and dye from cloth mills, till it becomes thick, 
 malodorous and sluggish. The vulgar looking on and sniffing at 
 it come to regard the pace, the colour, the smell, as its essential 
 qualities, and even get to relish them. These, however, are 
 importations — they were not in it at first. We can point to 
 where and when they flowed in and befouled the stream. 
 
 But against all this contamination with foreign heresy there 
 is something to be said. 
 
 In the Pyrenees, in the Middle Ages, certain valleys were 
 given over to the lepers. To them they were confined. They 
 might not associate with the healthy, even in Divine worship. 
 They were called the Cagots. But the pure air of the mountains, 
 the balsamic breath of the pines, the sweet milk of their kine, 
 have resulted in the total ehmination of leprosy, and the des- 
 cendants of the Cagots are as healthy and vigorous as any other 
 mountaineers ; they can be known only by their surnames. It 
 has been the same in the English Church. Some of our ablest, 
 most devoted and most Catholic priests are descendants of the 
 Cagots from Scotland, France, Switzerland, Ireland, and Germany 
 — nay, even from our recently acquired Transvaal. The Spirit 
 of God breathing in the Catholic Church, the religious atmosphere, 
 the fragrance of the sanctuary, the pure milk of the Gospel, have 
 had a marvellous effect in the expulsion of the germs of heresy, 
 and the building up of vigorous Church life. And yet the in- 
 vading Cagots were not confined to sequestrated nooks, but 
 advanced to high places. 
 
 I have been told that in banknotes a fine red fibre was formerly 
 introduced into the texture, and that unless this were seen and 
 acknowledged, the note was worthless. But I do know, that 
 unless, through the centuries, there had existed Catholic faith and 
 tradition from the period before the Reformation, sometimes so 
 finely attenuated as to be scarcely discernible, at other times 
 broadening to a ribbon, at another dyeing the whole tissue, the 
 Church of England would have been as utterly worthless as a 
 forged banknote. The red thread has ever been there ; we can 
 
A REMNANT 
 
 55 
 
 see it at every period. It was never broken : in the Elizabethan 
 period it was tangled up with some coarse hempen threads, in 
 the Puritan time it was overlaid, in the Hanoverian it was again 
 overlaid, but it was there. 
 
 The conforming Marian clergy had hardly died out before 
 there appeared such men as the saintly Lancelot Andrewes, the 
 profoundly learned Richard Hooker, author of the Ecclesiastical 
 Polity, of which Pope Clement VIII declared that " it had in 
 it such seeds of eternity that it would abide till the last fire 
 shall consume all learning" ; Bancroft, Overall, 1 Young, George 
 Herbert the poet, Moreton, Laud the martyr, Wren also, who 
 was specially obnoxious to the Puritans, and was confined as a 
 prisoner in the Tower from 1641 to 1660. He was the butt of 
 Puritan satire : 
 
 A little Wren came flying through the air, 
 And on his back betwixt his wings he bore 
 A minster stuffed with crosses, altars' store, 
 With sacred Fonts and rare gilt cherubims, 
 And bellowing organs, chanting curious hymns. 
 
 " Buy my high altars, 5 ' he lifts up his voice, 
 
 "All sorts of Mass-books here you may have choice." 
 
 Lambeth Fair. 
 
 There were others: Felton, Bishop of Ely, the friend of 
 Andrewes, and his successor; John Buckeridge, Laud's tutor; 
 Peter Heylin, who stoutly defended the position of the English 
 Church, as inherited from the earliest days, Bilson, Sutton, Mon- 
 tague, Cosin, and many others. The red thread had never been 
 broken, or such a manifestation of Church feeling could not have 
 appeared. Whence did these men derive their definite ortho- 
 doxy ? The Elizabethan immigrants had not a grain of it in their 
 whole composition. They drew it from Catholic tradition and 
 the study of the Fathers. They were so learned that it was 
 said of them on the Continent, " Clerus Anglice stupor mundi." 
 
 The uprise of a strong definite Church feeling towards the 
 close of the reign of Elizabeth and in that of James I, is a 
 remarkable phenomenon. 
 
 For a little while the Church had been like a vessel at sea in a 
 storm, with the sailors drunk and mutinous, with no man at the 
 
 1 Overall said : "It were better to endure the absence of the people 
 than for the minister to neglect the usual and daily " (Eucharistic) " sacri- 
 fice of the Church." So Cosin, his secretary, informs us. 
 
56 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 wheel and no captain on the bridge. But now, at once, the officers 
 started up and insisted on order, sent the mate and the steers- 
 man and each several and sulky mariner to his proper place, 
 to do his proper work. Great indeed was the change. Isaac 
 Casaubon, who had been reared in Geneva for the pastorate, 
 revolted against the narrowness, the inhumanity of Calvinism, 
 and its absolute severance from the Christian past. He came to 
 England in the reign of J ames I , and thence wrote to his old 
 antagonist in controversy, yet friend, Cardinal Peron : " The 
 Anglican Church is prepared to give an account of her faith, 
 and to prove by facts themselves, that the authors of the 
 Reformation established here did not propose to erect any new 
 Church (as the ignorant and malevolent assert) , but to restore 
 one which had fallen to the best possible form ; and they judged 
 that form to be the best which was handed down to the rising 
 Church by the A~~>stles, and adopted in the ages nearest to them." 
 During the reign of Elizabeth it was not possible for any one to 
 feel any regard for the Church. It was like a family in which 
 every member was wrangling with every other, the father storm- 
 ing, the mother scolding, the children defiant and disobedient. 
 But the impress made by the body of Catholic feeling among the 
 people generally produced a change in the situation. Rapidly 
 men realized what the Church really was, how beautiful and 
 precious was the Prayer Book. The Church, instead of being 
 regarded with contempt, was looked upon with hatred on one 
 side 1 and with love on the other ; so much so, that there were 
 men during the Rebellion and Commonwealth who were willing 
 to suffer, for the sake of the Church, the spoiling of their goods, 
 even death itself. 
 
 Permit me to look back and briefly trace the crimson thread. 
 That there were very decided Churchmen in Jacobean days in 
 some of the parishes, we can judge, as we can also their con- 
 fidence of gaining the upper hand over the Protestants of the 
 Calvinistic type, by the great cost and labour displayed in the 
 setting up of chancel screens in churches that were without 
 or where they had been destroyed. In Devonshire there are a 
 limited number of cases only, because the retention of the older 
 screens had been general. There is one very magnificent, rich 
 
 1 Robert Parsons wrote in 1580 : "I mighte bringe the opinion of all 
 the hotter sort of Protestantes, called Puritayns, who in wryting, sermons, 
 and private speeches, doe utterly condemne the service which nowe 
 Protestantes have, and thereupon doe refrayne from it, as much as Catho- 
 licks." 
 
A REMNANT 
 
 57 
 
 with carving, gold and colour, at Lustleigh, that is of post- 
 Reformation date, probably of the reign of Elizabeth, as the 
 panels do not contain Saints but clerics and choristers. One 
 very similar is at Bridf ord — evidently by the same craftsmen — in 
 this also there are no saintly figures. At Holbeton there is 
 another ; one of very fine quality of the reign of James I at 
 Washneld, dated 1624 ; another at Ermington. 
 
 In Somersetshire the post-Reformation screens are much 
 more numerous. Mr. F. Bligh Bond has kindly furnished me 
 with the following list : (1) Croscombe (J as. I). (2) Rodney 
 Stoke with loft, 1625. (3) Low Ham, about 1630. (4) Mark, 
 ID 34- (5) East Brent with loft, 1635, now removed to west 
 end. (6) North Newton (Chas. I). (7) Thurloxton. (8) Keyn- 
 sham, now removed to serve as a parclose. Others remain 
 imperfect, mutilated, of Caroline date. (9) Bruton. (10) Ditch- 
 eat, now in private hands. (11) Berrow, post and beams 
 of loft, 1637. ( I2 ) Bridgewater, Elizabethan. (13) Norton 
 S. Philip, two screens. (15) Isle Abbot. (16) Crowcombe. (17) 
 Ilminster, a baluster screen. 
 
 Earlier screens that had been injured were restored in Jacobean 
 and Caroline times. (18) Elworthy. (19) Nunney. (20) Pilton, 
 a chantry screen. (21) Kingsbury Episcopi. (22) Raddington. 
 (23) Loxton, debased Gothic. (24) Marston Magna, of same late 
 Gothic type. (25) Old tymphanum, with heraldry and black- 
 letter texts on it at Wyke Champflower, under which a Jacobean 
 screen stood until recent years. (26) Another old tymphanum 
 with Royal arms at Stockleigh English. 
 
 It is, moreover, exceptional to find the paintings of saints on 
 the earlier screens wantonly defaced. The number of very richly 
 carved Altar tables that pertain to the J acobean period certainly 
 point to reverence for the Lord's Board. The Puritans con- 
 tented themselves with a shabby table, moved into the nave. 
 
 The Communion Service continued to be the principal service 
 for the Sunday, and was choral. The earliest setting of the 
 English office is that called the Missa Simplex, an adaptation 
 of the old Plain Song to English words. It was performed at 
 the opening of the first Parliament of King Edward VI in 1547. 
 The next was that by Merbecke published in 1550, conforming 
 to Archbishop Cranmer's rule that one note should be given to 
 each syllable. 1 This was re-issued with harmonies so as to be 
 
 1 The First Prayer Book of Edward VI assumed that the Holy Com- 
 munion should be celebrated daily in cathedrals and collegiate churches, 
 
58 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 sung by four voices in 1560, and again in 1565. Next came that 
 by Tallis, the date, according to Dr. Rimbault , being 1570. Un- 
 happily only the bass has been preserved. The Rev. William 
 Harrison, who became Canon of S. George's, Windsor, published 
 a Description of England in 1577. In the course of an account 
 of the Church of England and her services, he says : " After 
 morning prayer we have the litanie and suffrages. . . . This 
 being done, we proceed unto the Communion, if anie communi- 
 cants be to receive the Eucharist ; if not we read the decalog, 
 epistle and gospell with the Nicene creed (of some in derision 
 called the Drie Communion) , and then proceed unto a homilie or 
 sermon, which hath a (metrical) psalm before and after it, and 
 finallie unto the baptism of such infants, etc. . . . And thus doo 
 we spend the sabath daie in good and godlie exercises, all doone 
 in our vulgar toong, that each one present may heare and under- 
 stand the same, which also in cathedral and collegiat churches 
 is so ordered, that the psalms onlie are soong by note, the rest 
 being read (as in common parish churches) by the minister with 
 a lowe voice, saving that in the administration of the Communion 
 the quier singeth the answers, the Creed and sundrie other things 
 appointed, but in so plaine and distinct manner, that each one 
 present may understand what they sing, every word having but 
 one note, though the whole harmonie consist of manie parts, 
 and those very cunninglie set by the skillfull in that science." 
 
 As Mr. Royle Shore says : "It was not until some seven months 
 after the accession of Elizabeth that the English rites were 
 resumed. It is becoming increasingly admitted that, whatever 
 may have happened later, on the restoration of the Book of 
 Common Prayer, the setting and accessories of the services did 
 not necessarily differ very greatly in their broad features from 
 those of the Latin rites. This largely helped to conciliate those 
 who were attached to the former state of things." 1 
 
 I am indebted to Mr. Royle Shore's paper for the following 
 list of composers of Communion Services, such as remain in 
 whole or in part. It must be borne in mind that a vast amount 
 of our old Church music perished in 1645, at the dispersion of 
 the choirs and the destruction of organs. It is probably due to 
 this that none has been recovered of the period of James I. 
 
 and more frequently than on Sundays in parish churches, for it directs 
 the omission of the Exhortation except once a month. 
 
 1 "The Church Eucharist since the Reformation" in The Cathedral 
 Quarterly (No. 2, 1913). 
 
A REMNANT 
 
 59 
 
 Also, in some cases only the Kyrie and Creed have been pre- 
 served, probably because in later days the full Communion 
 Service rendered chorally ceased to be observed. 
 
 First Period : Edwardian (1547-1558) 
 
 (1) Missa Simplex (plain song) , 1547. 
 
 (2) John Merbecke, organist of S. George's, Windsor (plain 
 song), printed in 1550. 
 
 (3) Thomas Tallis of the Chapel Royal (1575-1585) , Communion 
 Service in five parts ; only the bass remains. 
 
 (4) Thomas Causton (d. 1569) , of the Chapel Royal, for men's 
 voices, printed in 1560, reprint 1913. This splendid piece of 
 composition has been neglected till the present date. 
 
 Second Period : Elizabethan (1558-1589) 
 
 (5) Robert Whyte (c. 1540-1575) , organist of Ely and West- 
 minster, wrote a complete Communion Service in 1560 that is 
 lost. 
 
 (6) Thomas Causton (as above). 
 
 (7) Thomas Heath, a Communion Service printed in 1560. 
 
 (8) Thomas Tallis (as above), a Communion Service in the 
 Dorian mode (about 1570), printed in 1641. 1 
 
 Third Period : Caroline 
 
 (9) Adrian Batten (about 1590-1637), organist of S. Paul's, 
 Communion Service in the Dorian mode. 
 
 (10) John Amner (d. 1641), organist of Ely. Of his Com- 
 munion Service only the Gloria in Excelsis remains. 
 
 (11) William Child (1606-1697), organist of the Chapel Royal 
 and of Windsor. Communion Service in the Dorian mode ; 
 another of which only Kyrie and Credo remain for four voices ; 
 also Sanctus and Gloria in Excelsis for eight voices. 
 
 Nor did the composition of Choral Communion Services end 
 here, but continued to quite a late period. 
 
 George Jeffries (middle of the seventeenth century) wrote a 
 complete Communion Service some time after 1669. Pelham 
 Humphry (1647-1674) wrote a Communion Service in E minor. 
 Loosemore of King's and Trinity Colleges, Cambridge (1627- 
 
 1 To these may be added John Brimley, Master of the Choristers and 
 organist of Durham, 1557-1576. In one of the old MS. music books is 
 " Mr. Brimly, bis Kerrie," followed by a Credo. 
 
60 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 1670) composed a Gloria in Excelsis that remains ; John Foster 
 (d. 1677) , organist of Durham, also a Gloria ; so also Michael Wise 
 (1638-168 3). Jeremiah Clark (1670-1707), Sanctus and Gloria 
 in A minor. John Blow (1648-1708), organist of Westminster, 
 Sursum Cor da, Sanctus and Gloria in D, also Kyrie and Credo 
 in A, also a complete service in G, another in six parts also in G. 
 Henry Aldrich (1647-1710), a Communion Service in G. 
 Tobias Langdon (d. 1712), succentor of Exeter Cathedral, a Gloria 
 in Excelsis in B minor. 
 
 I will carry the list no further. 
 
 It must be borne in mind that the rubrics in the Communion 
 Service order the Creed and the Sanctus to be " sung or said," 
 whereas in Matins and Evensong the Psalms are to be " said 
 or sung." In fact, the tradition of Choral Eucharists never did 
 die out, from 1548, when, as we read, " Powles' Quire, with 
 divers other parishes in London, sung all the service in English 
 to the Mettens, Masse and Evensong ; and at the anniversary 
 of Henry VII kept at Westminster on May 12, 1548, the Mass 
 was sung in English with the Consecration of the Sacrament also 
 spoken in English." In fact, the rupture in the tradition of 
 Choral Eucharists and in the use of Plain Song was due to the 
 Rebellion. At the Restoration the Choral Communion Services 
 were resumed ; but as the tradition of Plain Song had died 
 during the period of the triumph of Puritanism, there came in, 
 in its place, Anglican barred Chants making chopped nonsense 
 of the words ; and unecclesiastical " Services " for the canticles. 
 
 In Durham the Choral Eucharists continued to the present 
 day, though rendered now only on the first Sunday in the month. 1 
 In 1696 Bishop Compton of London gave directions for the 
 singing of the Sanctus and the Gloria in Excelsis in his cathedral. 
 At Exeter " in connection with it there was a very curious 
 
 1 In 1685 Dr. Granville wrote to Sancroft : " Among many other 
 excellent things, my Lord of Durham hath strictly enjoined us to continue 
 the weekly Communion with Jubilation" (i.e. choral). 
 
 The cantankerous Smart wrote in wrath : "A strange speech, little 
 better than blasphemy, uttered by a young man in the presence of his 
 lord and many learned men : ' I had rather go forty miles to a good 
 service than two miles to a sermon.' And what meant he by a good 
 service ? His meaning was manifest : Where goodly Babylonish gar- 
 ments were worn, embroidered with images, where he might have a 
 delicate noise of singers, and sackbuts and cornets and organs, and, if 
 it were possible, all kinds of music, used at the dedication of Nabuchodo- 
 nosor's golden Image." There can exist no manner of doubt that 
 many shared the opinion of this young man, as we share it at the present 
 day. How men must have got to loathe the braying of the preachers 
 through a whole hour ! 
 
A REMNANT 
 
 61 
 
 custom, only discontinued within comparatively late years. As 
 may be seen by reference to old drawings of the choir, there 
 were two altar rails at Exeter — one near the Holy Table, the 
 other at some distance. Within these rails the communicants 
 were assembled, and the sacred Elements administered to each 
 by the officiating priest going round to them. At the Gloria in 
 Excelsis the ten chorister boys, who alone appear to have re- 
 mained, were ranged outside the outermost of these rails. Two 
 musical settings for this service are in existence ; one in B 
 minor by the Rev. Tobias Langdon, succentor of the Cathedral 
 (d. 1712), the other by William Jackson (d. 1803). After the 
 service the boys closed the procession of clergy, each party filing 
 off to its respective vestry. But when the Bishop was present, 
 the boys preceded, and arranged themselves in a line, on their 
 knees, in the south aisle, to receive the Bishop's blessing as he 
 passed out of the Cathedral to his palace." 1 
 
 Up to the triumph of Puritanism at the Rebellion, it would 
 seem that the Eucharist had been the principal service of the 
 Sundays and Feast Days. Matins was said early, at 6 or 7 a.m., 
 the Litany later, at 9 or 9.30 a.m., and this was followed by a 
 Choral Communion. John Johnson, writing in 1709, said that 
 it was an innovation to run the three services together. But 
 even in the reign of Charles I they had begun to be joined, as 
 a concession to the later hours that were gradually gaining 
 ground, and as Heylin expresses it, " because of the sloth of the 
 people." But long after the Restoration the distinction was 
 maintained in some places. 2 
 
 The position of the priest at the Holy Table has been a subject 
 of much debate, and " the north side " has been variously 
 interpreted. The north side is not the north end. Actually an 
 altar has on its front three parts, medium and two cornua or 
 sides. According to the Sarum, the most extensively spread 
 Use in England, the priest at High Mass ascended to the Altar 
 and said the two preparatory prayers at the south horn or side ; 
 but for Low Mass he said them at the north hom or side. Side 
 or horn were interchangeable terms : thus, in the Alphabetum 
 Sacerdotum, the direction as to the Gospel is " differat missale 
 ad aliud locus." When the Prayer Book of 1552 was being 
 drawn up, Cranmer was unwilling to make too violent, obvious 
 
 1 Bumpus (T. F.), The Cathedrals of England and Wales (London, 1905-6). 
 * Abbey and Overton, The English Church in the Eighteenth Century 
 (London, 1887), p. 452. 
 
62 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 changes, so as not to provoke fresh outbreaks and bloody 
 reprisals. He introduced the rubric as to the position of the 
 Holy Table, that it should stand either in the body of the Church 
 or in the chancel. Now in pre-Reformation times, the people 
 in a large cathedral or collegiate church communicated not 
 from the high altar, but from the people's altar that stood 
 before the screen at the chancel steps. The high altar served 
 for the Chapter Mass. This may be seen in many cathedrals 
 and large churches abroad at the present day. For instance, 
 at Cologne, where for the Chapter High Mass the priest cele- 
 brates at the high altar, but for the Volksmesse at the head 
 of the steps of the choir. At Genoa the high altar and the 
 people's altar are back to back ; the chapter occupy the chancel, 
 and the celebrant stands facing west. But for the people's 
 service he stands facing east, and the two altars are at the 
 choir steps. At Chartres Cathedral a wooden altar is rolled in 
 early on Sunday morning, and is planted below the steps into 
 the choir and the metal screen. About it are set up temporary 
 rails hung with the houseling cloth. Thence the people are com- 
 municated, at it the Children's Mass is said, after which it is 
 dismantled and rolled out of sight. Consequently the rubric 
 directs nothing but that to which the people were accustomed. 
 So also that requiring the priest to say the introductory prayers 
 standing at the north side was to require him to occupy that 
 position which the congregation was accustomed to see ; as they 
 hardly ever saw a High Mass, save in cathedrals, and then that 
 was not their mass. 
 
 But, during the outbreak of Puritanism in Elizabeth's reign, 
 the fanatical clergy, compelled to conform to the rubric, did so 
 in a way most calculated to degrade the service, by turning 
 the Holy Table lengthwise, " oysterboard fashion." Laud and 
 the bishops in the reigns of James I and Charles I insisted on 
 having the tables replaced altarwise ; but with the Rebellion and 
 the Commonwealth, Presbyterians and Independents resumed 
 the lengthwise position of the table. At the Restoration, and 
 when the Church came to her own again, once more the Holy 
 Table was replaced altarwise ; but owing to the hosts of Con- 
 formists being ordained, it was not possible to get them to accept 
 the traditions of the Church, and these men went round to the north 
 end looking south in place of the north side looking east, and 
 this had to be borne with or connived at, though the revisionists 
 of 1661 surely desired a return to the proper liturgical position. 
 
A REMNANT 
 
 63 
 
 No sooner did Charles II regain the throne than staunch up- 
 holders of Catholic tradition came to the front. Cosin and his 
 son-in-law Granville, Peter Gunning, who throughout the Puritan 
 times had persisted, at the risk of imprisonment, in reading 
 the Prayer Book ; Hackett of Lichfield, who at once set to work 
 to restore his beautiful cathedral; Wren, who came forth from 
 his prison in the Tower to remount his throne and resume the 
 ceremonial for which he had suffered bonds and imprisonment ; 
 Bramhall, Thorndike, a liturgical scholar, Henry Hammond, a 
 Laudian, Anthony Horneck, Kettlewell, and many more. Next 
 appeared Ken, Frampton, Atterbury, and devout laymen such 
 as Robert Nelson. 
 
 Bad as were the appointments to sees under William III, 
 there was one exception — John Sharp, who was made Archbishop 
 of York, in this case probably through the influence of Queen 
 Mary. He was a model bishop, an earnest and thorough Church- 
 man, greatly preferring the first Prayer Book of Edward VI to 
 that of 1662. 
 
 In the reign of Queen Anne the Church became stronger, 
 and had a greater hold of the people than ever before. In the 
 Georgian period there was still evidence of life. We see it in 
 Bishops Butler, Wilson and Home. Take, for instance, the 
 saintly Bishop Wilson of Sodor and Man. The Earl of Derby, 
 who was " King of Man," sent a governor (Captain Home), and 
 got the appointment of an archdeacon, Horobin, with the 
 express purpose of neutralizing to the best of their ability the 
 spiritual work of the Bishop. In 1719 the Governor's wife had 
 grossly slandered a woman of good character in the island, and 
 the Bishop refused Communion to her till she repented. But 
 the Archdeacon, to oppose the Bishop, communicated her, 
 whereupon the Bishop suspended him. Thereupon the Governor 
 threw Bishop Wilson into prison on S. Peter's Day, 1722, and 
 there he was confined for nine weeks in a damp cell, in which 
 he contracted a rheumatic affection that disabled him ever after 
 from the free use of his right hand. But " the concern of the 
 people was so great that they assembled in crowds, and it was 
 with difficulty they were restrained from pulling down the 
 Governor's house, by the mild behaviour and persuasion of the 
 Bishop, who was permitted to speak to them only through a 
 grated window, or address them from the walls of his prison, 
 whence he blessed and exhorted hundreds of them daily." He 
 was wont to say that he ruled his diocese better when in prison 
 
64 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 than when out of it. The love borne him by the people made 
 them more amenable to his discipline. 
 
 The Church is not infrequently blamed for the low condition 
 to which she sank under the Hanoverian rule ; but unjustly. 
 The fact was that she was so paralysed by the State that she 
 could do nothing. In all high places were either Latitudinarian 
 Bishops or men chosen on political, not on religious grounds. 
 She was debarred the exercise of her voice in Convocation ; she 
 had no power to oppose unsuitable prelates being appointed 
 to rule her. 
 
 It would be possible, and not difficult, to form a full catena 
 of faithful men holding definite Church doctrine from the time 
 of Henry VIII down to the Victorian period, but such is not 
 my object. The work has been done, for the tract of time 
 between 1660 and I7i4,by Mr. Overton. 1 When one finds gold 
 grains in the sand at one's feet, one knows that a gold reef is 
 present. 
 
 There were books as well as men that maintained the truth ; 
 books read in quiet parsonages, in manor-houses and in citizen 
 families, sound in doctrine and inspired with true devotion ; 
 moulding the opinions and shaping the spiritual lives of tens of 
 thousands. The series begins even during the Commonwealth 
 with The Whole Duty of Man (1657), * ne authorship of which 
 was never divulged. It sprang almost immediately into popu- 
 larity. It was placed with the Bible and Prayer Book as the 
 indispensable requisites of the Christian life ; it was issued in 
 innumerable editions. From first to last it is a plain, sober, ortho- 
 dox statement of Church doctrine j it does not turn to right 
 or left, to Geneva or to Rome. There can be no better proof 
 of the deep-rooted place the Church had taken in the affections 
 of the people than its extraordinary success. Then came Jeremy 
 Taylor's Golden Grove and Holy Living and Dying j there ap- 
 peared notable expositions of the Church Catechism by Hammond 
 and by Ken and Beveridge. Conspicuous among books of 
 devotion for the Holy Communion was that issued by Arch- 
 deacon Lake, putting forth advanced views without compromise 
 or disguise, and which maintained its popularity for a very long 
 time. But there were numerous other devotional works for the 
 Holy Communion. I will mention but two. In 1738 appeared 
 Samuel Keble's Week's Preparation for a worthy reception of 
 the Eucharist, and another edition appeared in 1742. But it 
 
 1 See as well Dean Stephen's Life of Dean Hook (1879), i. chap. iv. 
 
A REMNANT 
 
 65 
 
 was couched too much on the lines of the " Song of Solomon," 
 and exception was taken to its almost sensuous raptures. Then 
 appeared The New Week's Preparation, which went rapidly 
 through edition after edition. In seven years it passed through 
 thirty-four editions. The book consisted of two parts ; the 
 second is entitled The Companion for the Altar, and this continued 
 to be reprinted almost year by year down to 1870. There are 
 no tokens in it of anything but strong Catholic doctrine on the 
 Real Presence. Here is a prayer for Monday morning : " Rise, 
 my soul, and take thy swiftest wings ; fly to this great mystery. 
 There we shall see the Prince of Peace sacrifice Himself to re- 
 concile us with the Father ; there we shall see, O stupendous 
 mercy ! the Son of God with heavenly food entertaining the 
 sons of men. Can we, O dear Redeemer ! believe the wonders 
 of this mystery, and not be ravished with admiration of Thy 
 great goodness ? Can we acknowledge Thy perfect veracity, and 
 not believe this wonder of Thy love ? Let us not then refuse to 
 believe our God, because His mercies transcend our capacities, 
 etc." After the Consecration comes this prayer : " Now, O my 
 God, prostrate before Thine altar I dare not so much as look 
 upon this mystery of our salvation, if Thou hadst not invited 
 me. I beseech Thee, therefore, accept of this representation 
 we make before Thee of that all-sufficient sacrifice, which Thy 
 Son our Saviour Jesus Christ made upon the cross. Let the 
 merit of it plead effectually for the pardon and forgiveness of 
 all my sins, etc." Then we have Bishop Wilson's Sacra Privata 
 and Instructions for the Lord's Supper. 
 
 Nelson's Festivals and Fasts had a wide and enduring popu- 
 larity. Sparrow, Bishop of Exeter, in his Rationale of the Book 
 of Common Prayer, showed how that it was drawn from Catholic 
 sources. 
 
 There was a book by Jane West, Letters to a Young Lady, that 
 appeared in 1806 and ran into three editions in the same year. A 
 fourth came out in 1811. Jane West devoted two long chapters 
 to Calvinism, and insisted on the poisonous nature of its doctrine. 
 She fairly traced its introduction into England from abroad. 
 When she comes to the teachings of the Church of England 
 she is thoroughly sound. She had already issued Letters to a 
 Young Man on First Entering into Life, the sixth edition of which 
 appeared in 1818 couched on the same lines. 
 
 This is but a slight notice, but it suffices to show that the red 
 line was never broken. 
 5 
 
66 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 In the Hanoverian period of cloud and thick darkness, among 
 the clergy who still held the faith, their orthodoxy was instinctive 
 rather than due to well-grounded conviction. The orthodox 
 clergy were like men groping in the dark, asking to be led — 
 knowing whither they desired to go, but unable themselves to 
 find the way. 
 
 The one tenet they clung to with both hands was the Apostolic 
 Succession, and the divine institution of the Episcopal order. 
 
 " My reverend brethren," said Bishop Horsley in his charge 
 of 1790, " we must be content to be High Churchmen — or we 
 cannot be Churchmen at all, for he who thinks of God's ministers 
 as mere servants of the State is out of the Church, severed from 
 it by a kind of self -excommunicat ion." 
 
 " To God," wrote Archdeacon Wrangham in 1823, " and not to 
 a patronising Crown or to an electing people, we can authorita- 
 tively refer our origin as a ministry. For Christ, we are expressly 
 told in Scripture, sent the Apostles with a power to send others, 
 thus providing an unbroken succession for all coming ages, and 
 promised to be with them always, even to the end of the world." 
 
 Later, Samuel Wilberforce, when incumbent of Checkendon, 
 let it be plainly seen that he believed in Baptismal Regenera- 
 tion ; and, preaching at Bishop Sumner's Visitation in 1833, he 
 boldly called on the clergy to " prize at a higher rate that un- 
 broken succession whereby those who ordained us are joined 
 unto Christ's own Apostles," and he spoke strongly on " the 
 danger of quitting the high vantage ground of Apostolical 
 authority to fight the battle out upon the doubtful level of 
 Erastian principles." 
 
 After the Reform Bill, and the suppression of some of the 
 Irish sees, Churchmen in England were in perpetual alarm. 
 " We felt ourselves," wrote Mr. Palmer, " assailed by enemies 
 from without and from within. Our prelates insulted and 
 threatened by ministers of the State . . . clamours loud and 
 long for the overthrow of the Church ; Dissenters and Romanists 
 triumphing in the prospect of its subversion, and assailing it 
 with every epithet calculated to stimulate popular hatred." 1 
 Danger menaced from the timidity of the Bishops and other 
 dignitaries, who were prepared to cast out the lading of the 
 ship, her doctrines and rites, if only they could save their own 
 position. 
 
 Thus menaced, a declaration was drawn up addressed by 
 1 Palmer (Rev. W.), Narrative of Events (1883), p. 8. 
 
A REMNANT 
 
 67 
 
 the clergy to the Archbishop of Canterbury. " At a time when 
 events are daily passing before us, which mark the growth of 
 Latitudinarian sentiments and the ignorance that prevails 
 concerning the spiritual claims of the Church, we are especially 
 anxious to lay before your Grace the assurance of our devoted 
 adherence to the apostolical doctrine and polity of the Church 
 over which you preside, and of which we are ministers ■ and our 
 deep-rooted attachment to that venerable Liturgy, in which 
 she has embodied in the language of ancient piety the orthodox 
 and primitive faith." This was signed by seven thousand clergy, 
 against the expressed opposition of the dignitaries and the aloof- 
 ness of the Bishops. The Evangelical clergy did not sign. 
 
 This was followed by a declaration to much the same effect 
 by 230,000 heads of families among the laity ; and was pre- 
 sented to the King on May 27, 1833. 
 
 Such declarations show that there existed still a strong and 
 faithful remnant in the Anglican Church, ready to make itself 
 heard, and to act, and that it would not tolerate any watering 
 down of her formularies. The red line was not ruptured . Church 
 Unions were formed in London, Bristol and elsewhere, for 
 general Church extension, an increase of the Episcopate, with 
 some valid security against unfit appointments, the revival of 
 Convocation, and the restoration of Discipline. 
 
 There is further evidence of the existence of distinct orthodoxy 
 among the clergy of the Early Victorian age. When the Gorham 
 judgment had been delivered, and Archbishop Sumner was 
 prepared to institute Mr. Gorham into the living of Bampford 
 Speke in defiance of his diocesan, Henry, Bishop of Exeter, 
 summoned a synod of the diocese to protest. This proceeding 
 excited the liveliest alarm among Whigs and Latitudinarians. 
 Here was the torpid Church showing unwelcome signs of vitality, 
 and resistance to the judgment of the Privy Council, ready to 
 declare what is the faith of the Church against the ruling of 
 the judges. On May 2, 1851, Mr. Childers, in the House of 
 Commons, asked the Prime Minister what the Government was 
 prepared to do in the case — whether the meeting of the synod 
 could not be prohibited. Lord John Russell referred the matter 
 to the law officers of the Crown, and was surprised and discon- 
 certed to learn that there existed no law in the Statute-book 
 prohibiting the holding of diocesan synods. 
 
 The Bishop had desired the Archdeacons to inform the clergy 
 that he would hold the Synod on June 25 and two following 
 
68 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 days ; and the object would be to make a declaration of firm 
 adherence to the articles in the Creed — " I acknowledge one 
 Baptism for the remission of sins," and the doctrine of the 
 Church on the Grace of that Sacrament, as set forth in the 
 Catechism. 
 
 The Synod met, and was attended with the utmost success. 
 Of thirty-two rural deaneries in the diocese only two failed to 
 send representatives. " Considering," says the Report of the 
 Metropolitan Church Union, " the pains taken to defeat the 
 Bishop's intention by preventing the Clergy from assembling in 
 such numbers as to constitute a fair representation of the diocese, 
 the result is highly encouraging. No less gratifying is the fact 
 that, in spite of the endeavours made to excite the public feeling 
 in opposition to the Synod, to an extent which seemed at one 
 time to threaten the peace of the Cathedral city, no commotion 
 or demonstration of any kind took place, but the synod was 
 protected in the discharge of its functions by an evident feeling 
 of respect on the part of a populace, certainly not prejudiced 
 in favour of its proceedings." 
 
 The declaration " On Baptism " agreed on by the Synod 
 was of an uncompromising character, definite in proclamation 
 of the faith of the Universal Church and of that of England in 
 particular. It was a declaration that the Church in the diocese 
 of Exeter utterly repudiated the decision of the Privy Council. 
 The clergy had loyally rallied about their Bishop, and had upheld 
 the Catholic Faith as maintained by the formularies of the Church 
 in the matter of Baptismal Regeneration. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone and the Bishop of Oxford were of opinion 
 that had the English Bishops met and issued a joint proclamation 
 affirming the doctrine of the Church in this matter, there would 
 not have ensued many secessions. But the prelates were too 
 timorous, too much afraid of offending the Liberal Ministry under 
 Lord John Russell, to take this step. 
 
 ''Alas!" wrote Bishop Wilberforce at the time, "all is very 
 dark around us. I fear we shall lose some of our very best 
 men, and my heart bleeds at every pore at the prospect. But 
 I firmly believe in the vitality of the Church of England, that 
 it will throw off the evil of such a loss of best blood as this." 
 So a good many of " our very best men " were sacrificed because 
 the Bishops neglected to do what in duty they were bound 
 to do. " The conies are but a feeble folk," said Solomon, and 
 alas ! at this period the conies ruled over the nobler beasts. 
 
A REMNANT 
 
 69 
 
 I may here quote Miss Mitford in Beljord Regis (1835) , who, after 
 describing the revived activity in the Church, gives a delightful 
 sketch of the orthodox clergyman : " I cannot help entertain- 
 ing relentings in favour of the well-endowed clergyman of 
 the old school, round, indolent, and rubicund, at peace with 
 himself and with all around him, who lives in quiet and plenty 
 in his ample parsonage-house, dispensing with a liberal hand the 
 superfluities of his hospitable table, regular and exact in his 
 conduct, but not so precise as to refuse a Saturday night's rubber 
 in his own person, or to condemn his parishioners for their game 
 of cricket on Sunday afternoons ; charitable in word and deed, 
 tolerant, indulgent, kind to the widest extent of that widest 
 word. . . . There he goes, rotund and rosy, a tun of a man, 
 filling three parts of his roomy equipage ; the shovel hat with 
 a rose in it, the very model of Orthodoxy overshadowing his 
 white hairs and placid countenance. There he goes in whose 
 youth Tract societies and adult schools were not, but who yet 
 has done as much good and as little harm in his generation, 
 has formed as just and as useful a link between the rich and 
 the poor, the landlord and the peasant, as ever did honour to 
 religion and to human nature." 
 
 Very charming is Lord Selborne's account of his own father, 
 the Rev. W. Joscelyn Palmer (b. 1778, d. 1833), Rector of Mix- 
 bury and Finmere, holding the former living for forty-seven 
 years. " I have heard some people speak as if the care of a few 
 hundred souls were insufficient employment for the zeal and 
 energy of a clergyman of mark. What God had charged him 
 with was the care of those five or six hundred people at Mixbury 
 and Finmere, for whom there was no one else to care ; among 
 whom there was no praise to be won, no distinction to be 
 attained, no ambition to be gratified. He was content with this, 
 and sought nothing more. The people he loved and willingly 
 served, wisely also and discreetly, as a spiritual father and 
 friend, who understood them, and was able to speak to them in 
 a way which they could understand. There was not one, young 
 or old, whom he did not observe and study. His interest in 
 individuals was not capricious or transitory, but patient and 
 persevering. It was long before he despaired (if he ever did 
 despair) even of those who went astray." 1 We are further told 
 that Mr. Palmer was a staunch Anglo-catholic priest in church, 
 in advance of his time, both as to reverence and as to rubrical 
 
 1 Memorials, by Roundell Palmer, Earl of Selborne (1896), i. 5-8. 
 
70 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 strictness. Where the High Church clergy failed and proved 
 faulty was in their remaining content with the very minimum 
 of worship. The Church unquestionably required that they 
 should observe daily prayer twice in their churches, and should 
 celebrate the Eucharist at the least every Lord's Day and every 
 Holy Day. They contented themselves with two services on 
 the Sunday and with Communion once a month at oftenest, 
 and made no attempt to improve on what had become the routine 
 before their time. 
 
 When I was a boy, in my neighbourhood all the clergy with 
 two exceptions were in theory High Churchmen. One of the 
 exceptions was a very worthy, spiritually-minded man who 
 served two churches, and was mildly Evangelical; the other 
 was the Vicar of Tavistock. The vicars there were appointed 
 by the Whig Dukes of Bedford, who always nominated men of 
 no definite Church opinions. 
 
 One of these actually proposed to banish the Church Catechism 
 from the National School, although there existed in the town 
 an undenominational British School. The subscribers to the 
 National School were incensed, and pertinently inquired for what 
 their subscriptions were solicited, if in the Church school Church 
 doctrines were not to be taught. 
 
 But in Tavistock of recent years, the tide has notably risen, 
 and there are now daily prayers, and weekly and Saints' -day 
 Communions. 
 
 I do not suppose that in any Christian church except the 
 Evangelical and Calvinistic communities in Germany, which 
 do not pretend to be a part of Catholic Christendom, such long- 
 protracted and cogent efforts have been made to degrade and 
 dedoctrinize, as have been made by the State in England, which 
 had encroached on and neutralized the liberties of the Church, 
 guaranteed to her by Magna Charta. 
 
 In the Turkish Empire, although there has been persecution 
 of the Christians, the Sublime Porte has never interfered with 
 the teaching and the worship of the Orthodox Churches. 
 
 The nearest approach to the condition of affairs we have gone 
 through was under Constantius, when he forced Arians into the 
 bishoprics, or under Anastasius I when he filled the sees with 
 Monophysites. That was but for a time. But in England the 
 evil began with Charles II, was accentuated under William III, 
 and was carried on with but slight intermission till the middle 
 of the reign of Queen Victoria, and even considerably later. 
 
A REMNANT 
 
 71 
 
 First came the Conformists bribed with mitres, then from 1689 
 to the appointment of such men as Thomson and Tait to our 
 own two Archbishoprics, for something like a hundred and 
 eighty years, did this continue. 
 
 In olden times there existed in England a punishment entitled 
 Peine forte et dure, that consisted in prostrating the victim on 
 the floor, and putting lumps of lead in slow succession on his 
 chest till the life was squeezed out of him. And it was in this 
 way that Statesmen dealt with the Church of England for two 
 centuries — and these lumps of lead were all stamped with mitres. 
 Some were lighter, others were oppressive, but together they 
 nearly drove the breath of life out of her. Happily the vitality 
 of the Church was sufficient to enable her to swell her lungs 
 and endure them with such patience as she could muster, till a 
 gracious Providence tumbled them off, and dropped them into 
 Lethe. 
 
 Here and there, wide dispersed, were men who looked back 
 with sadness, and looked forward without hope, who said to 
 themselves, like Elijah in the reign of Ahab : "I, even I alone 
 am left ! " Yet it was not so — it was through that miserable 
 time as when Jezebel threw down the altars and persecuted the 
 prophets. God Almighty knew what man did not — that there 
 were left to Him seven thousand in Israel, all the knees that had 
 not bowed unto Baal, and the mouths that had not kissed him. 
 
 Owing to total absence of salt in Central Africa the cattle 
 of the natives suffer from a polypuslike parasitic growth in the 
 intestines that drains away the vital juices, affects the tissues, 
 and reduces the yield of milk to meagreness in quantity and 
 quality. On the other hand, in the Alps, in the crisp early dawn, 
 the herdsman, furnished with a wallet full of rock-salt, stands 
 at the door of his hut and calls in patois "Kith seelef Kuh 
 seele ! " whereupon from all the pastures, with bells tinkling, come 
 galloping the cattle to receive from his hands the renovating 
 and health-giving condiment, that ensures their vigour and the 
 abundance and sweetness of their milk. 
 
 The English Church was full of abuses and corruption that 
 had reduced her vitality. Her intestines were choked with the 
 loathsome growths of indifference, Erastianism, neglect of duties, 
 pomposity, secularity. Then came the Tract writers with the 
 salt of the Catholic Faith — and since then, all is changed ; the 
 Church is full of vigorous life, the clergy are energetic, and 
 the quality of their teaching is improved. The churches are 
 
72 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 transformed ; and life, beauty and joy have become the char- 
 acteristics of worship in them. 
 
 And now to give some of my personal experiences. My uncle 
 Charles was born in 1807, and became rector of Lew Trenchard 
 in 1832. I do not conceive that he ever read the Tracts for the 
 Times ; at all events they were not comprised in his library. But 
 he preached incessantly on Baptismal Regeneration and the 
 Real Presence, and at Ember-tide on the Apostolic Succession 
 and the Constitution of the Church. There was nothing ap- 
 proaching to Ritualism in the services, but as to his convictions, 
 of them there could be entertained no doubt. To him I owe 
 a great debt of gratitude. Indeed, I may say that, to a large 
 extent, he moulded my opinions. He was wont to give me 
 Paget's Village Tales, and Neale's Stories from Church History, 
 as also Monro's Allegories. My mother gave me Sparrow's 
 Rationale. Later I had Wordsworth's Theophilus Anglicanus, 
 which absolutely fixed my belief. 
 
 Then, again, my mother, a daughter of Admiral Thomas 
 Godolphin Bond, R.N., was born in 1808, and married in 1832, 
 after which we lived so much abroad that she was never brought 
 within the influence of the Oxford movement. Nevertheless she 
 had been reared in definite Church doctrines ; she used daily 
 Bishop Cosin's Book of the Seven Canonical Hours, and would 
 never communicate except fasting, although the celebrations 
 were always late. 
 
 My very old friend, Canon Fowler of Durham, tells me of his 
 grandfather, William Fowler of Winterton, Lincolnshire (1761- 
 1832), a man famous for his engravings of Roman pavements, 
 stained glass, etc., that he was a thorough Churchman all his 
 life, never missing Sunday morning or afternoon service, or Holy 
 Communion. He was much stirred by the piety of the first 
 Wesleyans, and became a Class-leader, yet without breaking 
 away from the Church. 
 
 When, in his last illness, he desired private Communion, he 
 requested the Vicar to wear his surplice and to bring the parish 
 clerk with him to make the responses, " that it might be more 
 like Church." One of his favourite books was Jeremy Taylor's 
 Holy Living ; his copy bears his pencil- marks of approval in 
 many places ; and in the margin opposite to where fasting Com- 
 munion is recommended " unless it be in the case of sickness, or 
 other great necessity," he had written, " This puts me in mind of 
 
A REMNANT 
 
 73 
 
 my dear grandmother. May I follow her example in that which 
 is good. Amen." Her maiden name was Mary Taylor, and 
 it is recorded of her that " she never neglected the Church or 
 Holy Sacrament, and always received the latter, after due pre- 
 paration, fasting." 
 
 That Holy Communion was received fasting was a pretty 
 general usage among pious people, as we learn from Vaux's 
 Church Folk Lore, in which a great many instances are given. 
 
 At Lumncott, a very small parish, containing sixty-two 
 persons, of which the living was worth as many pounds, and some 
 glebe, with no resident gentry and but one large farm, in 1791 
 the parishioners at their own expense rebuilt the church tower. 
 When I first knew it, in early life, the incumbent was the Rev. 
 Frank Parker, a scholar, well read in Patristic theology. He 
 possessed a large library of the Fathers of the Church and Anglican 
 Divines. He had daily service, fasted from meat throughout 
 Lent, and was unmarried. Some rumour, quite unfounded, got 
 abroad that he proposed taking to himself a wife. " Ah, 
 Parker," said a neighbour, " soon, instead of thy Fathers thou 
 shalt have children." 
 
 Our nearest neighbour at Coryton, distant two miles, be- 
 longed to the old High Church school. On his death he was 
 succeeded by his son, who at once instituted daily service in the 
 church. 
 
 I may go back somewhat earlier and mention a circumstance 
 that happened before my time, which at all events shows strong 
 church feeling in that dead period. 
 
 Madam Gould of Lew Trenchard, who died in 1795, was left 
 a widow in 1766. She had a son, a spendthrift, who got rid 
 of the principal family property at Staverton, and would have 
 got rid of Lew Trenchard as well, had not his mother secured 
 it by a lease of ninety-nine years. She had also a daughter 
 married to Charles Baring. When the son died, in 1788, Mrs. 
 Baring might look to succeed to Lew Trenchard as heiress. Old 
 Madam drove in her coach to Courtlands , near Exmouth, where 
 lived Charles Baring and his wife. She arrived on Saturday. 
 Now Mr. Baring had his religious views, like the rest of his 
 family, and attended a conventicle he had set up in Limpstone. 
 On Sunday morning Mr. Baring took his mother-in-law in his 
 chariot to the chapel instead of to church. She sat grim and 
 motionless throughout the service, and silent in the carriage 
 on the return to Courtlands. So soon as she was in the hall, she 
 
74 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 turned on her son-in-law and said : " Charles, order my coach 
 round at once." 
 
 " But — we are about to sit down to early dinner." 
 
 " I will not eat with you, nor visit you again. I leave at 
 once. And, Charles, jnever whilst I live shall you set foot in 
 Lew House, and never shall you or Margaret inherit an acre there. 
 I shall leave everything to my grandson William." 
 
 And Charles Baring never did set foot in Lew House. The 
 old lady was a sturdy Church wo man. She would stand up 
 during prayers in church and see if any of the congregation 
 failed to kneel ; if so, such persons heard of it from her in the 
 ensuing week. As none but herself and the clerk in the congre- 
 gation were able to read, the latter was wont to give out the 
 psalm in this fashion : " Let Madam and I sing to the praise and 
 glory of God." 
 
 " Madam " was a sort of female Sir Roger de Coverley. In 
 the Spectator it is related how that this worthy knight " keeps 
 the whole congregation in order, and will suffer nobody to sleep 
 in it but himself ; for if by chance he has been surprised into 
 a short nap at Sermon, upon recovering out of it he stands up 
 and looks about him, and if he sees anybody else nodding, either 
 wakes them himself or sends his servant to them. He sometimes 
 stands up when everybody else is on their knees, to count the 
 Congregation, or see if any of his Tenants are missing. ... He 
 has often told me that at his coming to his estate he found his 
 parishioners very irregular, and that in order to make them 
 kneel and join in the responses, he gave every one of them a 
 hassock and a Common Prayer Book, and at the same time 
 employed an itinerant singing master, who goes about the 
 country for that purpose, to instruct them rightly in the tunes 
 of the psalms." 
 
 I repeat what I have said already, that notwithstanding 
 every effort made by the Crown and Prime Ministers of the day 
 from the reign of William of Orange to far on in that of Queen 
 Victoria to deaden the Church and drive orthodoxy, if not wholly 
 out of her, yet into holes and corners of the land, there remained 
 a large, if inactive, Church element. In books of Natural Science 
 published at the beginning of the nineteenth century, we were 
 taught that in metals, minerals, etc., existed a body of latent 
 heat that might well remain unsuspected, because unmanifested. 
 A little friction or a clash would, however, bring it into evidence. 
 It sufficed to strike a flint with steel to produce a spark, the 
 
A REMNANT 
 
 75 
 
 latent heat elicited from the cold silex. There was throughout 
 the land latent Church feeling, not among the clergy alone, but 
 among the laity as well ; and all required was a sharp stroke 
 such as that dealt by the publication of the Oxford Tracts to 
 make it flash light everywhere, in towns, in villages, in colleges 
 and schools. When in 1827 J onn Keble published The Christian 
 Year, it was hailed everywhere with avidity. It passed through 
 edition after edition, as had no other book. It found its way 
 into almost every parsonage, and into every house where any 
 Church feeling existed. Only the Evangelicals looked upon it 
 with a jealous eye. The volume could not have sold as it did, 
 and become the spiritual food of thousands of souls, had there 
 not been in England a vast amount of latent Catholicism. 
 
 There was, indeed, in most Church households Nelson's Festi- 
 vals and Fasts, which was read and re-read, but that was mainly in 
 prose. 1 Now Fast and Festival were invested with the glamour 
 of beautiful poetry that carried the teaching of the Christian Year 
 to minds hitherto unconscious of its significance. 
 
 The time had at last come when the long-bound and down- 
 trodden Orthodoxy of the Church was to show itself. 
 
 I think we may trace an analogy between the fortunes of the 
 English Church and those of the English people. The old Anglo- 
 Saxon stock extended through every shire and was embedded 
 in every parish ; it had become lethargic, un progressive, and its 
 vitality failing. It needed the infusion of fresh blood to re- 
 invigorate it. This was obtained through the Norman Conquest. 
 The remedy was desperate, and for a long time it seemed as 
 though the inherent strength of the race would expire under such 
 drastic treatment. English institutions, social order, genius, 
 literature, alike disappeared beneath the influx of French fashions, 
 culture and language, only slowly to re-emerge, and eventually 
 to assert themselves as predominant factors in every department 
 of life, retaining but a trace here and there of prolonged foreign 
 mastery, in our tongue and in our manners. 
 
 In like way was it with the English Church. The body was 
 sound in constitution, in orthodox doctrine ; but it was sub- 
 merged for awhile, as I have shown, beneath a flood of Continental 
 Zwinglianism and Calvinism, in the reigns of Edward VI and 
 Elizabeth. Only in those of James I and Charles I did the tops 
 of the hills appear, to be again engulfed for a season. But 
 Puritanism never altered the substance, the contour and con- 
 1 The thirty-third edition was issued in 181 8. 
 
76 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 formation of the English Church, however greatly it may have 
 devastated its surface, overlaid it with a film of slime, not without 
 fertilizing qualities in it, and strewn it with wreckage. 
 
 I happen to live where the sedimentary rocks have been 
 heaved aloft, contorted, rent, shattered, and in places metamor- 
 phosed by the granite, the bed-rock of all, spiring into lofty tors. 
 
 And the bed-rock of the English Church has been its primitive 
 Catholic and Apostolic constitution. All the superimposed 
 strata of novel Continental heresy have been riven and dis- 
 integrated, crumbling down into beds of intractable, sterile clay. 
 What has become of Calvinism in England ? Even in Presby- 
 terian Scotland it is dead or moribund. But with us in England, 
 the imperishable primary rock of the Faith as once for all 
 delivered to the Saints, Catholic worship, and Apostolic order, 
 remain in their integrity. When we would build, on that we 
 lay our foundation. We hew it for the corner-stone of every 
 structure ; of this primeval material are the blocks fashioned 
 into which we drive the crooks on which every hinge of our 
 spiritual and moral life turns. Of the late-deposited strata — so 
 modern that they are not more than three and a half centuries 
 old — we can utilize only such as have been transformed — crys- 
 tallized — by contact with the primary rock, and have thereby 
 acquired consistency and durability. 
 
 Antiochus Epiphanes resolved on Hellenising the Jewish 
 people and assimilating their religion to that of the Greeks. He 
 was greatly assisted in his work by apostate Levites and the 
 High Priests, Jason and Menelaus. In December 168 B.C., the 
 enclosure was broken down between the outer and the inner courts 
 of the Temple, and a Grecian cippus was placed on the platform 
 of Zerubbabel's altar and dedicated to the Olympian Zeus. The 
 profanation was consummated by introducing a herd of swine 
 and slaughtering them in the sacred precincts. From that hour 
 the daily sacrifice ceased, the sacred fire was extinguished, and 
 the faithful Israelites fled from the dishonoured Temple. 
 
 At the time commemorated in the Book of Daniel the Abomina- 
 tion of Desolation ceased, Antiochus was dead, his generals and 
 armies had been routed, and after the battle of Bethzur in 165 
 B.C., the Jews were able to undertake the purification of God's 
 House. The gates had been consumed with fire, the altar over- 
 thrown, and the platform was overgrown with nettles. The 
 faithful people and such of the priests as had remained true set 
 to work to restore and to cleanse. The holy fire, if we may trust 
 
A REMNANT 
 
 77 
 
 the Second Book of Maccabees, was discovered in a pit where it 
 had been hidden. The Temple was re-dedicated, and again the 
 altar smoked and the lights burned. 
 
 Something much like this occurred in the English Church. 
 From the time when William III landed in Tor Bay, through 
 the Whig administration of the early days of Anne, through 
 the long period of Whig prime ministers, from 1714 to 1770, 
 during the twenty years when Walpole was prime minister, 
 through the Peel, Palmerston and Russell domination, the 
 Government laboured to Protestantize the Church of England, 
 now in the direction of Evangelicalism, then in that of Religious 
 Indifference. 
 
 But with the publication of the Tracts for the Times, from every 
 quarter men started up, shook off their torpor, and began to 
 rebuild the Temple of God. The fire — the sacred fire — was 
 kindled in ten thousand hearts, and flamed in the House of God. 
 Although the progress of restoration might be slow, halting, 
 and hampered, it never was wholly given over. The reign of the 
 Abomination of Desolation was at an end. 
 
 " Populus qui sedebat in tenebris vidit lucem magnam : etseden- 
 tibus in regione umbrce mortis lux orta est eis." (Matt. iv. 16.) 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE EVANGELICAL MOVEMENT 
 
 AS I have already pointed out, a foreign element, as by 
 a hypodermic injection, had been introduced into the 
 blood of the English Church, predisposing it for the 
 outbreak of an Evangelical epidemic. That epidemic 
 was Calvinistic, not Arminian, for the very good reason that it 
 was Calvinism which had entered the Church from the Puritan 
 Conformists, the French Huguenots, the Dutch, the Scottish and 
 Irish invaders. The sons and grandsons of all these men may 
 have conformed, but the old Predestinarianism ran curdling in 
 their arteries. It did not at once reveal itself. It lay dormant. 
 For awhile it remained incubating. It was bound eventually 
 to manifest itself. 
 
 The old Puritan party had become disintegrated. 
 A major portion had conformed, as we have seen ; it had lost 
 all its vehemence and vitality in so doing, and constituted, in 
 the reign of William III and during the Hanoverian period, the 
 bed of Latitudinarianism in the Established Church ; whereas 
 the sincere Puritans formed Nonconformist bodies, Calvinistic 
 or Unitarian. 
 
 As to true Evangelicalism — real spiritual converse with God — 
 that had never lacked in the English Church. It had been 
 manifest in the saintly Andre wes, in Nicholas Ferrar, George 
 Herbert, Vaughan the Silurist, in Ken, in Nelson, and in Law. 
 
 But the modern Evangelical party in the Church was started 
 by the preaching of Wesley ; it speedily altered its direction from 
 Arminianism to Calvinism. It owed its real origin, Orion-like, 
 to the united operation of Scottish, Dutch and Huguenot in- 
 vaders. 
 
 The English Bishops and clergy have been often and unjustly 
 accused of having thrust Wesley and his followers out of the 
 Church. But it was impossible to allow the Methodist doctrines 
 of sensible and instantaneous conversion, personal assurance, 
 and indefectability to find a lodgment within the Church. 
 
 78 
 
THE EVANGELICAL MOVEMENT 79 
 
 Let us see shortly what were the fundamental doctrines of 
 Calvin j and I will take for the purpose the Lambeth Articles : 
 
 (1) From all Eternity God had predestinated some to life 
 eternal, others to be cast into he 11- fire. 
 
 (2) The efficient cause of predestination to life eternal is 
 wholly independent of a man's faith, good works, perseverance. 
 It exists solely in the determination of God. 
 
 (3) There exists a limited, foreknown number of those who are 
 to be saved. 
 
 (4) Those who are not thus fore-ordained will be lost eternally. 
 
 (5) The elect can never lose a justifying faith. 
 
 (6) The elect are made conscious by assurance in their hearts 
 that they are destined to eternal life. 
 
 (7) Grace is not given outside this limited number of the elect 
 to enable others to be saved. 
 
 (8) All men are not drawn by the Father to come to the Son 
 to be saved. 
 
 (9) It is not placed in the will or power of any man to be 
 saved. 
 
 That this terrible doctrine was one stantis vel cadentis ecclesice 
 Calvini appears from the story of Barneveldt and Grotius in the 
 Netherlands. These men, who were at the head of the Estates 
 of Holland, in order to mitigate the severity of the Calvinistic 
 doctrine, attempted to impose on all the ministers a command 
 to teach " that God has created no man in order to damn him ; 
 that God has not laid man under a necessity of sinning ; and 
 that He invites no man to be saved to whom He has resolved 
 to deny salvation." This roused stubborn resistance. Maurice 
 of Nassau, the Stadtholder of the United Provinces, a bitter 
 and unscrupulous man, and of immoral life, set himself at the 
 head of the Calvinistic party, brought Barneveldt to the block, 
 and Grotius to imprisonment that was to have been for life, only 
 he managed to escape in a book-box and fly to Paris. 
 
 Such then are the doctrines which the Puritan party strove 
 to import into the English Church, and which the Divines under 
 James I and Charles I refused to entertain and allow a lodging 
 within the covers of the Prayer Book. And it was these doc- 
 trines that were re-introduced at the close of the eighteenth 
 century by the Evangelical preachers. 
 
 The low condition, the small vitality of the Church, prepared 
 the way for such an appearance as that of pseudo-Evangelicalism. 
 It is so in the human body: when the health is feeble, the pulse 
 
80 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 low, and the brain torpid, then it is that the extraneous humours 
 that have been imported into the blood come to the surface. 
 
 I knew a case of a girl who had swallowed a paper of pins. For 
 years she suffered great inconvenience and discomfort, but even- 
 tually they all worked out and she became robust and healthy. 
 
 And so it was with the Anglican Church : she had endured 
 much through the amount of alien matter that had been imported, 
 even forced into her. It is to be trusted that eventually she will 
 get rid of it altogether. 
 
 We should be doing most of the early Evangelicals a great 
 injustice if we lumped them with the ultra- Calvinists. They 
 held Calvinistic doctrine indeed, but in a very modified form, and 
 their teaching was far from being antinomian. They felt, and 
 expressed a great truth, that the Gospel appealed to men's hearts 
 as much as, if not more than, to their intellects. Theirs was an 
 emotional religion, and the cold Latitudinarians and the rigidly 
 orthodox abhorred " enthusiasm," by which they meant religious 
 fervour. These men had no thought of contravening the doc- 
 trines of the Church ; they accepted them without laying stress 
 upon them ; they had not given them a thought j they hardly 
 realized what they were. 
 
 We must clearly distinguish the early school of Evangelicals 
 from such men as Toplady, Whitefield and Romaine, who formed 
 a school to themselves altogether Calvinistic. 
 
 Early in the fourteenth century a phase of Quietism among the 
 monks of Mount Athos attracted attention. By crouching with 
 heads bowed and chins resting on their breasts, contemplating 
 their navels with absorbed attention, they conceived that they 
 saw the ineffable light of Tabor, bathing and irradiating their 
 internal organs. This light became to them an instructing, 
 guiding and overmastering illumination. 
 
 The Evangelistic movement among the Churchmen in England, 
 like Pietism in Germany, was a corresponding religious phase 
 to that of the Omphalopsychae. Instead of looking to the 
 Church and its teaching for guidance in the spiritual life, they 
 turned their eyes inwards, there to find a supreme director in 
 faith and practice ; and with indifference they were prepared to 
 burst through rule and order in obedience to the inward guide. 
 Dr. Dale of Birmingham wrote of the early Evangelicals : 
 
 " The Evangelical movement encouraged what is called an 
 undenominational temper. It emphasized the vital importance 
 of the Evangelical creed, but it regarded almost with indifference 
 
THE EVANGELICAL MOVEMENT 81 
 
 all forms of Church polity that were not in apparent and irre- 
 concilable antagonism to that creed. It cared nothing for the 
 idea of the Church as the august society of saints. It was the 
 ally of individualism." Further: " Although its leaders insisted 
 very earnestly on the obligation of individual Christian men to 
 live a devout and godly life, they had very little to say about the 
 relations of the individual Christian to the general order of human 
 society, or about the realization of the kingdom of God in all the 
 various regions of human activity. The Revival had no great 
 ideal of the Church as a divine institution." 1 This is an appre- 
 ciation by an outsider, a Dissenter ; and it is valuable. 
 
 Put but a little water in a spoon 
 And it shall be as all the ocean, 
 
 said the Bastard in King John, and this applied to the Evan- 
 gelical movement. The Evangelicals had laid hold of a truth, 
 a valuable truth, but it was only as " a little water in a spoon," 
 and they magnified it to be " as all the ocean," the whole sum 
 and substance of Christianity. 
 
 The consequence was that their religion was of a miserably 
 partial quality, not partaking of the fullness of the spirituality 
 that is found among Catholics, English or Roman. The old 
 teaching of Churchmen was the duty men owed to God, to 
 their country, to their neighbours and to themselves. And this 
 teaching has left its mark on the English character. We hear 
 of a nurse in a burning house, who will sacrifice herself, and that 
 readily, to rescue the child committed to her charge, of an engine- 
 driver who will devote his own life to the saving of the passengers 
 in the train, and of the captain of a sinking ship who will see crew 
 and passengers safe before he will think of leaving the wreck. 
 
 With this, Evangelical doctrine had nothing in common. In 
 fact, the idea of Duty was scouted by the Evangelicals. " Duty ! 
 duty ! " exclaimed one of the School to me — " There is nothing 
 in the Gospel about duty: everything is performed for us." 
 u ' Well done, good and faithful servant,' " I replied, " ' enter thou 
 into the joy of thy Lord.' Was there no duty done there ? " 
 
 What is very significant is the permanence of this sense in the 
 English character, impressed on it by the old, despised orthodox 
 clergy, never wholly effaced by Low-Church individualism. 
 
 The teaching of the Orthodox had been inadequate and in- 
 complete. The prevailing idea among all classes of Church- 
 
 1 Dale (R. M.), The Old Evangelicalism and the New (London, 1889) 
 pp. 17-18. 
 
 6 
 
82 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 people was indeed that of duty. They brought their children to 
 be baptized and confirmed ; they attended church once at least 
 on a Sunday, because they conceived that it was their duty so 
 to do j they communicated monthly, for the same reason. This 
 may be fairly taken as the prevalent conception of English 
 Churchmen as to what was expected of a Christian, and would lead 
 to Eternal Life ; and against this conception the Evangelicals 
 waged implacable war. 
 
 Doing is a deadly thing, 
 And doing leads to death. 
 
 This was their doctrine ; turning all Christians into such as 
 the rois faineants of the Franks, who sat smiling in inward com- 
 placency, receiving homage and tribute, combing their yellow 
 hair, and doing nothing either royal or manly. 
 
 The teaching of the orthodox clergy consisted in appeals to 
 the reason to acknowledge the truth of the Christian religion, and 
 to the conscience to obey its precepts. 
 
 This was well and necessary ; but it was not the whole Gospel. 
 If left out of account the feelings, and it is out of the heart that 
 man believeth unto righteousness. That under it very noble 
 characters were formed, high-minded, honourable, truthful, 
 sincere, is absolutely certain ; but so were also characters formed 
 under the teaching of the heathen philosophers. 
 
 What the orthodox failed to inculcate was that man is invited 
 to fulfil his duties, not as a servant to a master, but as a child to a 
 father. They had taught, indeed, that man was redeemed by the 
 death of Christ, but had not shown how that the death of Christ 
 was a manifestation of the love of God, calling for reciprocation. 
 
 It was to fill this void in the ordinary predication of the ortho- 
 dox, that the Evangelicals stepped in. They insisted on the 
 continuous effects of the death of Christ ; they represented the 
 blood as an ever-flowing stream, cleansing the sinner from every 
 spot and stain, and rendering him henceforth impeccable. They 
 sang — 
 
 There is a fountain filled with blood 
 
 Drawn from Immanuel's veins ; 
 And sinners, plunged beneath that flood, 
 
 Lose all their guilty stains. 
 
 And the mode of plunging was an act of faith. When once 
 cleansed there was no more amenability to the Law ; they had 
 received a complete discharge from all the obligations of duty. 
 Those who had acquired assurance of salvation, according to 
 
THE EVANGELICAL MOVEMENT 83 
 
 the teaching of these Evangelicals, were supernaturally born 
 again, and knew this by a Divinely-given perception akin to a 
 new sense, and were thereby freed from indwelling sin. They 
 could not sin — the faculty to do so was taken from them. This, 
 which was Wesley's doctrine, was held by the early Evangelicals, 
 but it soon got fused with Calvinism. 
 
 A recent traveller in Armenia states that, what with the 
 pictures of bleeding martyrs in Greek churches, and especially 
 the preaching and howled-out hymns of the American Protestant 
 missions, about blood — blood — blood ! the Mussulmans have 
 acquired an impression that Christianity is a sanguinary creed. 
 The Salvation Army bears on its banner " Blood and Fire." 
 
 Stress was laid by the Evangelicals on the death of Christ, 
 but small account was made of His Life. They declared that, 
 however exactly men might discharge their obligations to God 
 and man, nothing of this availed — all their righteousness was 
 filthy rags. Now it is true enough that we are commanded to 
 account ourselves unprofitable servants when we have done all 
 that is commanded us, but we are nowhere told that we are not 
 held responsible for our acts. Up to a certain point the teaching 
 of the Evangelicals supplemented that of the Orthodox, but 
 it erred in superseding it. It rendered conscience a valueless 
 faculty. It deprived man of every motive for resisting tempta- 
 tion ; and self-indulgence was fostered. Everything was done 
 for us, and we had nothing to do ourselves but to accept. Having 
 no particle, no fibre of good in us, we were to be saved by the 
 imputed righteousness of Christ. 
 
 Mr. Mozley, who for many years of his boyhood and early 
 youth sat under this kind of preaching, says that its great success 
 lay in its extreme simplicity. " Simple I say it must have been, 
 for it excluded everything else. You were to be quite sure 
 not only that you had received a special revelation that Jesus 
 Christ died for you in particular, but also that your salvation 
 was now a certainty, so as to place you above all further anxiety. 
 You might have your faults, but you were saved ; your neigh- 
 bours might have their virtues, but, wanting this personal 
 assurance, they were not saved. They were not even one step 
 on the way to salvation. The impression of the system on my 
 mind, after many years of such sermons, nay, thousands of such 
 sermons, with hardly any relief whatever, was that it put the 
 character of Jesus Christ entirely out of account, and that it 
 reduced the Sermon on the Mount, all the discourses of our 
 
84 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 Lord, and all the moral arguments and exhortations of S. Paul 
 and other Apostles, to mere carnalities that no real Christian 
 need have anything to do with. All that is tender, all that is 
 touching, all that appeals to our higher and nobler feelings, all 
 that by which Jesus Christ is the object of unbounded love and 
 adoration even to those who shrink from the attempt to fathom 
 the mystery of His being, was thrust aside — behind, I should 
 rather say, trampled upon, as likely to lead us astray from the 
 real point at issue, viz. whether we ourselves are personally saved 
 to our own certain knowledge." 1 
 
 I sent a daughter once to a cookery school. She returned 
 with a masterly knowledge how to make marchpane, almond 
 paste, but could do nothing else, not even boil a potato. Now 
 marchpane is very toothsome, but when served up twice a day, 
 and every day in every year, it palls on the appetite. The Cal- 
 vinistic Evangelicals had but one or at the outside two doctrines, 
 and they not of marchpane daintiness. On the other hand, 
 what a range of subjects has the Churchman to dilate on : every 
 fast and festival furnishes him with a theme, and enables him to 
 bring to light different and complementary verities. 
 
 The Evangelicals persistently dwelt on the utter helplessness 
 and hopeless depravity of human nature. Fallen man was 
 corrupt to the core ; no act of his, however generous, merciful 
 and just, that was not cankered, and to be regarded as worthless 
 and reprobate in the sight of God. 
 
 That this teaching produced smugness and self-righteousness 
 in those who regarded themselves as among the elect goes without 
 saying. 
 
 The Mussulmans have an account of the creation of man that 
 tallies exactly with the tenets of Calvin. They say that Allah 
 was sitting on His throne, and He took up two lumps of clay, one 
 in the right and the other in the left hand, moulded them into 
 living men, and cast them right and left. " This goes to Heaven 
 — and what care I ? And this goes to hell — and what care I ? " 
 Burns satirised the Calvinism of the Scotch in " Holy Willie 
 
 O Thou who in the heavens dost dwell, 
 Who, as it pleases best thysel', 
 Sends me to heaven, and ten to hell 
 
 A' for Thy glory, 
 And no for unco guid or ill 
 
 They've done afore Thee. 
 
 1 Reminiscences, i. 188. 
 
THE EVANGELICAL MOVEMENT 85 
 
 The Almighty, according to the Calvinist and Mussulman 
 Creeds, is an arbitrary and capricious tyrant. And one conse- 
 quence of the preaching of the Evangelicals and the Calvinistic 
 Methodists was the fits of terrible, agonizing despair into which 
 men and women were cast, through supposing they had been 
 foreordained from all Eternity to hell-fire, that God had created 
 them, brought them into the world and nourished them therein, 
 for the purpose of serving as fuel in the everlasting burning. 
 
 Children, brought up under Calvinistic teaching, imbibed a 
 conception of the Almighty, as though He were like the ogre 
 in a fairy tale, who fattens up little boys and girls in a cage for 
 his eating. They looked on Him with terror, not with love. 
 
 Shakespeare points to the doctrine of predestination so widely 
 preached in his day, when in Measure for Measure he makes 
 Claudio say : 
 
 The words of Heaven — 
 On whom it will, it will ; on whom it will not, — so ; 
 —Yet still 'tis just ! 
 
 The preachers not only denounced flagrant sin, but also with 
 equal energy what they termed " the World " : balls, races, 
 theatres, cards, even though no money passed ; novels, except 
 such as were religious — in fact all amusements ; they looked 
 askance at cricket, and with horror at football. 
 
 Only such as had the required assurance were regarded as 
 Christians ; all outside this narrow clique were lumped together 
 as Worldlings. The Elect pretended at a glance or a word to be 
 able to classify a man as predestined to glory or to hell-fire. 
 Extremes meet. S. Bridget of Sweden declared that she could 
 always detect a sinner by his malodour, and even distinguish 
 his special form of vice by the peculiar stench. A writer of the 
 period (R. Graves), describing Whitefield's preaching, says : 
 " He usually made choice of a different text at each meeting, but 
 whatever the subject was, it always ended — like Cato's speeches 
 in the Senate-house, with delenda est Carthago — with Down with 
 your good works ! with a denunciation against self-righteousness, 
 and a recommendation of Faith alone in its stead — as if virtue 
 was inconsistent with belief in the Gospel ; though Chillingworth 
 observed, ' This doctrine of renouncing their own righteousness 
 has been generally found most agreeable to those who have no 
 righteousness of their own to renounce.' Mr. Whitefield said 
 little about repentance, but laid all the stress upon faith alone ; 
 
86 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 so that if a man was, or fancied, or even said, that he was pos- 
 sessed of true faith, he was immediately pronounced a convert, 
 and whether he reformed his life or not, became a saint upon 
 easy terms." 
 
 William Romaine was for awhile curate of Lew Trenchard, 
 but so small a parish and such simple country folk did not afford 
 him the scope he desired. He became a lecturer at S. Dunstan's- 
 in-the-West, 1 and principal adviser of Lady Huntingdon. In his 
 teaching, Calvinism was pressed to its ultimate term. Believers 
 were assured that they were not bound to keep " the law " in 
 order to be saved. " Remember, thou art not required to obey 
 in order to be saved for thine obedience, but thou art already 
 saved." Final perseverance, and the impossibility of a believer 
 falling from Grace whatsoever his acts might be, was promi- 
 nently enforced. One of the " chosen vessels " being drunk, 
 tumbled out of a cart and broke his leg. The pastor on hearing 
 of the accident exclaimed, " Oh what a blessed thing it is that 
 he can't fall out of the Covenant ! " 
 
 The saner Evangelicals always qualified their teaching about a 
 saving faith by insisting that a true faith must manifest itself 
 in a good life, and that to boast of faith and live an immoral life 
 was a self-delusion. This, of course, is wholesome and true 
 doctrine. 
 
 But among Dissenters, where no qualification was added, it 
 led to most disastrous results — it entirely dissociated morals from 
 religion. When Dr. Benson was appointed to Truro, he was 
 horrified at the immorality of the Cornish, coupled with loud 
 profession of being in a " saved state." " The confusion of 
 sensual excitement with religious passion is awful," he wrote. 
 " The immoralities of revivals simply appalling." 
 
 That the Evangelical party, with their doctrines, was adven- 
 titious, and did not spring out of the Church herself, is fully 
 recognized by Dr. Stoughton in his Religion in England under 
 Queen Anne and the Georges (ii. 93). 11 The Evangelical leaders 
 of theology were disciples of the Puritans. They leaped back 
 over a hundred years to get at the time of Goodwin and Owen, 
 Baxter and Howe, Bates and Charnock, Gurnall and Flavel. 
 
 1 This was an instance of the mischievous nature cf the Lectureships 
 founded by the Puritans before the Rebellion. Romaine had been 
 appointed by the Trustees. The rector disputed his right to occupy 
 the pulpit. The churchwardens refused to light the church, and to 
 open the doors till the very moment that the lecture was commencing. 
 The case was brought before the King's Bench, and judgment was given 
 in favour of the Trustees and Romaine. 
 
THE EVANGELICAL MOVEMENT 
 
 87 
 
 The doctrines of Redemption and Justification by Faith, of the 
 Work of the Holy Spirit, were zealously embraced. The wells, 
 next to those of the Bible, whence the Evangelicals drew their 
 inspiration, were not Patristic, not Anglo-Catholic, but they 
 were Protestant works of the sixteenth and Nonconformist 
 works of the seventeenth century.' ' That is to say, the Calvin- 
 istic party was an eruption of suppressed Puritanism, altogether 
 alien to the faith and practice of the Church. 
 
 The first Evangelicals were a class to themselves. They were, 
 after a fashion, loyal Churchmen, held the doctrines of Baptismal 
 Regeneration and the Real Presence, though not in as crisp and 
 pronounced a form as did the Tract arians. They represented 
 the rise of Spiritual Life above the deadness of ordinary Church- 
 manship in their day. They brought their hearers to the foot 
 of the Cross, but it was to stand there stunned and inert. The 
 taint of Calvinism had not as yet entered deep into their theo- 
 logical system. They ministered faithfully and truly to their 
 flocks, and were men of prayer in their closets, and not, like 
 the later Evangelicals, blatant on platforms. 
 
 Some were like John Fletcher of Madeley, who laboured like 
 an apostle among the Shropshire colliers. He was a Swiss, 
 and had been trained for the Calvinist pastorate in his native 
 land. His real name was De la Flechere. Some were like the 
 Scotts, whose clerical life was laborious, and passed, as it were, 
 in the shade. 
 
 Earnest men of the older Evangelicals were rather influenced 
 by Wesley — who, as is well known, looked with repugnance on 
 separation from the Church, and who sought the infusion of 
 spirituality into a presumedly moribund body, and hated Cal- 
 vinism. William Wilberforce, the father of the Bishop, belonged 
 to the primitive Evangelicals. A more saintly soul never lived 
 in the English Church than Henry Venn. His absolute faith in 
 the Incarnation, his fervent love of Christ, his urgency of the 
 means of grace, mark him out as an Evangelical of the better 
 type. But he had no conception of what the Church was, and 
 when he quitted Yorkshire his congregation lapsed into Dissent. 
 His son, John Venn of Clapham, if not quite equal to his father, 
 was also a most zealous and holy man. At Clapham his Lenten 
 Lectures were specially devoted to the moral and religious 
 improvement of the younger part of his flock. He shared in 
 the establishment of a local Bible Society, and was one of the 
 founders of the Church Missionary Society. But his most 
 
88 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 noted characteristic was humility, and at the last it was his 
 earnest and particular wish that nothing should be recorded 
 of him in the way of panegyric. On reading his sermons one 
 cannot fail to be struck with the soundness of his theology. 
 His sermon on the " Communion of Saints 99 is excellent, only 
 just stopping short of Communion in prayer. 
 
 There was in my own neighbourhood one of the true repre- 
 sentatives of the early Evangelicals. He had but a small 
 vicarage in which to live ; his wife was stone-deaf, and he had 
 a large family of very noisy children who pervaded the house. 
 On one side of the parsonage was a grove, in spring a sheet of 
 snowdrops j this was his study, his oratory and place of medita- 
 tion ; for here alone was he free from the racket in the house. 
 Here, in fine weather and in foul, in rain and snow, and when 
 the sun strewed the sward with flakes of gold, the old man paced 
 up and down, his lips murmuring in prayer, or with a far-off gaze, 
 looking into the mysteries of God, preparing his Sunday dis- 
 courses. He served two churches three miles apart, and had 
 in consequence to take three services every Lord's Day. He 
 was an earnest and powerful preacher, but had only rustics to 
 listen to him. In his humble soul he was content with that, and 
 had no aspiration to occupy a pulpit in a fashionable watering- 
 place. 
 
 But it was with few, very few of the representatives of the 
 early Evangelicals that I was brought into contact. The 
 breed rapidly, indeed suddenly, deteriorated ; and this was 
 due to a large extent to their adoption of Calvinism. What a 
 blight John Newton cast on the genius of Cowper ! Newton 
 had been a blaspheming slave-dealer. He was converted and 
 became a black fanatic. 
 
 Most of the Evangelicals whom I met and knew were formal ; 
 and smugness was the badge of all their tribe. They were all, 
 without exception, men of very narrow views. Religion with 
 them was subjective, emotional, concentrated on self. " All you 
 care for," as some one said to Clayton of Cambridge, " is the 
 saving of your own dirty little soul." They conceived of God 
 in no other capacity than that of being engaged over individuals, 
 like a scientist examining, feeding and providing for animalcules, 
 and unconcerned about creation at large. Of worship they 
 had no conception at all. We hear a good deal of the Romish 
 priest occupying the place of God, intervening between the 
 human soul and God ; but it has always struck me that in no 
 
THE EVANGELICAL MOVEMENT 89 
 
 form of Christianity does man so poke himself into prominence, 
 and stand in the light, and throw his ugly shadow over the soul, 
 as in Protestantism, where the preacher is all in all, and the 
 worship of God is nowhere. Henri Quatre once said to a pastor, 
 " I had rather be with my God for one quarter of an hour, than 
 hear a fellow talk about Him for an hour and a half." Common 
 Prayer, the Eucharist especially, were disregarded as acts of 
 worship and treated as adjuncts to the sermon. I spoke once 
 on Daily Prayer to a clergyman of this school. He did not see 
 any good in it unless it led up to a sermon. 1 
 
 The very position of the Catholic priest is significant. He 
 kneels or stands facing East at the head of his flock, like a 
 shepherd leading to God. But the Protestant pastor confronts 
 his congregation, to bluster, or, if he wants their money, to 
 cajole. 
 
 From the Evangelical point of view the Church was the king- 
 dom of the Elect, known only to one another. As a body the 
 Evangelicals opposed the revival of Convocation and of Diocesan 
 Synods. When some of them became Colonial Bishops they 
 were helpless, they could wag their tongues, but put no hands 
 to work. Hands efficient for any constructive work they had not , 
 only fins wherewith to propel themselves into notice — and to 
 muddy the water in which they swam. 
 
 The contrast presented between the two provinces of Australia 
 
 and South Africa bears out this assertion. The former had been 
 
 for long ruled mainly by Low Churchmen j in consequence there 
 
 was no cohesion at one time between the different dioceses, and 
 
 Churchmanship everywhere is still at a low ebb. In the latter 
 
 the decided teaching of the metropolitans of Cape Town and their 
 
 suffragans has borne fruit in the vigour of the Church at large, 
 
 and its activity in propagating the Gospel, as tract after tract 
 
 of that huge continent has come under English influence. And 
 
 this in spite of trials arising from continued warfare with natives 
 
 and Dutch settlers, and the schismatic action of Bishop Colenso. 
 
 The secret lies in the fact that the South African bishops realized 
 
 the corporate character of the Church, and acted on this belief ; 
 
 and this the early Australian prelates with but few exceptions 
 
 did not understand. But there were difficulties to be met in 
 
 Australia, though not greater than those encountered in South 
 
 1 What the Evangelical never understood was the difference between 
 preaching and teaching. The office of the priest is to preach to the 
 practically heathen and call to the truth, and then to teach, or build up 
 in the Faith and the practice of the Christian duties. 
 
90 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 Africa. South Australia was founded seventy years ago as an 
 avowed Congregational settlement, in which Churchmanship 
 was a barrier to material prosperity. Of the population a good 
 number were the descendants of convicts, and there were to be 
 found among the settlers German Lutherans and Moravians, 
 Roman Catholic Irish, Scottish Presbyterians, Russian Greeks, 
 also Poles, Chinese, Kanakas, Japanese, Javaneseand Aboriginals. 
 The distances to be traversed were enormous. The Archbishop 
 of Sydney some time ago took occasion to pay a visit to his 
 brother at Perth. Now the Bishop of West Australia has a 
 diocese extending over near on four thousand miles, and he 
 thought right to turn back from a Confirmation tour to meet 
 his Primate at Albany. As they clasped hands, the Archbishop 
 said : " Well, my dear Bishop, I have come two thousand miles 
 to see you." " Aye," answered he of Perth ; " and I have 
 travelled four thousand miles in my own diocese to meet you." 
 
 Ubi probus est architectus, 
 Bene lineatam si semel carinam collocavit, 
 Facile est navem facere, ubi fundata et constituta est. 
 
 The South African bishops could well say, with Periplectomenes : 
 
 Nunc haec carina satis profundata bene et statuta est. 
 
 Plaut., Miles Glor., iii. 3. 
 
 A great point of Evangelical insistence was the verbal in- 
 spiration and infallibility of Scripture. These men could not 
 realize that the Old Testament was written to give us an aspect 
 of human history as seen from above, in contradistinction to 
 secular history, which sees all from below and misses the guiding 
 hand of God. The overstraining of this doctrine has had 
 disastrous consequences. J. Anthony Froude's book The 
 Nemesis of Faith, published in 1849, shows how this accounted 
 for the shipwreck of many faiths. " Perhaps the world has 
 never witnessed any more grotesque idol worship than what has 
 resulted from it in modern Bibliolatry." 
 
 Although the Evangelicals insisted on verbal inspiration, 
 they were too blind to see that their system was condemned 
 root and branch by Scripture. In their scheme the Beatitudes 
 had no place, and their denunciation of good works was con- 
 trary to the teaching of Our Lord as to the blessing pronounced 
 at the Last Day on such as had done works of mercy. How 
 could they explain away the saying about giving a cup of cold 
 water — that it should meet with reward ? Mr. Swinburne in his 
 
THE EVANGELICAL MOVEMENT 91 
 
 Memories of a School Inspector mentions a sermon that he him- 
 self heard from an Evangelical divine on the text " Not every- 
 one that saith unto me Lord ! Lord ! shall enter into the Kingdom 
 of heaven, but he that doeth the will, etc." And his sermon was 
 to show the precise contrary. It was a violent attack upon 
 such persons as urged that faith must be evidenced by works ; 
 " words," said he, " were all the necessary evidence of inner 
 faith — acts were naught. Passive faith," he argued, "was 
 action of the highest kind." 
 
 That the Church of Rome was Babylon and the Pope Anti- 
 christ, with these men admitted of no question. Newman 
 shows us how steeped his mind had been in that conviction, and 
 it was the reiterated denunciation of Rome which conduced 
 largely to conversions. Men who had had it impressed on them 
 that the Roman Church was the Scarlet Whore, when they 
 travelled abroad and came in contact with good Papists, and saw 
 how much more religion existed in Catholic lands than among 
 Protestants, what a living faith was possessed by Catholics, how 
 sweet and beautiful were their lives, then their prepossessions 
 fell, and they rushed into the contrary extreme, exclaiming that 
 their former teachers had been false guides and lying prophets. 
 The majority of those who " went over " had been, like Newman, 
 Faber and Oakeley, Sibthorpe, Manning, Dodsworth, the two 
 Wilberforces, and Allies, trained in Evangelicalism ; whereas 
 those who had been brought up on Church principles, like Keble, 
 Pusey and Isaac Williams, remained unshaken. 1 
 
 The Evangelical clergy, as already said, made preaching the 
 end of everything, and for the sake of that every other obligation 
 must be set aside. They were to be seen scampering about the 
 country, away from their parishes, to mount strange pulpits, 
 harangue on platforms, and gush in prayer meetings. 
 
 Simeon, the great luminary of the school, was a most worthy 
 man. He took the poorly endowed living of Holy Trinity at 
 Cambridge that he might use its pulpit as a rostrum whence to 
 pour forth his doctrine. He died in 1836. So great was his 
 
 1 Of the fourteen writers of the Tracts for the Times, only one, Newman, 
 seceded. Ambrose Phillipps de Lisle wrote : "A grave warning to all 
 teachers and controversialists, the immense and incalculable harm that 
 was done to me by the prejudiced, ignorant, and inaccurate notions of 
 Romanism which I had heard in talk, or had presented to me in silly 
 tracts, in partisan histories, in evangelical fiction, and in other bad and 
 foolish literature of these kinds. ... It was the recoil from the Protestant 
 libels and misstatements which drew me at last into the Papal Church." — 
 National Review (May 1900), p. 489. 
 
92 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 devotion to his work that he resigned his rights to a family 
 property, and persuaded his elder brother to leave it to another. 
 
 Nevertheless he disregarded his parochial duties ; he passed 
 over the whole pastoral work to Robinson, afterwards Arch- 
 deacon ; this latter, in his turn, and for precisely the same 
 reason (viz. a feeling that his calling lay in the pulpit rather 
 than by the sick-bed), transferred the entire pastoral duty to 
 a third clergyman. But he, also, preferred talking to acting, 
 and little relishing having to visit the poor and comfort the 
 dying, with a small gratuity handed over the charge to a lay- 
 man, a very humble member of one of the College choirs. 
 
 It was Simeon who in 1816 set himself to purchasing the 
 livings of popular watering-places and large towns. Although 
 this was done with the best intentions, it has acted in the long 
 run in casting a blight on such places. In that year he wrote 
 to Dean Milner : " Cheltenham, where there are ten thousand 
 souls, besides ten thousand visitors, or nearly so, is mine. It 
 was to be sold for £3,000, and I instantly secured it. . . . Mary- 
 le-bone, where there are one hundred thousand souls, is also to be 
 sold. The price named is £40,000. I hope to get it much under, 
 and if it be sold so low as £25,000 it is mine at this moment." 
 
 Evangelicalism in the English Church fed Dissent, which 
 gave more highly spiced doctrine than the sober Low Churchmen 
 could set before their people. Thirteen young men, converted 
 by Venn, became dissenting ministers. 
 
 In 1830 the Evangelical party could boast that they had 
 alienated from the Church the greater portion of the people, 
 and increased the number of meeting-houses from 35 to 1,000. 
 Venn on leaving Hudders field, in lieu of exhorting his flock to 
 abide in the Church, sanctioned and subscribed to the erection 
 of a dissenting chapel j " and when another Vicar came, from 
 whom he never wished the people to secede, but few returned 
 to the Church." Butt, Vicar of Kidderminster, habitually, in 
 full canonicals, held the plate at the door of the Kidderminster 
 meeting-houses. Mr. Wills, knowing that the Gospel would not 
 be preached according to Calvin, on resigning the curacy of 
 S. Agnes sold his family plate to build a dissenting chapel. Mr. 
 Ingham, a priest, placed himself at the head of eighty-four 
 congregations formed on the Moravian pattern, of which all but 
 thirteen left him and became Sandemanians. From Robinson's 
 congregation at Leicester a hundred at a time would pass 
 to the meeting-house from church. Newton, at Olney, with 
 
THE EVANGELICAL MOVEMENT 
 
 93 
 
 a population of 2,500, turned his people into Antinomians, 
 Christians without morality. 
 
 For thirty-seven years the Evangelical clergy went from 
 place to place, preaching indifferently in Dissenting meeting- 
 houses or in Church pulpits, till the decision of the Consistorial 
 Court in 1777 pronounced the illegality of such procedure, 
 and this induced some, but by no means all, to desist from 
 invading the chapels. A certain number severed their congrega- 
 tions from the Church. Indeed, Berridge frankly admitted : 
 " God sends Gospel ministers into the Church, to call people 
 out of it. What has happened to Venn's Yorkshire flock will 
 happen to the Yelling flock, and mine, ,, also to Dr. Conyers' flock 
 at Helmsley. 
 
 " This was a fatal drawback in the Evangelical movement, 
 that, except so far as it helped to revive religion in England," 
 says Mr. Hore, "it did nothing to strengthen or reform the 
 Church ; that, contrariwise, it gave an enormous impetus to 
 Dissent, virtually creating it in Wales, and developing it every- 
 where else, so that under its reign and through its influence 
 more congregations seceded from the Church of England than 
 individuals seceded to Rome under the Oxford movement " 
 (ii. 244). It is a matter of fact repeatedly noticed, that nowhere 
 does Dissent flourish and maintain its vigour more fully than 
 where the parish churches are in the hands of Simeonite or other 
 Puritan Trustees. 
 
 But after the passing away of the early Fathers of Evan- 
 gelicalism what a falling off was there ! When we come to their 
 successors, Evangelicalism had become fashionable — it was not 
 the religion of the Gentiles, but of the Genteels. And they 
 became alarmed at the uprising of the Tractarians. These latter 
 had the Prayer Book and its Rubrics to appeal to, and could 
 refer back to the Caroline Divines as approved exponents of 
 Church doctrine and practice. Their very position was menaced 
 by the plain words and rubrical directions of the Book which 
 they were pledged to use in their public ministrations, but which 
 they had disregarded. Accordingly a number of Evangelical 
 clergy united with Lord Robert Grosvenor (afterwards Lord 
 Ebury) in 1854 to form a Prayer Book Revision Society, and 
 some of their objects were : (a) The substitution of the word 
 minister for priest whenever the officiating clergyman is in- 
 tended ; (b) The omission of the Ornaments Rubric ; (c) The re- 
 moval of certain phrases in the Communion Service that favoured 
 
94 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 priestly confession and absolution ; (d) The removal from the 
 Baptismal service of such expressions as favoured the doctrine of 
 Baptismal Regeneration ; (e) The alteration of the words in 
 the Ordinal " Receive thou the Holy Ghost," etc., and the clause 
 " Whose sins thou dost forgive," etc., and the corresponding 
 Absolution in the Visitation of the Sick. 
 
 What these clergy did not see was, that by such demands 
 they were admitting that the Tractarian party was honest in 
 its observance of the ruling of the Prayer Book, and that they 
 were not. Their action was self -condemnatory. They wanted 
 to have the Church accommodated to their level. To continue to 
 use a book that taught doctrines which they repudiated, deprived 
 their position of all moral weight. Had they been honest men 
 and possessed the discipline and sincerity of their Scottish 
 co-religionists of the Disruption, they would have quitted the 
 Church of England en masse, and started a sect of their own, as 
 did Bishop Cummins with perfect honesty in the United States. 
 They did not do so, and remain to the present day an alien 
 element in the Church, but not, as I hope to show shortly, 
 without their use. 
 
 Although there existed a sad degeneracy among the ranks of 
 the so-called Evangelicals, trading on the fame of the leaders 
 of the movement, Venn, Simeon, Milner, Scott, etc., employing 
 their language, but devoid of their enthusiasm, there remained 
 some admirable men. Of these, of supreme excellence, to carry 
 on the best tradition, was Lord Ashley, afterward Earl of Shaftes- 
 bury ; than whom none has obtained a higher name as a social 
 reformer and redresser of the wrongs of the oppressed. Although 
 an " Evangelical of the Evangelicals," and with his mind cramped 
 by their prejudices and hedged about with their limitations, he 
 constantly expressed his dissent from the ordinary Evangelicals 
 of the day. " The Ritualists," he said, " have more zeal for 
 Christ than the Evangelicals. There are noble exceptions, but, 
 as a body, ' this people honour Me with their lips, but their 
 heart is far from Me,' " and his complaint at the coldness, bitter- 
 ness, insincerity, of the bulk of the Evangelicals was, as the 
 writer of his Life assures us, " not a sentiment written down in 
 the heat of the moment — it is repeated again and again in his 
 Diaries." " Who," he once contemptuously added, in speaking 
 of the men of his day who professed to be Low Churchmen, " is 
 to lead a regiment like that ? Even Falstaff could not march 
 through Coventry with them." 
 
THE EVANGELICAL MOVEMENT 95 
 
 That he was persistently hostile to the Catholic revival is 
 true enough, but this was due to his ignorance of its principles. 
 If his promotions to bishoprics and deaneries were of men of 
 no mental calibre, no learning, and not of conspicuous piety, 
 there was no help for it. He was compelled to present to Lord 
 Palmerston for promotion such " men " as Mouldy, Shadow, 
 Wart, Feeble and Bullcalf. He could find no others. 
 
 John Louis Mallet, son of Mallet du Pan, who married my 
 great-aunt Lucy Baring, kept a diary which he wrote up to 1827, 
 and which is still in manuscript. It affords us some interesting 
 particulars relative to the Evangelicals of his day. He writes 
 of the Baring family : 
 
 "As a part of the intellectual history of the age in which I 
 have lived, I may perhaps without impropriety say something 
 of the religious turn of the family. 
 
 14 The person with whom it originated was Mrs. Wall (Harriet), 
 eldest daughter of Sir Francis Baring, who married early in 
 life a partner of the house, Mr. Wall, a shrewd, bustling, 
 practical man of business. Mrs. Wall kept her father's house, 
 and did the honours of it for some time in Devonshire Square, 
 and afterwards in Berkeley Square, until his death. Sir Francis 
 was a man of the world, and connected with parliamentary 
 people, who lived in very high circles. Mrs. Wall was then a 
 warm Whig in politics and a frequenter of the theatres, an en- 
 thusiastic admirer of Mrs. Siddons. Other views of life, however, 
 grew upon her, previously to her father's and her husband's 
 deaths, and she had the good sense, as she has since with her 
 son, not to let the concerns of another life materially interfere 
 with the habits and feelings of those to whom she was bound by 
 domestic ties. After her husband's death she sold Aldbury, a 
 beautiful place in Surrey, which he had left her, and took a house 
 at Lymington, in Hampshire, within easy distance of her son's 
 estate at Norman Court, and of her brother, Sir Thomas, at 
 Stratton. She then set about converting to Calvinistic views 
 such members of her family as were under the reach of her 
 influence — Sir Thomas and Lady Baring, Mr. George Baring, 
 and her two younger sisters, Mrs. Kemp and Mrs. Story, and 
 through them leading their husbands, who in a fit of religious 
 zeal abandoned their property and became Evangelical clergy- 
 men. But as it is in the nature of things that when we pursue 
 an object with great eagerness and zeal, we should not rest 
 satisfied with the attainment of it, so it is with religion as a 
 
96 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 passion, as Mrs. Wall pursued it. Novelties of doctrine con- 
 tinued to have unabated attractions ; and Mr. Evans, a clergy- 
 man of Lymington, a man of education and talent, having 
 peculiar views, I believe, on the subject of baptism, which differed 
 from those of the Established Church, they started a little sect 
 of their own. Mr. Evans removed to London, where he built 
 a chapel, with the assistance of Mrs. Wall, and a separatist 
 congregation was formed, to which it then became Mrs. Wall's 
 great object to bring proselytes. The headquarters were estab- 
 lished at Stratton, a beautiful house replete with every con- 
 venience and luxury, and where vital Christianity could be 
 combined with the refinements of creature comforts and attend- 
 ance. 
 
 " Mr. Snow, a son of a banker of that name [Snow had been 
 an actor under the name of Hargreave. He seceded from the 
 Church in 1815 and returned to it in 1826 — John Bull, July 23, 
 1826], and Mr. Be van, both young men, were then the ministers 
 of the adjoining parishes of Stratton and Micheldever, and 
 Mr. Drummond of the Grange and his brother, neighbours of 
 Sir Thomas, had fallen in with the new opinions. At Stratton, 
 therefore, divers young proselytes congregated ; other ' seekers 
 after the Lord ' were also occasionally found there. Stratton 
 became a convocation to settle debatable points. Mrs. Wall 
 was there in all her glory, for her natural capacity, dexterous 
 intelligence, and cool temperament gave her a real superiority 
 over the heated brains and crude notions of her disciples ; among 
 others she soon numbered her brother, George Baring, and her 
 two brothers-in-law, Mr. Kemp and Mr. Story. Such of these 
 as had livings gave them up. This was the case with George 
 Baring, who held a living of his brother Alexander in Wiltshire. 
 After a youth marked by every species of extravagance, and 
 his making a rapid fortune in one of those golden prebends of 
 the E. I. Co. at Canton which are reserved for sons of directors, 
 he had late taken orders, and he now became a Dissenting Min- 
 ister and built a chapel at Exeter, which his name and religious 
 zeal and the novelty of his doctrine very soon filled. Mr. Kemp, 
 who is Lord of the Manor of a great part of Brighton, built a 
 chapel there, where he officiated as preacher. Mr. Snow opened 
 a chapel at Cheltenham, but at the end of a couple of years, 
 and after having got together large congregations and drawn 
 many people away from their accustomed faith, by persuading 
 them that this was the only road to salvation, Mr. Baring, Mr. 
 
THE EVANGELICAL MOVEMENT 
 
 97 
 
 Kemp, and Mr. Snow threw up the concern, and resumed their 
 blue coats, leaving their flocks to seek out new guides. 
 
 " Mr. Snow returned to the Church. Mrs. Mallet and I were 
 at Stratton in October 1822, when he arrived there with his 
 family to meet Mr. Simeon of Cambridge, a sort of Evangelical 
 bishop, who came to meet the stray sheep on his return to the 
 fold, and to christen two children, who had been born during 
 the time of their father's apostasy. Mr. Evans remained a 
 dissenter. Sir Thomas Baring himself adheres to the Church. 
 George Baring ruined himself by speculations in grain, Mr. 
 Kemp nearly so by building speculations at Brighton, and Mr. 
 Story by losses at play ; so it is difficult on the whole to conceive 
 anything more discreditable than this religious sally. 
 
 " What Mrs. Wall's opinions have been since, I know not. 
 I believe that she became a follower of Irving, but her address 
 and position still secured her considerable influence in religious 
 circles, whatever they were, and I heard now and then of her 
 taking under her spiritual guidance some stray Duchess who 
 had deserted the ranks of fashionable life to place herself under 
 Mrs. Wall. 
 
 M In the course of September 1810 [error for 1809] I went by 
 myself for a short time to Stratton, Sir Thomas Baring having 
 asked me, as a sort of favour, to come and meet Lord and Lady 
 Lansdowne, who were expected there for a few days. I had 
 met Lord and Lady Lansdowne at the Romillys' and Marcets', 
 and remember attending some lectures on the steam-engine 
 given by Marcet at his own house to a select party of friends, at 
 which Lord Lansdowne was severely burnt by the bursting of a 
 boiler by means of which a beautiful steam-engine was worked. 
 I forget most of the other people at Stratton on this occasion, 
 but two of them I can very well remember — Jekyl, Master in 
 Chancery at the time and a friend of Fox, whose bon mots and 
 talent for anecdote amused the town for so many years ; and a 
 very different, though likewise a clever man, the Rev. Mr. 
 Cunningham, Vicar of Harrow, who lately had taken a lead in 
 the new Church party denominated Evangelical, and who was a 
 great person in that line, and among other places at Stratton, 
 where these opinions had already been taking deep root. Mr. 
 Cunningham was a forward, self-sufficient, though a good- 
 natured man, with unbounded confidence in himself, and that 
 sort of manner which in one of a less sacred cloth might be termed 
 impudent. 
 7 
 
98 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 " At that time he came to Stratton whenever it suited him, 
 with his wife, several children, three servants, and three horses, 
 which were all quartered in the house, sometimes for two or three 
 months together ; and I remember some jokes among the young 
 people on the subject of a lame mare which he left to graze 
 at Stratton Park for many months after the family had left the 
 place, and went by the name of Madam Cunningham. None 
 but the men who keep the keys of Paradise take such liberties as 
 these. Mr. Cunningham being one of those favoured beings, and 
 having withal the advantage of a good person and address, had 
 engaged the affections and married a Miss Williams, one of the 
 daughters of a Mr. Williams of Moor Park, with whom he had a 
 portion of £20,000 — a very good beginning for a young divine ; 
 and when he lost his lady and was married again to a daughter 
 of General Sir Harry Calvert, I understand that he might have 
 thrown the handkerchief to almost any woman of rank and 
 fortune in the Calvinistic circles of the Church. Such success 
 implies great knowledge of the world, as well as those other 
 qualities and acquirements, upon which it was apparently 
 founded, and Mr. Cunningham is not deficient in these respects. 
 He had been at school with Denman ; but as Denman had 
 turned out something of an ultra- Whig or a Democrat, no remi- 
 niscences of their early acquaintance had come across his mind, 
 until Denman's appointment to the situation of Common Ser- 
 geant of the City of London, when he unexpectedly received a 
 letter from his old schoolfellow, addressing him as ' Dear Den- 
 man,' with congratulations and a printed copy of his sermons. 
 
 " But to return to my Stratton visit. It so happened that 
 Sir Francis Baring, with all his desire to do honour to Lord Lans- 
 downe and to make his house agreeable to him, could not have 
 committed a greater mistake than the having asked Mr. Cunning- 
 ham to meet him, for Lord Lansdowne well remembered when 
 he stood for Cambridge in 1806, as Lord Henry Petty, that he 
 applied to Cunningham for his vote, and it was attempted on 
 Cunningham's part to make it a matter of bargain and sale : 
 Cunningham stipulating that if he voted for Lord Henry, Sir 
 Francis Baring, whose connexion with the Lansdowne family and 
 the Whigs he well knew, and who was a director of the E.I. Co., 
 should get some appointment in India for a brother of his. These 
 things are understood to the north of the Tweed, but they are 
 not so common in the south, and the proposition was accordingly 
 scouted. Mr. C. was perfectly aware of this little blot, and in- 
 
THE EVANGELICAL MOVEMENT 
 
 99 
 
 stead of absenting himself for a few days on the plea of some 
 spiritual call, he determined de faire bonne mine d mauvais jeu t 
 and the first day he made up to Lady Lansdowne, talking to her 
 across the table in a manner so unusual and familiar, that both 
 Lord and Lady Lansdowne were very much annoyed and dis- 
 gusted, and treated him with marked reserve. Mr. C. felt the 
 rebuke, and looked perfectly miserable. 
 
 " The next day a party was formed to go to see Avington, one 
 of the Duke of Buckingham's seats near Winchester. Most of 
 the gentlemen went on horseback. I preferred a seat in one of 
 the carriages, and Lord Lansdowne contrived to make the ride 
 so unpleasant to Cunningham that he came to me at Avington, 
 and requested, as a most particular favour, that I would allow him 
 to take my place in the carriage. I am a very bad rider, and 
 riding is not agreeable to me ; but he looked so piteous that I 
 yielded to his wishes. I never saw a man more thoroughly 
 humbled ; but Lord and Lady Lansdowne left Stratton next 
 day, and both his spirits and his spiritual pride recovered their 
 wonted elasticity." 
 
 The Rev. Mr. Cunningham was typical of a good many others 
 of the same sort. Another notable instance was Toplady, the 
 author of the beautiful hymn " Rock of ages, cleft for me," 
 about the only thing he ever wrote that was not worthless. In 
 his diary he records that his sermons gave great satisfaction to 
 himself. " I preached for forty minutes with great ease to 
 myself, and with great strength, readiness and distinctness. It 
 was a blessed season to my own heart." But although he drew 
 large congregations in the church of Broad Hembury, of which 
 he was incumbent, he was not satisfied. He wrote : "I can 
 truly say that my lot has never hitherto been cast among a 
 people so generally ignorant of Divine things, and so totally 
 dead to God. I know of but three persons in all this large and 
 populous parish in whom I have solid reason to trust a work 
 of saving grace is begun, and these are Mrs. Hutchins, James 
 William Taylor, and Joan Venn." He craved for a more 
 emotional and impressionable congregation, and on the plea 
 that the humid air of Devonshire did not suit him, 1 deserted 
 his flock in 1775, and went to London to the fogs, where he 
 could find persons more congenial to his ministry than the poor, 
 
 1 Hembury lies high, 486 ft. above the sea, sheltered on the north-east 
 and west by encircling hills rising to 850-895 ft. The air is bracing, but 
 not cold. 
 
100 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 ignorant, simple souls of the Devonshire village. He did not, 
 however, resign his two livings, but went on drawing the emolu- 
 ments, and supplied his place with a succession of underpaid 
 curates. In London he could find sheep to pasture with more 
 wool on their backs. He was taken up by Lady Huntingdon, 
 and could command her purse. Early in 1775 he hired the 
 meeting-house of the French Calvinists in Orange Street, 
 Leicester Square, for Sunday and Wednesday evenings, and 
 began preaching there on April 11. For the three years he was 
 in London till his death in 1778, he never once went near Broad 
 Hembury or Sheldon, his two livings in Devonshire. It may 
 well be asked how he justified to himself continuing to draw his 
 stipend from both, with setting up a conventicle in London. 
 The fact was that these men conceived they had a call to preach 
 the Gospel to large, wealthy and fashionable congregations, and 
 that duty must be disregarded in presence of such a call. 
 
 There was great liability to self-deception, when, as Hood 
 says : 
 
 Every farthing candle-ray 
 Conceives itself a great gas-jet of light. 
 
 Tom Hood was denounced by Rae Wilson as godless, because 
 he wrote humorous poems, absolutely innocent, not tainted 
 with any grossness. Hood answered him in his inimitable 
 Ode to Rae Wilson : 
 
 I'm not a Saint 
 Not one of those self-constituted saints, 
 Quacks — not physicians — in the cure of souls, 
 Censors who sniff out mortal taints, 
 And call the devil over his own coals — 
 These pseudo Privy Councillors of God, 
 Who write down judgements with a pen hard-nibb'd, 
 
 Ushers of Beelzebub's Black Rod ; 
 Commending sinners, not to ice thick-ribbed, 
 But endless flames, to scorch them up like flax — 
 Yet sure of Heav'n themselves, as if they'd cribb'd 
 The impression of S. Peter's Keys in wax. 
 
 With sweet kind natures, as in honey'd cells, 
 
 Religion lives, and feels itself at home. 
 
 But only on a formal visit dwells 
 
 Where wasps instead of bees have formed the comb. 
 
 Shun pride, O Rae ! — whatever sort beside 
 
 You take in lieu, shun spiritual pride ! 
 
 A pride there is of rank, a pride of birth, 
 
 A pride of learning and a pride of purse ; 
 
THE EVANGELICAL MOVEMENT 101 
 
 A London pride — in short, there be on earth 
 A host of prides, some better and some worse, 
 But of all prides, since Lucifer's attaint, 
 The proudest swells a self-elected saint ! 
 
 Charles Dickens came across this type of Evangelical, and 
 sketched the male specimen in Mr. Chadband and the female 
 in Mrs. Jellyby. 
 
 But apart from conscious or unconscious humbugs, there 
 was much real piety in, and much good done by the Evangelicals. 
 Where they failed, it was due to limitation, or to a false element 
 in their teaching, which fostered self-righteousness. 
 
 Among some excellent types I can recall, was the Rev. H. A. 
 Simcoe of Penheale, near Launceston. He was squire as well 
 as parson, and lived in a beautiful old mansion with Elizabethan 
 ceilings and panellings, that had come into the Simcoe family by 
 purchase. He always wore Hessian boots with a tassel in front, 
 and stood up over six feet, was of strong build and powerful 
 muscles. Belonging to the Evangelical school, having been one 
 of Charles Simeon's disciples, he spent his energies and his money 
 on all the organizations called into being by his party. He went 
 about wherever invited to preach in pulpits and harangue on 
 platforms. At home he had made his picturesque old manor- 
 house into a store of everything necessary to daily life. The 
 lads and girls of the parish of Egloskerry were taught trades 
 under his eye — tailoring, bootmaking, basket- weaving and the 
 manufacture of a thousand other commodities likely to be wanted 
 in a region where there are no shops. He established a printing 
 press in the house, from which issued tracts and a periodical, 
 The Light of the West, printed on poor paper, with on the cover a 
 representation of the Eddystone lighthouse. We had piles of 
 these in the house, but they were all burnt. I regret it now, 
 as these papers would have contained many significant anecdotes 
 of conversions, happy deaths, and special providences, that 
 would prove instructive reading at the present day. " The 
 manor-house of Penheale still stands," says a modern writer. 
 " Its industrial accessories may have disappeared, but in all 
 parts of the world may be found British settlers who, or whose 
 parents, leaving England in the nineteenth century's most 
 distressful years, owe much of their success in a new world to 
 habits acquired and handiwork learned at Penheale — in its day 
 the uniquely beneficent training school for emigrants." 1 
 1 Escott, Society in the Country House (1907), p. 263. 
 
102 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 With all its faults, we owe an incalculable debt of gratitude 
 to the Evangelical revival. It produced a marvellous change in 
 English social life j it made speech more decent, and banished pro- 
 fane oaths. It caused the Sunday to be observed as the Lord's 
 Day, though on the false assumption that it was the Sabbath. 
 Family prayers, and grace before and after meals, became general, 
 and personal piety was quickened. The majority of the early 
 Evangelical school were sincerely earnest, and lived holy and 
 self-denying lives. Newman in his Apologia testifies to this. 
 
 It was their fiery zeal and absolute sincerity that made the 
 early Evangelicals a dominant power in the English Church. 
 " Regarded purely as a spiritual force, the Evangelicals were 
 undoubtedly the strongest party in the Church during the first 
 thirty years of the nineteenth century. So much was this the 
 case that spiritual earnestness was in itself a presumption that a 
 man was an Evangelical, and some were placed in that category 
 simply because they were spiritually- minded, though in point 
 of fact they were out of sympathy with many of the tenets of 
 Evangelicalism. " 1 And Mr. Lecky goes so far as to say that 
 the " Evangelicals gradually changed the whole spirit of the 
 English Church. They infused into it a new fire and passion of 
 devotion, raised the standard of clerical duty, and completely 
 altered the whole tone and tendency of the preaching of its 
 ministers." 2 That there were windbags and hypocrites (not 
 consciously so) among those who were Evangelical preachers 
 is no condemnation of the movement. These were the camp- 
 followers, not the leaders. 
 
 A friend sends me this : " In 1853, when Easter holidays came, 
 I went to spend them with a certain Low-Church incumbent in 
 one of the midland manufacturing towns. I found my sister 
 staying there as well ; she was utterly miserable, and I speedily 
 discovered the reason. The clergyman was a rank Calvinist, and 
 his wife had been brought up as a Scottish Presbyterian. The 
 house was regulated throughout on the severest Puritan system. 
 If my sister or I were merry and laughed, then, in the evening, 
 in the extemporary prayer put up before the servants and 
 visitors, we were prayed for to be delivered from the ungodly 
 spirit of levity. I had brought a Shakespeare with me. This 
 was discovered, and I was required to keep it locked up in my 
 
 1 Overton, The English Church in the Nineteenth Century (London, 
 1894). P- 9". 
 
 ? History of England in the Eighteenth Century, ii. chap. ix. 
 
THE EVANGELICAL MOVEMENT 103 
 
 portmanteau, lest it should be seen by the domestics. I asked 
 for a book to read, and was offered The Dairyman's Daughter, 
 and Elliott on the Apocalypse ; which latter I thought sank to 
 an abysmal depth of silliness such as I had before thought 
 inconceivable. I have visited Crosse and Blackwell's factory 
 when they were making pickles, and I found the whole atmosphere 
 impregnated with vinegar and the smell of gherkins. It ap- 
 peared to me that I was in a religious pickle manufactory, where 
 the air was charged with sour fumes enough to set one's teeth 
 on edge. When I left, and the cabman let me out of his con- 
 veyance at the station, ' Well,' said he, ' how did you get 
 on there ? ' I shrugged my shoulders. 1 Ah,' said he, 1 just 
 before you arrived I took away two young ladies who had been 
 there on a visit, and they were like mad things, escaped from 
 confinement. They romped in the cab — and smashed a pane 
 of glass in the window.' " 
 
 A general conviction prevailed, and was not unfounded, that 
 the sons of these ultra-Evangelicals when getting out into life 
 went wholly to the bad, or else dashed across the frontiers into 
 Rome. Girls often became tricky, sly and untrustworthy. I 
 have myself known such cases. 
 
 Going out of curiosity to an Evangelical meeting, I heard a 
 man discourse on a platform against the iniquities of the theatre. 
 He told an effective story, how that a young man piously brought 
 up at home under Gospel teaching, on being launched into 
 London freedom, resolved on going to the theatre. As he was 
 in the queue, he looked up and saw the direction " This way to 
 the Pit." He recoiled — " the Pit ! " He returned to his lodgings, 
 a converted Christian. 
 
 There were two great centres of Evangelicalism near London, 
 Islington and Clapham. I never came in contact with the Low 
 Churchmen of the former place, but I had relatives at Clapham 
 who belonged to the strictest form of Low-Churchism, wealthy 
 people, who lived uncommonly well, kept a well- furnished table 
 and an excellent cellar. I was a boy then, and was somewhat 
 amused to see how every degree of indulgence was tolerated in 
 meats and drinks, but music, literature, the theatre, and games, 
 were tabooed. They had strawberries out of season, when they 
 cost something like sixpence apiece, but we young folk were 
 not suffered to play Puss in the Corner. From the library, Sir 
 Walter Scott's novels were excluded, as also those of Jane Austen. 
 
 Sydney Smith wrote of the Clapham sect : " Danger to the 
 
104 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 Church arises, not from the Catholics but from the Methodists, 
 and from that patent Christianity which has been for some time 
 manufacturing at Clapham to the prejudice of the old and ad- 
 mirable article prepared by the Church. I would counsel my 
 Lords the Bishops to keep their eyes upon that holy village and 
 its hallowed vicinity. They will find a zeal there for making 
 converts far superior to anything which exists among the 
 Catholics ; a contempt for the great mass of English clergy 
 much more rooted and profound, and a regular fund to purchase 
 livings for these groaning and garrulous gentlemen, whom they 
 denominate (by a standing sarcasm against the regular Church) 
 Gospel preachers and vital clergymen." 
 
 The fund to which Sydney Smith alludes is the " Simeonite 
 Trust " for livings, especially in watering-places and towns of 
 social importance ; these were bought so as to secure a succes- 
 sion of incumbents with Calvinistic views. The Trustees do not 
 seem to have felt much interest in village cures. It was the 
 fashionable, the noble and the wealthy they strove to catch in 
 their net — not the little fish. 
 
 Thackeray had been brought up surrounded by a cordon of 
 the straitest sect of Evangelicalism, and he revolted against 
 it, for he speedily discerned its intellectual feebleness, its self- 
 complacency, its incapacity for laying hold of the great problems 
 of life and thought. And he has transferred to his pages portraits 
 of the men and women he had known — the Dowager Lady 
 Southdown, authoress of The Washerwoman of Finchley Common ; 
 Sophia Alethea Newcome, the Bishopess of Clapham, surrounded 
 by a bevy of Evangelical toadies, men like the Revs. Bartholomew 
 Irons, Silas Hornblower and Luke Waters. 
 
 I was walking one day with a friend in a small town in the 
 West of England that was in the hands of the Simeonite Trustees. 
 The vicar was extreme in his Calvinism, and had recently in a 
 sermon declared that he knew of only three persons in the place 
 who were saved, he himself of course being one. Now I have 
 always held that the sin of idolatry does not involve only the 
 worship of idols, but the setting up of new religions apart from 
 the Church. As we walked down the High Street, I was struck 
 with the number of dissenting meeting-houses of all descriptions. 
 Turning to my companion, I said : "It appears to me that 
 this town is wholly given over to idolatry." " Yes," he replied ; 
 and pointing to the parish church, said, " And there is the altar 
 to the Unknown God." 
 
THE EVANGELICAL MOVEMENT 105 
 
 It must be recognized that present-day Evangelicalism is 
 not by any means so severe, sour and heretical, not to say anti- 
 nomian, as some of it was fifty to seventy years ago. The vinegar 
 is actually losing its acidity and is turning sweet. It is deserving 
 of note that the modern Evangelical no longer preaches the 
 Calvinistic doctrine of the ministers of forty or fifty years ago. 
 No congregation would now endure the inhumanity of such 
 teaching. Nor does he now hold fast, as did his predecessors, 
 to Verbal Inspiration. The better type of Evangelical contents 
 himself with striving to deepen personal religion, and for this 
 he is well calculated. But the other wing of the party is more 
 or less lost in Broad-Churchism. 
 
 Even among the Scottish Presbyterians the most repulsive 
 tenets of Calvin are ignored. The basis of union of the Free 
 Kirk and the United Presbyterian Establishment, and the fifth 
 clause of the Scottish Church Act of 1905, remove from both 
 established and non-established communities any obligation to 
 hold to Calvinism in the old literal sense. 
 
 Mr. J. Ewing Ritchie says : " The Calvinism of the moderns 
 is not the Calvinism of the Westminster Assembly, and yet every 
 (Presbyterian) clergyman at his ordination declares that he 
 sincerely owns and believes the whole doctrine contained in the 
 Confession of Faith to be founded upon the Word of God j 
 acknowledges it as the Confession of his Faith ; and that he 
 will firmly and constantly adhere to it ; and that he disowns 
 all doctrines, tenets and opinions whatsoever contrary to, and 
 inconsistent with, the Confession." 1 
 
 We are, it must never be forgotten, indebted to the Evangelical 
 movement for some great benefits, that last and will last. 
 
 (1) Sunday Schools. — The Evangelicals deserve the credit 
 of having founded these. There exist but scanty traces of them 
 before 1781, when Mr. Raikes, a bookseller of Gloucester, and Mr. 
 Stock, a clergyman, started the movement. They were looked 
 on askance at first by Bishop Porteus of London, but later met 
 with his full approval. Rowland Hill is thought to have been 
 the first to inaugurate them in London, and he took occasion 
 in a sermon to defend them against the objection raised by 
 Horsley, Bishop of Rochester, who considered that they might 
 be used for political purposes. 
 
 Hannah More and her sisters devoted themselves to the duty 
 of illumining the ignorance in sacred things, and softening the 
 1 Ritchie (J. E.), The Religious Life of London (1870), p. 144. 
 
106 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 manners of the young, in the part of Somersetshire where 
 they had settled, by opening Sunday Schools. The institution 
 rapidly spread. The instruction was almost wholly in Bible 
 reading, but where the clergy were orthodox, the Catechism was 
 also taught. Beyond that there was no definite Church teaching. 
 The children were, however, expected to learn by heart the 
 collect for the day. 
 
 (2) Hymns. — A strong prejudice was felt by the orthodox 
 against the use of any hymns in divine service except the few 
 that had got annexed to Tate and Brady's Metrical Psalms. 
 Indeed, Bishop Marsh of Peterborough in his charge of 1823 
 denounced them on the ground that it was a preferring of the 
 words of man to those of God. But they were largely employed 
 in Dissenting meeting-houses, and the Evangelical clergy intro- 
 duced them into their churches. The Olney Hymns — a collection 
 to which Newton contributed largely — became popular. But 
 when Heber, afterwards Bishop of Calcutta, had compiled a 
 hymnbook for use in his church at Hodnet, he applied in vain 
 in 1820 to Manners-Sutton, Archbishop of York, and to Howley, 
 Bishop of London, to obtain authorization to use it. 
 
 Bishop Marsh, already alluded to, spent £4,000 in a lawsuit 
 to stop the use of an unauthorized hymnbook in a church of the 
 diocese of Peterborough. 
 
 (3) Fervour in preaching. — The old style of parson addressed 
 the Intellect. He exhorted to a virtuous life ; he showed that 
 vice led to ruin even in this world ; he produced arguments 
 in favour of a revealed religion ; he propounded reasons why 
 we should believe in the existence of God. 
 
 Sydney Smith wrote : " The great object of modern sermons 
 is to hazard nothing. Their characteristic is decent debility, 
 which alike guards their authors from ludicrous errors and pre- 
 cludes them from striking beauties. Every man of sense in 
 taking up an English sermon expects to find it a tedious essay, 
 full of commonplace morality." 1 
 
 The preaching of the Evangelicals was the reverse of this. 
 They appealed directly to the hearts and souls of their hearers. 
 Instead of the impersonality of the addresses of the clergy of 
 the old school, they made religion a matter of individual applica- 
 tion and feeling. Consequently they drew crowds to hear them. 
 
 At first the Low-Church party looked askance at the move- 
 ment for establishing Colonial and Missionary bishoprics, since 
 1 Sydney Smith's Works, i. 10. 
 
THE EVANGELICAL MOVEMENT 107 
 
 they feared lest the authority of the Committees of the " Church 
 Missionary " and the " Colonial and Continental " Societies over 
 their men might be impaired. The missionary, they thought, 
 would naturally look up to and respect the bishop on the spot, 
 rather than the little knot of authorities at home, albeit these 
 latter held the purse. They need not have feared it, as was seen 
 in Ceylon, where the Church Missionary clergy were actively 
 disloyal to their Bishop, 1 also in Syria towards Bishop Blyth ; 
 and in India, the clergy of the Church Missionary Society refused 
 to recognize the same Bishop as had been appointed for the 
 missions of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. They 
 might have reckoned with confidence on the wilfulness of their 
 employes. Moreover, these Low-Church Societies could dangle 
 before their eyes hopes of preferment, such as the bishops set 
 over them could not offer. 
 
 The Evangelicals uniting with the Dissenters raised strenuous 
 opposition to the sending of a Bishop to Madagascar in 1874; 
 finally the difficulty was overcome by having him consecrated 
 in Scotland. For ten years this disgraceful opposition had been 
 carried on successfully. The anger of the obstructionists was 
 great when their efforts were defeated. 
 
 The party leaders soon saw what a mistake they had made, 
 and they used their powerful influence to procure the appoint- 
 ment of men of their own views, men not infrequently without 
 breeding and tact, very frequently their most obsequious servants, 
 to the vacant sees. By so doing they accomplished two results : 
 first of all they were able to stain with their own opinions the 
 infant Churches in the colonies ; and then secondly, when these 
 nominees resigned their sees, as they almost invariably did, 
 after a very few years' service, and returned home, they were, 
 by virtue of their episcopal character, popped into positions of 
 great influence and no little dignity. Hence the Church at home 
 had a large infusion of low-toned Christianity poured into her 
 by these " returned Empties." 
 
 A few years ago there were no less than thirty bishops who, 
 like the hireling of the Gospel, had deserted their flocks, and 
 were in England snuggling into the cosy corners provided for 
 
 1 The clergy were summoned in 1865 b y Bishop Claughton to meet 
 him in synod. Those maintained by the C.M.S. did not feel themselves 
 at liberty to obey the Bishop's summons without the consent of their 
 " superiors " in Salisbury Square ; and the permission, when asked, was 
 refused. Under Bishop Claughton's successor the same contumacy was 
 encouraged. 
 
108 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 them by their Evangelical friends at home. No less than three 
 of these were ex-bishops of Sierra Leone, and at one time three 
 ex-bishops of Colombo. 
 
 The plea for resignation was health ; but it was remarkable 
 how their healths and appetites recovered in England, and 
 they were able to take, and take with avidity, canonries, pre- 
 bendal stalls, archdeaconries, along with plump livings, even 
 bishoprics, in England. 
 
 As to those sees that have been under Evangelical formation 
 and organization , they compare with such as have been founded 
 and governed by men of Church principles as a rickety child 
 does with one who is robust. 
 
 I remember many years ago I knew at Cambridge a man who 
 was wheeled about in a bath-chair. Through want of lime in his 
 blood all his bones had become as gelatine, and he was reduced 
 to a feeble, helpless lump of humanity. A clever doctor said : 
 " Why, it is lime you want. Lime you must have," and he 
 dosed him with lime-water. Under this treatment the patient 
 became strong, firm in bone ; he grew from a doubled-up heap 
 of flesh into an upright man. And the Colonial and Missionary 
 Churches in the hands of the Evangelicals were like this unhappy 
 wretch. What they needed was the lime-water of the Catholic 
 Faith. When that is given them they recover, where it is still 
 denied they retain their gelatinous structure and their incapacity. 
 
 The decline of Evangelicalism is due to several causes. One is 
 that it never encouraged objective worship, and exaggerated a 
 subjectivity of religion that needs to be supplemented with 
 objectivity. Moreover, as already said, early Evangelicalism 
 had no realization of the Church as an organized body, and 
 that the body of Christ. 
 
 Then again, a doubt was entertained as to their sincerity. 
 Mr. Ritchie says : "A fact becomes increasingly prominent ; 
 the readiness of the Evangelicals to swallow their words, to 
 quietly accept whatever may be offered them by their opponents 
 merely for the sake of position in society. Every now and then 
 a crisis occurs in the history of the Church. If Baptismal Re- 
 generation, for instance, be ruled to be permissible, they must 
 leave ; and then, when the time comes for them to arise and 
 become martyrs, they quickly pocket their principles and remain. 
 Of course they plead their greater opportunities of usefulness, as 
 if religion were better served by dishonesty than by honesty — 
 as if the cause of God were better advanced by falsehood than by 
 
THE EVANGELICAL MOVEMENT 109 
 
 truth — as if position as regards society were of more importance 
 than the man's consciousness of independence and honourable 
 life. For the Ritualist or the Broad Churchman it is no difficult 
 matter to remain in the Church in communion with the Evan- 
 gelical ; but they, in accordance with his theory, are teaching 
 soul-destroying errors ; yet he remains with them and is, ac- 
 cording to his idea, a partaker in their sins." 1 
 
 Dissenting ministers look on them as dishonest men. They 
 know that these Evangelicals differ from them in no point of 
 belief, or rather of disbelief ; they know that they omit the 
 use of what in the Prayer Book they dislike, or put upon it a 
 non-natural gloss — and they ask why these men remain where 
 they are, and find the reason in the clinging to their benefices for 
 the sake of social position and income. No amount of fawning 
 on the Dissenter, inviting him to put on a surplice and read the 
 lessons in Church, or invading the meeting-house to occupy the 
 pulpit j no slobbering over the dear Nonconformist brother 
 at Grindelwald and Keswick conferences, and meetings of the 
 Evangelical Alliance, can remove the impression. 
 
 The hunting after association with Dissenting ministers is 
 due largely to a craving after popularity, and as it is the fashion 
 of the day to be " liberal-minded," these men proclaim their 
 readiness to dance as popular opinion pipes to them. They 
 forget the words of Our Lord, " Woe unto you when men shall 
 speak well of you, for so did their fathers to the false prophets." 
 The Evangelical of the present day no more resembles the Evan- 
 gelical of the class of Simeon, Toplady and Whitefield than does 
 a Nonconformist of to-day resemble the sturdy Puritan of the 
 Commonwealth. The fact from which he has not been able to 
 escape, to which he cannot shut his eyes, is that the doctrine 
 of Verbal Inspiration can no longer be held by him with sure 
 hands as the unshaken basis on which his system can be upreared. 
 Biblical criticism, though it has often gone very much too far, 
 and is always on the change, has yet brought to light truths that 
 cannot be blinked, and established facts that may not be over- 
 looked. He fears to maintain the verbal exactitude of such 
 incidents as Balaam's ass speaking with man's voice, as the sun 
 and moon actually standing still in the battle of Bethhoron, of 
 Jonah spending three days and nights in the belly of the whale j 
 and he is hesitating and timorous as to the foundation of his 
 religion. That on which his fathers planted their feet so securely 
 1 Ritchie, The Religious Life of London (1870), p. 78. 
 
110 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 has been knocked away from under him. He fought against 
 the principle of Biblical criticism with the courage of despair, 
 and now has succumbed. Criticism has by this time found the 
 results of its work popularized and accepted in quarterlies, 
 magazines, popular fiction, and daily papers. To a large and 
 increasing extent he who began as an Evangelical finds himself 
 on a sloping plank down which he slips and becomes a Broad 
 Churchman. But there are others, and these the majority, 
 in whom religious and Evangelical instinct is strong, and who, 
 though hardly yet having found a footing, fall to exhortations to 
 piety, to encouragement of devotion, and to living a holy life ; 
 such are constrained to a wider tolerance, to take a broader 
 outlook more consonant with natural science and textual criti- 
 cism, but as yet they have not formulated a system. Some 
 there be who cling tenaciously to the old doctrine of verbal 
 inspiration — but these are to be found mostly lodging about 
 in nooks and corners like hibernating snails. 
 
 Meanwhile the old Puritan hostility to the High-Church party 
 is disappearing. Some of the venerable controversies are dead 
 and becoming as obsolete as Guelph and Ghibelline ; and each 
 party is beginning to realize that the other holds and lays stress 
 on a truth, but not the whole truth. The Evangelical principle 
 is individualism, the union of the soul with God, and a con- 
 sciousness of that union — indeed, a conviction that it has taken 
 place. The High Churchman insists on the corporate life of the 
 Church, and insists on the Sacraments as the means of Grace. 
 An infusion into his teaching of the Evangelical doctrine would 
 rescue from the danger of formalism. The Evangelical, on the 
 other hand, is even now coming to appreciate that which his 
 predecessors did not — the value of the Church as a bond of union 
 and a pillar of the Faith. 
 
 There is a curious passage in The Banquet of Plato, in which 
 Aristophanes expounds his theory of Love. Man when created 
 was hermaphrodite, containing in himself all the qualities and 
 characteristics of the two sexes; but Zeus " cut human beings 
 in half, as people cut eggs before they salt them," and thus 
 produced the two distinct sexes ; and there is an inclination 
 and a gravitation of one to the other, because till united each 
 is imperfect. At first, possibly, there is repulsion, because the 
 thoughts, feelings and impulses of the one sex differ radically 
 from those of the other. But eventually each discovers his 
 own shortcomings, and then they are drawn together. 
 
THE EVANGELICAL MOVEMENT 111 
 
 Now this seems to me to represent the two parties in the 
 Church, the Evangelical and the Orthodox. Each without the 
 other is incomplete. At first they kept very separate, and 
 distrusted each other. But that condition has now passed, 
 and they are disposed to coquet and flutter about each other 
 like Papagino and Papagina in the Zauberflote — seeking close 
 and lasting union. " I cannot restrain the poetic enthusiasm 
 which takes possession of my discourse," says Agathon in the 
 same dialogue, " and which bids me declare that Love is the 
 divinity Who creates peace among men, and calm upon the sea, 
 the windless silence of storms, repose and sleep in sadness. 
 Love divests us of all alienation from each other, and fills our 
 vacant hearts with overflowing sympathy j he gathers us together 
 in such social meetings as we now delight in celebrating." 
 
 Those opposed eyes, 
 Which like the meteors of a troubled heaven, 
 All of one nature, of one substance bred, 
 Did lately meet in the intestine shock, 
 
 Shall now, in mutual well-beseeming ranks 
 March all one way, and be no more opposed. 
 
 / Henry IV, Act I, sc. ii. 
 
 I quote the Index to a Book of Devotion by a Dissenter, 
 Sir H. E. Lunn. The book is entitled The Love of Jesus, and 
 was published in 191 1. 
 
 Motives of Prayer. General Prayer. The Lord's Prayer. 
 
 Devotions for days of . . . retirement. 
 
 Method of Prayer for the Christian Year. 
 
 Readings for the Hours of the Passion. 
 
 Meditations on the Lord's Supper. 
 
 Hymns on the Lord's Supper. 
 
 Preparations for the Holy Communion. 
 
 Prayers before the Holy Communion. 
 
 Order of Administration of the Holy Communion. 
 
 Prayers after the Holy Communion. 
 
 Method of Bible reading. 
 
 Methods of Fasting. 
 
 The Preface is dated Lent. The Order of Administration is that 
 of the Prayer Book, with the substitution of minister for Priest 
 and with the omission of the rubrics for the manual acts at the 
 Consecration. 
 
 If there be such a levelling up among those who are not 
 Churchmen, what may we not expect among those who are ? 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE CHURCH IN COUNTRY PLACES 
 
 TO understand the condition into which the English 
 Church had fallen at the beginning of the nineteenth 
 century it is well to have in one's hand certain statistics. 
 I will take first of all those made by the Bishops, produced 
 in the House of Lords in 1807. By the returns of that date 
 the number of incumbents resident in the 11,164 parishes of 
 England and Wales was only 4,412, or little more than one in 
 every third parish. There were actually resident, including 
 such as lived near but not in their parishes, not exceeding 5,000, 
 that is to say about one to every two parishes. 
 
 Of the resident incumbents in 1810 there were about 1,500 
 whose incomes were under £150 per annum. In that year the 
 number of livings under £150 a year were : 
 
 Not exceeding £10 a year . 
 
 12 
 
 From £10 to £20 inclusive . 
 
 • 72 
 
 From £20 to £30 
 
 . 191 
 
 From £30 to £40 
 
 • 353 
 
 From £40 to £50 
 
 • 433 
 
 From £50 to £60 
 
 • 407 
 
 From £60 to £yo 
 
 . 376 
 
 From £70 to £80 
 
 • 319 
 
 From £80 to £90 
 
 . 309 
 
 From £go to £100 
 
 • 315 
 
 From £100 to £110 . 
 
 . 283 
 
 From £110 to £120 . 
 
 • 307 
 
 From £120 to £130 . 
 
 . 246 
 
 From £130 to £140 
 
 . 205 
 
 From £140 to £150 . 
 
 . 170 
 
 Total 
 
 • 3,998 
 
 Of these poorly endowed livings 2,500 of the whole were left 
 to the pastoral care of Curates, who in many cases received no 
 more than £40 per annum. 
 
 112 
 
THE CHURCH IN COUNTRY PLACES 113 
 
 In 1832 in England and Wales there were 4,361 livings under 
 £150 ; there were 2,626 without parsonages, 2,183 with such as 
 were unfit to serve as residences. In 1831, in the diocese of 
 Exeter, as many as 280 incumbents were non-resident, mainly 
 because they had in their parishes no houses in which they could 
 reside. 
 
 In 1835, out of 7,167 parishes in England and Wales, where 
 the living exceeded £150, there were 3,556 incumbents either 
 actually or virtually resident, leaving 2,612 cases in which only 
 curates did the duties. The whole number of non-resident 
 incumbents of all classes, after deducting sinecures, was found 
 to be 5,925. Of these, those clergy who were non-resident in 
 one parish because pluralists, but did reside in another, were 
 1,797. Deducting these, and a few others for whom reasonable 
 explanation was forthcoming, from the whole number there still 
 remained 3,500 parishes which were either not served at all by 
 a curate or were served by the curate of a neighbouring parish. 
 
 In 1836 the whole income of the Church, notwithstanding 
 the spoliation to which she had been subjected, amounted to 
 £3,490,497, but of this £435,046 was absorbed by the Bishops and 
 other dignitaries ; and it was very unequally distributed among 
 the Bishops, for whereas the Archbishop of Canterbury put 
 into his pocket annually £18,090, the Bishop of London £13,890, 
 and of Durham £19,480 ; the Bishop of Oxford had but £1,600, 
 of Rochester £1,400 ; and the see of Gloucester, not then united 
 with Bristol, was worth only £700 a year. 
 
 In like manner the livings of the parochial clergy were of 
 unequal value : whereas some small country benefices were worth 
 £3,000, £4,000, or even £7,000 per annum, large parishes in 
 London, Lancashire and Yorkshire, containing 20,000 or 30,000 
 inhabitants apiece, were not above £150. 
 
 In the diocese of Exeter, in 1839, the condition was this : 
 Out of 628 parishes, 244 were without resident incumbents ; of 
 these, however, 162 had resident curates. Fifteen parishes were 
 served by incumbents living two miles off, and 22 by curates of 
 neighbouring parishes. There were at that date 10 parishes in 
 which parsonage houses were in process of construction, but 
 there were 12 uninhabited by incumbent or curate. As to non- 
 residence, this must be taken into account — that there was one 
 parish with only 15 people in it, another with 29, several under 
 80, and forty with not more than 100. 
 
 It will be seen from the above statistics that, although non- 
 
 8 
 
114 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 residence and pluralism are most undesirable, it was not possible 
 to avoid both, when livings were so poor that a rector or vicar 
 could not live on his incumbency alone. A provision that 
 sufficed for an unmarried priest was not sufficient for a parson 
 with wife and family. Moreover, before the Reformation the 
 incumbent very frequently lived in the manor-house, where he 
 acted as domestic chaplain and tutor to the children. This 
 condition of affairs ceased ; and in many parishes there were 
 no parsonage houses extant, and there was no money available 
 wherewith to build one. 1 
 
 The scandal of pluralism was not confined to England or to 
 the Hanoverian period. Thomas Cantilupe, Bishop of Hereford, 
 who died in 1282, was simultaneously precentor and Canon of 
 York, Archdeacon of Stafford, Canon of Lichfield, Canon of 
 London, Canon of Hereford, and held the livings of Doderholt, 
 Hampton, Aston, Wintringham, Deighton, Rippel, Sunterfield, 
 and apparently also that of Prestbury. Thomas a Becket was 
 given S. Mary-le-Strand and Otford, with prebends in both 
 S. Paul's and Lincoln, before he was even in deacon's orders. 
 
 In Germany pluralism was rampant, 2 in France before the 
 Revolution it was common. But in England pluralism existed 
 mainly because the livings were so poor ; while in Italy, France 
 and Germany it flourished because they and the bishoprics and 
 abbacies were so rich. 
 
 In 1801, William Dickenson, member for Ilchester, brought 
 in a bill before the House " to protect and relieve . . . spiritual 
 persons from vexatious prosecutions by common informers, 
 under statute of King Henry VIII, in consequence of their non- 
 residence on their benefices or their taking of farms." 
 
 In the case of information lodged, the case proved and the 
 
 1 What gave great occasion to pluralism was the Black Death in 1348 
 and again in 1361. It swept away nearly one-third of the inhabitants. 
 Above 50,000 persons were said to have perished in London alone. The 
 mortality among the clergy was great, and at its disappearance there 
 were only enough left for one priest to minister in three, four and even 
 more parishes. 
 
 2 Popes even then were pluralists. Clement II retained the wealthy 
 bishopric of Bamberg, and Leo IX that of Toul. Verily instead of the 
 Papacy resting on Simon Peter, it reposed on Simon Magus. The popes 
 provided for their " nephews " and other favourites in the most scandalous 
 manner. I give one instance out of many : Gulielmus Brunelli being made 
 Provost of Wells, aged twenty-three years, had an indult in 1289, not 
 being ordained priest, to hold as well the Church of Westerham, also 
 canonries and prebends of Lichfield, Salisbury, Llandaff, S. David's and 
 S. Omer ; later he resigned Westerham, so as to get another benefice 
 and a prebendal stall at Exeter. 
 
THE CHURCH IN COUNTRY PLACES 115 
 
 fine imposed, half went to the Crown and half to the common 
 informer. 
 
 Now let us see what were the provisions of that Act which 
 could be invoked and put in force against an incumbent, should 
 he attempt to improve his income, by any captious and aggrieved 
 parishioner who resented having his tithe exacted with strictness. 
 
 Under this statute no clergyman , beneficed or not beneficed, 
 could rent a house, except in a city, market-town or borough, 
 under the penalty of £10 per month ; no vicar could lease a 
 parsonage, under a penalty amounting to ten times the value of 
 the profits of such lease. No clergyman was permitted to hold 
 a lease of land under any circumstances whatever, even though 
 it had descended to him by inheritance, and although he himself 
 did not occupy the land, under a penalty of ten times its annual 
 value ; no clergyman was suffered so much as to buy or sell a 
 cow without becoming liable to forfeit triple its value. 
 
 Undoubtedly the Act became generally inoperative, but it 
 hung like a threatening cloud over the heads of the clergy ; 
 it could at any time be enforced, and that it was enforced 
 occasionally is seen from the preamble of William Dickenson's 
 Bill. Incumbents who did reside were always at the mercy of 
 litigious and dissatisfied parishioners. 
 
 At the same time that curates were starving on their £30 or 
 £40 a year, the Bishops, Deans and Canons were gorged with 
 wealth, and doing nothing for it. The Black Book (1820-23) 
 gives a statement of the mode in which the revenues of the 
 Church, amounting to £9,459,565, were distributed. 
 
 Class. 
 
 Average Income 
 of each. 
 
 Total. 
 
 Episcopal Clergy : 
 
 
 
 2 Archbishops . 
 
 £26,465 
 
 £52,930 
 
 24 Bishops ...... 
 
 10,174 
 
 £244,185 
 
 Dignitaries : 
 
 28 Deans ...... 
 
 1,580 
 
 44.250 
 
 61 Archdeacons . . . . . 
 
 739 
 
 45,126 
 
 26 Chancellors . . . . . 
 
 494 
 
 12,844 
 
 514 Prebendaries and Canons, 330 Pre- 
 
 centors, Succentors, Vicars-General, 
 
 
 
 Minor Canons, Priests- Vicars, etc. 
 
 338 
 
 111,650 
 
 Parochial Clergy : 
 
 2,886 Aristocratic Pluralists, mostly non- 
 
 
 
 resident, and holding several livings, 
 
 
 
 in all 7,037 livings, averaging each ^764 
 
 1,863 
 
 5,379,430 
 
 4,305 Incumbents, holding one living each, 
 
 
 and about one-half resident on their 
 
 
 
 benefices ...... 
 
 764 
 
 3,289,020 
 
 Total . 
 
 
 £9,459,565 
 
116 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 The curates, licensed and unlicensed, whose average stipend of 
 about £75 per annum, amounting together to £319,050, are 
 included in the incomes of pluralist s and other incumbents. 
 
 Archbishop Potter, a draper's son, noted for his haughtiness, 
 died immensely rich with the spoils of the Church, and dis- 
 inherited his eldest son for marrying against his wishes. How- 
 ever he obtained for him Church benefices to the value of £2,000 
 a year. He left the whole of his fortune, valued at £90,000, to 
 his second son, who was a reprobate. 
 
 Bishop Sherlock died worth £150,000. Of him it was said 
 or sung : 
 
 As Sherlock at Temple was taking a boat, 
 
 The Waterman asked him which way he would float ; 
 
 " Which way ? " said the Doctor : " Why, fool, with the stream." 
 
 To Paul's or to Lambeth was all one to him. 
 
 A son of Archbishop Moore died in 1865. He was Rector of 
 Hunton, also of Eynesford, also of Latchinford, Canon of Canter- 
 bury, and Registrar of the Will Office in the Prerogative Court 
 of Canterbury. The gross total of his receipts from the Church 
 was £753,647, and his annual income close on £12,000. 
 
 Majendie,of Huguenot ancestry, Bishop of Bangor, who died 
 in 1830, held no fewer than eleven parochial preferments. 
 Chandler, Bishop of Durham, Wills, Bishop of Winchester, and 
 Gilbert, Archbishop of York, all died shamefully rich, some of 
 them worth more than £100,000. In a series of letters published 
 in the Morning Chronicle between November 6, 1813, and 
 March 11, 1814, a Mr. Wright favoured the public with many 
 curious disclosures which had come to his knowledge as secretary 
 to three right reverend prelates — the Bishops of London , Norwich 
 and Ely. In a letter of November 20, he says that he had 
 selected from well-authenticated documents 10,801 benefices, 
 on which were only 4,490 incumbents said to be resident, so 
 that there were 6,311 confessedly non-resident incumbents, to 
 supply whose places 1,523 resident curates were employed, 
 which left 4,788 without resident curate or incumbent. In 
 one diocese, he said, one-third of the parish churches had the 
 services performed in them reduced from twice to once on the 
 Sunday. A very general excuse made for non-residents was 
 bad health. " Now, ill-health of the incumbent himself, or 
 his wife or daughter, is a common pretext, when no other 
 legal cause can be found of avoiding residence. Of twenty-two 
 
THE CHURCH IN COUNTRY PLACES 117 
 
 licences granted in one diocese for this reason, three only of the 
 persons are in a state of health to warrant it, and the benefices 
 from which they absent themselves are very valuable. Some 
 (of these incumbents) live in town during the winter • and 
 although night air certainly cannot benefit a valetudinarian, 
 they may be constantly seen at card-parties, routs, or the 
 theatres ; in summer enjoying the amusements of fashionable 
 watering-places, whilst too often their curates, by the par- 
 simonious stipends they afford them, are with a numerous family 
 in a state of the greatest poverty." To this condition of affairs 
 the Latitudinarian Bishops appointed by the Crown had brought 
 the clergy. And it must be borne in mind that every bishop 
 set to work not only to feather his own nest, but also those of 
 his sons and sons-in-law, brothers, nephews and other relations. 
 Bishop Pretyman,of Lincoln and afterwards of Winchester, who 
 changed his name to To inline on acceding to a large estate, did 
 not leave his children destitute. G. T. Pretyman was made 
 Chancellor and Canon of Lincoln, Prebendary of Winchester, 
 Rector of Chalfont S. Giles, Rector of Wheathampstead, and 
 Rector of Harpenden. Another son, Richard, was also made 
 Canon of Lincoln, Rector of Middleton-Stoney, Rector of Wal- 
 grave, Rector of Wroughton, and Vicar of Hannington. A 
 third son, John, was created Prebendary of Lincoln, Rector of 
 Sherrington, and Rector of Win wick. 
 
 Sparke, Bishop of Ely, quite as scandalously provided for 
 his sons, nephews and relatives. A list may be found in the 
 Black Book. Archbishop Sutton provided seven of his family 
 with sixteen rectories, vicarages, and dignities in cathedrals. 
 Of his eleven daughters, several had the prudence to marry men 
 in holy orders, and soon became amply endowed. Hugh Percy 
 married one daughter, and in eight years was given as many 
 different preferments, bringing in together about £10,000 per 
 annum. He was afterwards advanced to be Bishop of Rochester, 
 and was then translated to Carlisle. According to law he ought 
 to have resigned all the preferments he held at the time of being 
 promoted to a bishopric — four of which, by the way, had been 
 given him in one year ; but he contrived to retain the most 
 valuable prebend of S. Paul's, worth £3,000 per annum, and 
 also the Chancellorship of Sarum. Another daughter of the 
 Archbishop married James Croft, Archdeacon of Canterbury, 
 incumbent of Hythe, Rector of Cliffe and Rector of Salt wood 
 — all preferments in the gift of the Archbishop. A sister 
 
118 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 married Richard Lockwood, who was presented in one year by 
 his brother-in-law with the three vicarages of Kessingland, 
 Lowestoft and Potter- Heigham ; all these livings were valuable, 
 and in the gift of the Bishop of Norwich, and were presented by 
 his Grace when he held that see. 
 
 These are but a few samples of the nepotism that prevailed, 
 and of the low tone of ecclesiastical consciences. What could 
 be expected of the clergy under such a system ? No wonder that 
 the Church sank in the esteem of the people and was regarded 
 as the home of jobbery. 
 
 Another scandal was the sale of livings. There were in London 
 agents who sold them by auction. An American Bishop, Dr. 
 Hobart, during his sojourn in this country, felt shocked by 
 reading the following details of the traffic in the Morning 
 Chronicle, July 13, 1824 : " The Church livings in Essex, sold 
 on the 1st instant, by Mr. Robins, of Regent Street, were not 
 absolute advowsons ; but the next presentations contingent 
 on the lives of Mr. and Mrs. W. T. P. L. Wellesley, aged thirty- 
 six and twenty-five years respectively, were as under : 
 
 Place. 
 
 Description. 
 
 Estimated 
 Annual Value. 
 
 Age of 
 Incumbent. 
 
 Sold for 
 
 
 
 £ 
 
 
 £ 
 
 Wanstead 
 
 Rectory 
 
 653 
 
 63 
 
 2,440 
 
 Woodford 
 
 
 1,200 
 
 58 
 
 4,200 
 
 Gt. Paindon . 
 
 
 500 
 
 63 
 
 1,600 
 
 Fifield . 
 
 
 525 
 
 59 
 
 1,520 
 
 Rochefort 
 
 
 700 
 
 62 
 
 2,000 
 
 Filstead 
 
 Vicarage 
 
 400 
 
 50 
 
 900 
 
 Roydon . 
 
 
 200 
 
 46 
 
 580 
 
 "The biddings appeared to be governed by the age and 
 health of the incumbents, residence, situation, and other local 
 circumstances." 
 
 I knew of the following case : 
 
 A certain living was advertised for sale. The incumbent, 
 whom we will call Mr. Baker, owned the presentation. He put 
 a price on the living which was so high that a would-be pur- 
 chaser demurred. One day the latter received a telegram from 
 Baker's lawyer urging him to come down at once. He did so, 
 and was told that the Rector was very ill, and had been prayed 
 for in church, and was not expected to live. The lawyer 
 accompanied the would-be purchaser to the parsonage, where 
 he was admitted, and entreated to make as little noise as possible 
 
THE CHURCH IN COUNTRY PLACES 119 
 
 on ascending the stairs, and to stay but a short time in the room 
 of the dying man. He and the lawyer ascended, and saw the 
 old man in bed so prostrate as to be scarce able to speak. No 
 demur ensued as to the price, and the contract of sale was rapidly 
 drawn and signed, and a deposit paid. Then the purchaser 
 went down and walked about the grounds and glebe. Two hours 
 must elapse before the train would reconduct him to town. 
 Presently Mrs. Baker emerged from the house into the garden 
 and begged him to come in and have some dinner. This he 
 declined, as, under the circumstances, he did not wish to give 
 trouble in the house. " Not at all," answered Mrs. Baker : " Mr. 
 Baker would be glad of your society." " Mr. Baker ! " "I 
 forgot to add," said the lady, " the crisis is happily past and 
 Mr. Baker is risen, dressed and impatient for his dinner." 
 
 The dying rector and patron lived on for twenty years, and 
 bought back the presentation and advowson for his son. I 
 heard the story from the rural dean. I was told that the old 
 rogue cleared £2,000 by the transaction. 
 
 The law of the land was plain enough, but it was evaded in 
 the most barefaced manner. According to enactments of the 
 law, if a patron were to present any person to a benefice for a 
 corrupt consideration, by gift, promise, or reward, the presenta- 
 tion was rendered void, and for that turn lapsed to the Crown. 
 If a person procured a presentation for money or profit and was 
 presented, he was disabled from holding the living. But by 
 ingenious methods, by the subtle craftiness of lawyers, means 
 were devised for the circumvention of the law. But of what 
 moral quality can a man have been who by such means gained 
 a position in the sheepfold ? 
 
 In 1818 a grant of a million was made by Government for 
 the creation of additional churches ; a further grant of half 
 a million was made in 1824, but part of this went to Scotland. 
 A grant of £10,000 a year was also made for eleven years to the 
 Governors of Queen Anne's Bounty, for the better endowment 
 of poor livings ; and that Bounty has not only been continuously 
 engaged in raising the value of such livings, but it also has lent 
 money to incumbents to enable them to provide parsonage 
 houses for their cures. But the greatest boon of all to the Church 
 was the Tithe Commutation Act of 1836. By this useful 
 measure an end was put to the incessantly recurring disputes 
 and heartburnings that arose out of the valuation of tithe, 
 and the occasional attempt made to take it in kind. The 
 
120 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 parson exacting his tithe pig was a subject of caricature and of 
 satirical ballad. 
 
 In 1802, the patronage of about 2,500 churches belonged to 
 the bishops and deans and chapters, and nearly 1,100 to the 
 Crown. That of 2,000 pertained to lay corporations, including 
 the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge. The remaining number, 
 rather over 6,500, were in the hands of county families and lay 
 individuals. 
 
 Crown livings were disposed of as payment, or part payment, 
 for political services rendered either by the presentee himself 
 or by a relative. Bishops gave livings to relatives and to men 
 who were of the same way of thinking in politics and church 
 matters as themselves. Chapters passed on the presentation 
 from one member to another that they might accommodate their 
 families, and it was much the same with the lay corporations. 
 The colleges appointed men who held a fellowship or tutorship, 
 and the incumbent who lived in College rode out on the Satur- 
 day evening, perhaps even on the Sunday morning, and returned 
 to his rooms in College after afternoon service. If the livings 
 were good and at a distance they were taken by such fellows 
 as desired to get married, and these were sufficiently advanced 
 in years, and so accustomed to their University life as to be 
 quite unable to understand and sympathize with their rustic 
 congregations. 
 
 Family livings went to younger sons. If one would not suffice 
 to keep a son in comfort, a second was obtained for him. It 
 was not a matter of vocation, but of convenience. We can 
 form an idea of what the clergy of this type were, from Jane 
 Austen's novels. Her father and two of her brothers were 
 clergymen. Setting aside Mr. Collins as somewhat of a carica- 
 ture, and as not pertaining to the gentleman class, we have Mr. 
 Elton in Emma, Edward Bertram and the gluttonous Dr. Grant 
 in Mansfield Park, Henry Tilney in Northanger Abbey, and 
 Edward Ferrar in Sense and Sensibility. These were all men 
 of good family and culture, conscientious as far as their light 
 went, who looked to their profession as a means of living com- 
 fortably, with very little to do ; men hardly qualified to be of 
 any spiritual aid to their flocks, though they would be ready 
 to assist them in their material needs. 
 
 " I cannot think," wrote Anthony Froude in 1849, " why 
 as a body clergymen are so fatally uninteresting — they, who 
 through all their waking hours ought to have for their one 
 
THE CHURCH IN COUNTRY PLACES 121 
 
 thought the deepest and most absorbing interests of humanity. 
 It is the curse of making it a profession — a road to get on upon, 
 to succeed in life upon. The base stain is apparent in their 
 very language, too sad an index of what they are. Their duty, 
 what is it ? To patter through the two Sunday services. For 
 a little money one will undertake the other's duty for him. And 
 what do they all aim at ? Getting livings ! Not cures of souls, 
 but livings • something which will keep their wretched bodies 
 living in the comforts they have found indispensable. What 
 business have they, any one of them, with a thought of what 
 becomes of their wretched selves at all ? To hear them preaching, 
 to hear the words they use in these same duties of theirs, one 
 would suppose they really believed that getting on, and growing 
 rich, and getting comfortable were quite the last thing a Chris- 
 tian should propose for himself. Alas ! with the mass of them 
 the pulpit keeps its old meaning, and is but a stage. Off the 
 stage there is the old prate of the old-world stories, the patronage 
 of this rich man and that, the vacant benefice or the cathedral 
 stall." 
 
 This is hard, and unjust as well. If a man cannot live by 
 bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth 
 of God, it is also true that man cannot live by the Word alone, 
 without bread to put into his mouth, and the law prohibited 
 the pastor from engaging in unprofessional work, as S. Paul 
 maintained himself by tent-making. Besides, surely duty may 
 be joyously as well as conscientiously undertaken. The only 
 part in the above stricture that is fair is that on unreality in the 
 pulpit. According to Nelson's signal before Trafalgar, England 
 expects every man to do his duty : did not officers and sailors 
 fight zealously with all their hearts in that great battle, although 
 it was merely duty so to do ? The well-to-do clerics did their 
 duty, as they understood it. But to them duty had a very 
 different meaning from what is understood by the clergy of the 
 present day. With them duty comprised a couple of services 
 on the Lord's Day, with services also at Christmas and Good 
 Friday, baptizing the young, visiting the sick, as also giving 
 marriage benedictions. They had no conception of anything 
 further. 
 
 There was an old man, long ago dead, who had been in the 
 service of our family through three generations. He told me 
 that his grandfather, or great-grandfather (I cannot recall 
 which) had been bedridden in the adjoining parish of Maristowe 
 
122 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 for twenty years. The vicar was the Rev. John Teasdale 
 (1704-1755), who was a most indefatigable parish priest j and 
 Mr. Teasdale was wont during those twenty years to visit the sick 
 man daily. He never missed , weekday or Sunday alike , to read to 
 him and pray with him. Of this Rev. John Teasdale an anecdote 
 is told which, though not illustrating my point, I will relate. 
 He held an estate on lives from the family of Harris of Hayne. 
 A life dropped, and the Hon. John Harris, then of Hayne, sent 
 and took Mr. Teasdale's carriage horses as a heriot — an act 
 which, though legal, was considered unhandsome. On Mr. 
 Harris sending to inquire the names of the horses, he replied 
 that they were called " Honour " and " Conscience " when in his 
 possession, but since they had passed into other hands, the present 
 owner had better impose on them names of his own choice. 
 
 Take the witness of the Rev. J. M. Cunningham, Vicar of 
 Harrow, an Evangelical of the Evangelicals, looking on such as 
 did not belong to his own party with a censorious eye. In his 
 book The Velvet Cushion he speaks of the systematic visiting 
 of the people by the country clergy. The old Vicar is address- 
 ing his wife. " ' I am not sure,' said the Vicar, ' that it is not a 
 presumptuous reliance on the goodness of God, and an abuse of 
 the doctrine of Divine mercy, that has kept me at home to-day, 
 when I should have gone to visit old Dame Wilkins directly.' 
 Her bonnet was soon on, and they hobbled down the village 
 almost as fast as if their house had been on fire. Mary Wilkins 
 was a poor, good woman, to whom the Vicar's visit three times a 
 week had become almost one of the necessities of life. It was 
 now two hours beyond the time he usually came, and, had she 
 been awake, she would really have been pained by the delay. 
 But happily she had fallen into a profound sleep, and when he 
 put his foot on the threshold, and in his old-fashioned way said 
 ' Peace be with you,' she was just waking. This comforted the 
 good man, and, as he well knew where all comfort comes from, 
 he thanked God in his heart even for this." 
 
 Or take Winthrop Mackworth Praed's sketch of his Vicar, 
 in Everyday Characters — mind you everyday characters. Praed 
 was born in 1802. He belonged to the Young Liberal party, 
 and sat in Parliament for Yarmouth in 1834 ; he died in 1839. 
 
 Some years ago, ere time and taste 
 
 Had turned our parish topsy-turvy, 
 When Darnel Park was Darnel waste, 
 
 And roads as little known as scurvy ; 
 
THE CHURCH IN COUNTRY PLACES 123 
 
 The man who lost his way between 
 
 St. Mary's Hill and Sandy Thicket 
 Was always shown across the green, 
 
 And guided to the Parson's wicket. 
 
 Whate'er the stranger's caste or creed, 
 
 Pundit or Papist, saint or sinner, 
 He found a stable for his steed, 
 
 And welcome for himself, and dinner. 
 
 He was a shrewd and sound Divine, 
 
 Of loud Dissent the mortal terror ; 
 And when, by dint of page and line, 
 
 He 'stablished truth, or startled error, 
 The Baptist found him far too deep ; 
 
 The Deist sighed with saving sorrow ; 
 And the lean Levite went to sleep 
 
 And dreamed of tasting pork to-morrow. 
 
 His sermons never said or showed 
 
 That Earth is foul, that Heaven is gracious, 
 Without refreshment on the road 
 
 From Jerome, or from Athanasius. 
 And sure a righteous zeal inspired 
 
 The hand and head that penned and planned them, 
 For all who understood admired, 
 
 And some who did not understand them. 
 
 And he was kind, and loved to sit 
 
 In the low hut or garnished cottage, 
 And praise the farmer's homely wit 
 
 And share the widow's homelier pottage. 
 At his approach complaint grew mild, 
 
 And when his hand unbarred the shutter, 
 The clammy lips of fever smiled 
 
 The welcome which they could not mutter. 
 
 Where is the old man laid ? Look down 
 
 And construe on the slate before you : 
 Hie jacet Gulielmus Brown, 
 
 Vir nulla non donandus lauru. 
 
 Although the majority of livings were poor, there was a certain 
 number that were " fat," and these became the perquisite of 
 men of good family and of political influence. Dr. Valpy was 
 headmaster of Reading School, and Rector of Stradishall in 
 Suffolk, for twenty years. The rich living of Stanhope had been 
 held in succession by three prelates, when its rector, Dr. Phillpotts, 
 was made Bishop of Exeter in 1830. There was a bit of an 
 outcry at this, and he resigned Stanhope and took in its stead 
 
124 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 a canonry in Durham. 1 " Bishop Courtenay held the living of 
 S. George's, Hanover Square, with a population of 430,396; 
 Bishop Pelham a living in Sussex, and Bishop Bethell a living in 
 Yorkshire, each with the see of Exeter." 2 
 
 These incumbencies were, of course, served by curates. 
 
 In 1762 William, Viscount Courtenay, ran away with Frances, 
 daughter of a taverner named Clack at Wallingford, and married 
 her in Edinburgh. The publican said to him, " My lord, you 
 have married my daughter. Now you must do something for 
 my son." " What can I do ? I have nothing I can give him 
 but some livings. He must go into the Church." Accordingly 
 the cub was sent to Oxford, where he managed to pass ; he was 
 subsequently ordained and given three livings — Powderham, 
 Moretonhampstead, and Woolborough, that includes the town 
 of Newton Abbot. He chose to live at the Rectory in the 
 park at Powderham, but his behaviour made him so insufferable, 
 that he was required to quit it, and then he went to live at 
 Moretonhampstead . 
 
 Too many scandalous jobs were effected, but the majority 
 of presentations were honestly made. A country squire liked 
 to have near him as closest neighbour a gentleman, and one who 
 would not cause scandal in the parish. 
 
 Where pluralists were in possession, there the curate had 
 the care of souls. Sydney Smith described him as he saw him. 
 " A curate — there is something which excites compassion in the 
 very name of a curate ! A learned man in a hovel, with sermons 
 and saucepans, lexicons and bacon, Hebrew books and ragged 
 children ; good and patient, a comforter, and a preacher, the first 
 and purest pauper in the hamlet." 
 
 Here is Washington Irving's account of a country church 
 and a vicar of the parish in a plump living : 
 
 " The congregation was composed of the neighbouring people 
 of rank, who sat in pews sumptuously lined and cushioned, 
 furnished with richly gilded prayer books, and decorated with 
 their arms upon the pew doors ; of the villagers and peasantry, 
 who filled the back seats, and a small gallery beside the organ ; 
 
 1 But the see of Exeter was badly endowed. Bishop Voysey (1519- 
 J^ 1 ). of twenty-five manors and fourteen mansions, was despoiled of all 
 save eight. Burnet says of him that he received a pension for life, but 
 " all the rest he basely resigned, taking care of himself and ruining his 
 successors." 
 
 2 Overton : The English Church in the Nineteenth Century (1894), P- 7- 
 
THE CHURCH IN COUNTRY PLACES 125 
 
 and of the poor of the parish, who were ranged on benches in 
 the aisles. 
 
 M The service was performed by a snuffling, well-fed vicar, 
 who had a snug dwelling near the church. He was a privileged 
 guest at all the tables of the neighbourhood, and had been the 
 keenest fox-hunter in the county ; until age and good living 
 had disabled him from doing anything more than ride to see the 
 hounds throw off, and make one at the hunt dinner. 
 
 '* Under the ministry of such a pastor, I found it impossible 
 to get into the train of thought suitable to the time and place." 1 
 
 The parson was doubtless a rector and not a vicar. An 
 American would not know the distinction. 
 
 The clergy of the Hanoverian and Early Victorian period 
 were divided into distinct classes — the well-born, well-bred and 
 well-beneficed,and the poor curates who lived on the crumbs that 
 fell from the tables of the well-to-do men of the same cloth. 
 Some of them were scholarly, some no doubt boors, each well- 
 content by marrying a farmer's or a yeoman's daughter, to 
 receive with her a dower that would enable him to keep a cow, 
 a pig, and cocks and hens. 
 
 The poverty of the livings was due to several causes. All 
 the great tithes of the vicarages had gone to abbeys, many 
 of them out of England ; and at the Reformation these were 
 appropriated by the Crown or given to favourites ; and the 
 small tithes which had served to maintain a chaplain without 
 incumbrances were quite insufficient to support a resident vicar 
 with wife and family. Moreover, in the reigns of Henry VIII, 
 of Edward VI, and of Elizabeth, the livings were plundered in 
 the most shameless fashion. 
 
 But there were other ways in which they were reduced in 
 value. To what extent I cannot say, but to some extent, simony 
 was practised, and an incumbent paid his patron for presentation 
 by alienating to him a portion of the glebe. Thus, in the parish 
 of Coryton adjoining mine, there was a good farm that belonged 
 to the Church, also ninety acres of " sanctuary land." Both 
 the farm and the major portion of the sanctuary land were 
 made over to the patron, probably by the Rev. John Rice, who 
 was appointed in 1778 and died in 1799, for in the register his 
 successor entered after his name : 
 
 This was a grateful Priest, whose wealth, tho' small, 
 He to his Patron gave who gave him all. 
 
 1 The Sketch-book (1821), i. 176. 
 
126 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 Moreover, rectors and vicars for a lump sum of money would 
 make over glebe farms on lives, upon a nominal rent. In another 
 neighbouring parish, the incoming rector found that this had 
 been done in a wholesale manner, greatly impoverishing the 
 living. A few years ago, only just before such an act became 
 illegal, a neighbouring rector who was leaving for another 
 living transferred to the lives of his children three of the best 
 farms on the glebe. 
 
 Most of the bishoprics had been sorely robbed in the reigns 
 of Edward VI and Elizabeth, so that some bishops were com- 
 pelled to be pluralists, as the revenues of their sees would not 
 support them. Some of the worst offenders were the Marian 
 bishops, who on the accession of Elizabeth set to work to make 
 fortunes for themselves by alienating estates of the Church. 
 They conveyed manors to women, children, relatives, by lease, 
 or sold them. Fuller says, " Many bishoprics of the realm had 
 they so impoverished by these means, that some of the new 
 bishops had scarce a corner of a house to lie in, and divers not 
 so much ground as to graze a goose or a sheep, so that some were 
 compelled to tether their horses in their orchard." The Eliza- 
 bethan bishops were every bit as bad. Cox of Ely scandalously 
 robbed his see. Barlow, Bishop of S. David's, ripped the lead- 
 work off the palaces of S. David's and Llawhaden. He was 
 transferred to Bath and Wells, where was the noble Lady Chapel, 
 said to be the finest Perpendicular building in the West of Eng- 
 land. Barlow sold it, lead- roof, stones and all. Bishop Aylmer 
 of London cut down the elms at Fulham to the extent of £6,000, 
 an enormous sum in those days. I give particulars of the 
 proceedings of Edmund Seamier, made Bishop of Peterborough 
 in 1560. He for ever alienated from his see the hundred of 
 Nessaburgh, the Manors of Thirlby and Southorpe, without 
 receiving any recompense, but so as to prepare a way for his 
 translation to a better bishopric — viz. Norwich. 
 
 Other properties belonging to the see that he sold were as 
 below. The proceeds went into his own pocket. 
 
 i *■ d. 
 
 Parcel of Borough Berrie Manor sold to Walter Pye for . 467 9 6 
 Parcel of Thwaites Manor sold to Robert Henson for . 82 o o 
 Parcel of Borough Berrie Manor sold to John Bellamy for 389 19 10 
 The Episcopal Palace at Peterborough sold to James Russell 3,122 o o 
 Three tenements in Peterborough Court, London, sold to 
 
 Wm. Stamford and R. Brown for .... 459 10 0 
 Parcel of Berrie Manor sold to Thomas Baynard for . 146 6 o 
 
THE CHURCH IN COUNTRY PLACES 127 
 
 
 / 
 
 s. 
 
 d. 
 
 Four tenements in Peterborough Court sold to Edw. Wood- 
 
 
 
 
 ford 
 
 
 0 
 
 0 
 
 A TYiAQdn p crp in T^loo-t- Q-(-rpP'+ <;r>lr1 +r> TrwpnVi PhywpI 1 fnr 
 
 lULOjaaJ^ 111 -L ICLt OU1U IU 1 UJL UJ1 V_yW^Wv wll 1 Ul • 
 
 71 
 
 D 
 
 0 
 
 Gunthorpe and Thwaites Manors sold to George Smith for . 
 
 D 
 
 -? 
 j 
 
 5 
 
 Witherington Manor sold to Sir W. Roberts for . . 
 
 I 077 
 
 IO 
 
 6 
 
 Feefarm of Thirlby Manor sold to Henry Price for . 
 
 i,"3 
 
 IO 
 
 O 
 
 Eye Manor sold to John Bellamy for 
 
 968 
 
 I 
 
 8 
 
 The Bell, Center Lane, London, sold to Tho. Masson for . 
 
 780 
 
 IO 
 
 0 
 
 Manor of Borough Berrie sold to Walker S. John, John 
 
 
 
 
 Thurlow, Thos. Matthews for . 
 
 2,982 
 
 13 
 
 9 
 
 Total sale of lands, ^12,729 13s. n%d. 
 
 But to return to the Hanoverian period of the History of the 
 Church. 
 
 A recently published volume of eighteenth-century letters 
 exhibits Georgian religious apathy at what must surely have 
 been its lowest point. " Can it be expected," writes a country 
 rector to his brother in 1780, " that a proper regard to Religion 
 will be kept up by the appearance of it one single hour in the 
 week, which is the case of half the country parishes in the King- 
 dom ? • The Proprietor sells the Living, which consists entirely of 
 Glebe ; the Purchaser considers how to make the best use of his 
 money, reduces the Duty to one, and that in the afternoon, 
 hires a Curate who resides in the nearest Market Town, who, 
 being barely paid for Sunday duty, thinks himself under no 
 obligation to do more, and arrives dirty and fatigued at a ruined 
 Edifice. Disfigured by torn and draggled surplice, he mounts 
 the desk and labours to edify souls by reading the statute 
 service, rendered less intelligible by tropes and figures with which 
 he tries to embellish it in his sermon, all his Arguments being 
 unsupported by the inestimable influence of Example." 
 
 The parish of Lydford, the largest in England, comprising 
 50,751 acres — mostly indeed Dartmoor, but yet with Prince 
 Town in it numbering a considerable population, and Lydford 
 itself, distant from Prince Town nearly fifteen miles by road, 
 was held for a great many years by the Rev. Dr. Fletcher. This 
 Fletcher was also Rector of Southhill in Cornwall, one of the 
 richest livings in the county, worth some £594 per annum — 
 twenty-five miles from Lydford, he held with this the church 
 and rectory situated three miles from the town of Callington, 
 also in the parish. For many years I knew the successive 
 curates of Lydford, but never heard of Dr. Fletcher visiting 
 the place to take duty in it. The chancel roof was in holes, 
 
128 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 and on one Christmas Day the holy table was spread with a 
 covering of snow. 
 
 In my own parish, the Rector, the Rev. Mr. Elford, was non- 
 resident. He lived nine miles off, at Tavistock. When the 
 Bishop demurred to this, " How can I live," said he, " in a place 
 where there is no barber to trim my wig ? " And this was 
 accepted as sufficient excuse. 
 
 From 1795 to 181 1 Elford held as well the curacy of Coryton 
 under the Rev. R. V. Willesford, who was a pluralist Rector. 
 This man was also Vicar of Brentor, Vicar of Awlescombe, near 
 Honiton, curate of Tavistock, and headmaster of the Tavistock 
 Grammar School from 1795 to 1821. 
 
 In this parish of Lew Trenchard, Elford had a curate, ap- 
 pointed in 1820, the Rev. Caddy Thomas, who, I believe, ended 
 his days in the Virgin Islands. He lived in the Rectory, and 
 had a pupil with whom he was often at variance, breaking out 
 into fierce quarrels. The gardener- groom and his wife, named 
 Adams, occupied a portion of the house, and she cooked and 
 served and was housemaid as well. One day Adams heard 
 screams of rage and blows in the library, and rushed in to find 
 that Caddy Thomas had knocked the pupil down, and whether 
 to drive information into his head I cannot say, but he had him 
 on the ground and was pounding his head with the handle of a 
 clasp knife. Adams wrenched the curate away and locked him 
 into the study ; then he carried the pupil upstairs, washed the 
 blood from his head, locked him into the bedroom, and hastened 
 to the stable, where he saddled two nags. Then he brought 
 forth the pupil, mounted him on one, himself on the other, rode 
 away with him, and deposited him with his relatives. 
 
 The Rector of East Mersea in Essex was non-resident. He 
 visited the parish once only in the year, to collect his tithes. 
 But he had a curate who took the duty there and also in two 
 other churches with non-resident incumbents, on the mainland. 
 Mersea is an island connected with the mainland by a causeway 
 that is covered by the sea only at very high tides. Immediately 
 after morning service at East Mersea, the curate had a horse 
 brought to the churchyard gate, where he mounted and galloped 
 as hard as he could spur to the nearest church on the mainland, 
 took there a second morning prayer, dined with a farmer, and 
 then rode off to the third church for afternoon service. " He 
 was a right parson of the good sort," said the aged clerk to 
 me ; "he did leave us so gloriously alone." 
 
THE CHURCH IN COUNTRY PLACES 129 
 
 Hannah More gives an account of the usual state of things 
 in regard to non-residence at the close of the eighteenth century 
 and the beginning of the nineteenth. " The vicarage of Cheddar 
 is in the gift of the Dean of Wells. The value nearly fifty pounds 
 per annum. The incumbent is a Mr. R.,who has something to 
 do, but I cannot find out what, in the University of Oxford, 
 where he resides. The curate lives at Wells, twelve miles 
 distant. They have only service once a week, and there is 
 scarcely an instance of a poor person being visited or prayed with. 
 The living of Axb ridge — annual value about fifty pounds. The 
 incumbent about sixty years of age. Mr. G. is intoxicated about 
 six times a week, and very frequently is prevented from preach- 
 ing by two black eyes, honestly earned by fighting. We have 
 in this neighbourhood thirteen adjoining parishes without so 
 much as even a resident curate. No clergyman has resided in 
 this parish for forty years. One rode over three miles from 
 Wells to preach once on a Sunday, but no weekly duty was done 
 or sick persons visited, and children were often buried without 
 any funeral service. Eight people in the morning and twenty in 
 the afternoon was a good congregation." 
 
 Dean Hole in his Memoirs tells us that the Vicar of Strood 
 was a pluralist and lived far away on his other benefice. Once 
 only did he take it into his head to visit Strood, but as he entered 
 the place was so disgusted with the smell from a basket of stale 
 shrimps offered for sale, that he turned his horse's head and 
 went back to his sweeter cure. " Our curate," he writes, " who 
 lived five miles away, rode over for one dreary service on the 
 Sunday, dined, and we saw him no more during the week." 
 
 But even in some places where the clergy did reside, there 
 was disgraceful neglect. At Stamford, where are five churches, 
 William Wilberforce, when visiting it in 1798, records : " This 
 seems a sad, careless place. I talked to several common people. 
 At church miserable work. Remnant of Sunday-school, only 
 eight children. I have seldom seen a more apparently irreligious 
 place. A shopkeeper said none of the clergy were active, or 
 went among the poor." 
 
 A notable change, however, took place in the Church. The 
 French Revolution, the Reform Bill, had shown the Church that, 
 as Lord Grey had warned her, " she must set her house in order." 
 Miss Mitford, in Belford Regis (1835), wrote : " Of late years there 
 has been a prodigious change in the body clerical. The activity 
 of the dissenters, the spread of education, and the immense 
 9 
 
130 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 increase of population, to say nothing of that word of power, 
 Reform, have combined to produce a stirring spirit of emulation 
 amongst the younger clergy which has quite changed the aspect 
 of the profession. Heretofore the Church militant was the 
 quietest and easiest of all vocations ; and the most slender and 
 ladylike young gentleman, the ' Mamma's Darling' of a great 
 family, whose lungs were too tender for the bar, and whose frame 
 was too delicate for the army, might be sent with perfect comfort 
 to the snug curacy of a neighbouring parish, to read Horace, 
 cultivate auriculas, christen, marry, and bury, about twice a 
 quarter, and do duty every Sunday. Now times are altered : 
 prayers must be read and sermons preached twice a day at least, 
 not forgetting lectures in Lent, and homilies at tide times ; 
 workhouses are to be visited, boys and girls taught in the 
 morning and grown-up bumpkins in the evening ; children are 
 to be catechised ; masters and mistresses looked after ; hymn- 
 books distributed ; Bibles given away, tract societies fostered 
 amongst the zealous, and psalmody cultivated amongst the 
 musical. In short, a curate nowadays, even a country curate, 
 much more if his parish lie in a great town, has need of the lungs 
 of a barrister in good practice, and the strength of an officer of 
 dragoons." 
 
 Confirmation had been sadly neglected, or not properly pre- 
 pared for. I heard of an old parson who, when a period of 
 preparation for this rite approached, got some tracts about it, 
 gave them to the candidates, with " There, read that and you will 
 understand more about it than I do." 
 
 The brother of the late Sir Morell Mackenzie was on one 
 occasion talking about the preparation for Confirmation he had 
 from his vicar. A day or two before the Confirmation Mr. 
 Mackenzie went to see the incumbent of the parish with a view 
 to being confirmed. After some desultory chat the vicar said, 
 " What sort of crop of apples have you had this year ? " "Oh," 
 was the reply, " we had a very good crop, very good indeed." 
 " Ah," said the Vicar, " that is capital. Our crop was small, 
 and the apples not at all good." Then he added, " By the way, 
 you know your catechism, I suppose ? " " Oh, yes," was the 
 reply, " I knew it by heart, long ago." u Well, the Confirmation 
 is next Wednesday. Be there in good time." That was all the 
 preparation the would-be Confirmee had from his vicar ! 
 
 Here is an extract from Mr. Paul Treby's MS. Diary, now 
 in the possession of Mrs. Clark of Efford Manor, near Plymouth. 
 
CONFIRMATION IN THE FORTIES 
 
THE CHURCH IN COUNTRY PLACES 131 
 
 The incident took place during the march of his militia to 
 Winchester. 
 
 " July i8ii, Famham. — The wine here is excellent. ' Good 
 wine needs no bush,' so pull down your sign, Mr. Landlord. 
 There was a Confirmation and a Visitation in the town. Many 
 drunken Parsons, and a few drunken officers. " 
 
 In Devon and Cornwall, comprising the diocese of Exeter, 
 confirmations were held only in the principal towns, and then 
 only when something like a thousand candidates could be secured 
 at a time from the surrounding parishes. In the Life of Bishop 
 Wilberforce an anecdote is given of an innkeeper who sought to 
 obtain compensation from the Bishop, because the candidates for 
 Confirmation no longer attended a ball in the evening given in 
 honour of the occasion, as he had been wont to provide one 
 during the time of Bishop Wilberforce's predecessor. And it is 
 said that the wife of a bishop in the West was accustomed 
 regularly to give a dance upon the day of Confirmation in the 
 cathedral city, at the palace, saying that it was a pity so many 
 young people should be brought together without affording them 
 the opportunity of enjoying themselves. 
 
 It is stated of Bishop North that he once examined (or pre- 
 tended to examine) his candidates for Holy Orders in the cricket 
 field, while watching the progress of the match. 
 
 An old incumbent in the North, who has now passed away, 
 the Rev. John Sharp of Horbury, whose curate I was, used to 
 tell the story of his ordination. " Well, Mr. Sharp," said the 
 Archbishop in his only interview with the candidate, " so you 
 are going to be curate to your father, Mr. Sharp of Wakefield. 
 Make my compliments to him when you go home. My secretary 
 has your testimonials ; he will give you full instructions. Be 
 sure to be at the Minster in good time. Good morning." 
 
 Bishop Pelham (1807-27) examined a candidate for Holy 
 Orders by sending a message to him by his butler to write an 
 essay on some given subject, and then post it to him. On the 
 other hand, Bishop Marsh of Peterborough (1819-39), in his 
 determination to stamp Calvinism out of the diocese, proposed 
 eighty-seven questions to candidates for Ordination and licences. 
 He drew down upon himself thereby a bitter attack in the 
 Edinburgh Review. 
 
 I will now give a few instances — to be supplemented later when 
 I come to speak of Progress — of the infrequency of Celebrations 
 of Holy Communion : The vicarage of Sheepstor had not always 
 
132 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 a resident incumbent. A Mr. Smith was Vicar of Bickleigh as 
 well, and divine service was performed at the former place once 
 only in three weeks. In the Book of Parish Accounts we find in 
 1809 the sum of £1 13s. 5^. for eight bottles of wine. In 1812, 
 for four bottles for the Sacrament and five for the minister, 
 £2. After this entry there is no specification for wine, but 
 for Mr. Smith's account. In 1824 it amounted to £3 15s. 6d. 
 The Holy Communion was celebrated four times in the year, 
 then it declined to three times, and finally, in 1835 and after, 
 to once only. In a charge delivered by Dr. Horsley, Bishop of 
 Rochester, in 1800, he urged : " Four celebrations in the year are 
 the very fewest that ought to be allowed in the very smallest 
 parishes. It were to be wished that it were in all more frequent." 
 At Launceston, a considerable market town, the Holy Communion 
 was celebrated only monthly. It may not be uninteresting to 
 give a couple of sketches of old-fashioned parsons belonging to 
 an extinct type whom I have known. 
 
 There was one in the West, a white-haired man, singularly 
 like John Bright, for whom he was often mistaken, a widower, 
 who wore stays, and thought himself a lady-killer. Wherever 
 there were young and pretty girls he would drive over and pre- 
 sent himself as a suitor, always to meet with a rebuff. Indeed, 
 he was commonly called the Oft-rejected. Usually on every 
 Monday morning he might be seen at the nearest station, leaving 
 by the first train for town, or to visit some congenial friends, 
 heavy port-drinkers, narrators of good, but not always par- 
 ticularly choice stories, and card-players. He would return to his 
 parish on the Saturday afternoon. He could not be persuaded 
 to have a celebration of the Holy Communion on Christmas 
 Day, but he did not miss having one on his own birthday. His 
 sole idea of a reredos above the altar was a huge representation of 
 his family arms — not that his family had other than a fictitious 
 antiquity, and never had been of any importance. 
 
 Another parson whom I knew very well, as he was a near 
 neighbour of mine, was in Yorkshire. He was old when I made 
 his acquaintance, a bachelor in a very large house in a park, 
 that had been a family mansion which had been made over to the 
 Church as a rectory when the original owners moved away. 
 We will call him Underwood. He had been tutor to a former 
 
 Viscount D . He was attended by two worthy servant-maids, 
 
 who sometimes walked over to my church. 
 
 " My Rebecca and Betsy were with you last Sunday," said the 
 
THE CHURCH IN COUNTRY PLACES 133 
 
 old gentleman to me one day. " Ah, they're good girls and 
 varra fond o' Sacraments and all that sort of thing." I may 
 mention that he talked broad Yorkshire, although a ripe scholar, 
 and had Horace at his fingers' ends, and would quote to his 
 bucolic parishioners, regardless of the fact that they could not 
 understand him. 
 
 One day when I called I was informed that he had a touch 
 of the gout and was confined to his bedroom. As I ascended the 
 staircase I encountered two women, one with a baby, descending. 
 " I've been having a baptism and a churching," said he, when I 
 entered and saw him reclining in an embroidered dressing-gown 
 in his easy chair with his leg up. " I daresay you saw the 
 parties leaving." 
 
 Usually baptisms were performed in the houses of the parents. 
 If the happy father was a labourer he would invite the farmer 
 for whom he worked to come, bring a bottle of gin and sit over 
 the fire with the parson, so soon as the ceremony was over. At 
 a farmhouse, the table was laid with spirits, tumblers, pipes, 
 and a pack of cards, and so soon as the child was baptized the 
 farmer with two friends and the rector sat down and made a 
 night of it. 
 
 On such occasions his housekeeper was wont to leave the 
 study window unhasped, so that Mr. Underwood might let 
 himself in by throwing up the sash and climbing over the sill. 
 Below the window was a violet bed, that had suffered through 
 being trampled on upon such occasions, and with the parson 
 one night having slept in it, unable to get the sash up, or throw 
 his leg over the sill. 
 
 One Good Friday the rector was in bed at eleven when his 
 wooden-legged clerk came stumping into the room, out of breath, 
 to say that his Lordship had walked over to service. " Run 
 round," said Mr. Underwood, " scrape together a few farmers. I 
 shall be dressed in a jiffy." 
 
 Viscountess D once invited him to stay for a few days at 
 
 the Park. " I'll bring some of my Jargonelle pears," said he. 
 A few minutes later he returned to the parlour with a little 
 handbasket, in which all that was visible was pears. " You'll 
 require some luggage, I suppose ? " said her Ladyship. " Nay, my 
 Leddy, I've all I want here." " But, surely, that will hardly 
 suffice for the inside of a week ? " He considered for a moment 
 and then said, " I'll just go and get some more Jargonelles." 
 
 On another occasion he was invited to spend a few days at 
 
134 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 B Hall. After a couple of days he made his farewell and 
 
 disappeared. Three days later, the lady of the house, hearing 
 somewhat uproarious merriment in the kitchen, descended, and 
 found Mr. Underwood there. After having been the guest in the 
 parlour, he had been invited to the servants' hall by the butler. 
 He was a kindly and hospitable old man , and was much liked by 
 his parishioners. When I knew him he had become somewhat 
 slatternly, and his housekeeper had difficulty in keeping him 
 approximately tidy. She complained to me, that if she insisted 
 on his having a clean neckcloth he threw a lot of Latin at her — 
 and that frightened her, as she could not understand it, and 
 thought they were bad words. 
 
 The one-legged clerk died whilst I was in the neighbourhood, 
 and the duties of clerk and sexton combined were carried on by 
 his widow. At the approach of Easter it occurred to the woman 
 or to the rector that some decoration would be appropriate, 
 and she consulted him as to the nature of the floral adornment. 
 " Well, now," said he, " as you've lost your husband, it would 
 be suitable to wreathe his crutch in ivy and set it up at the East 
 end o' one side o' the Communion." " And what on the other 
 side ? " inquired the sextoness. He mused and presently said, 
 " Ye might cut out o' stiff white paper the jaws o' Death, 
 wi' mighty white fangs, and stitch together laurel leaves for the 
 gums. It strikes me it would be a neat, poetical and varra 
 appropriate symbol for Easter, and for the loss of Joe (the 
 deceased sexton)." I went over shortly after to take an occa- 
 sional service for Mr. Underwood, and this amazing decoration 
 figured at the East end of the chancel. 
 
 I called during Lent one year to propose that he should preach 
 for me one week-day. I thought perhaps it might do him some 
 good to see how church matters were elsewhere. " Look here," 
 said he, "I'll put a bottle o' good port on the table — and you 
 overhaul my sermons in the lower drawer yonder, and choose 
 which you will have. I must go out for half an hour. John Dale 
 asked me to look at a cow he's bought." 
 
 I did read or rather skim through some of his discourses: 
 there was hardly any Christianity in them, and I could select 
 none — there is no choice in rotten apples. When he returned, 
 I told him that I must leave the selection to himself. Happily, 
 when the day came, a note reached me to say he had an attack 
 of the gout and prayed to be excused. 
 
 The condition of most of the churches in country places 
 
THE CHURCH IN COUNTRY PLACES 135 
 
 was deplorable : the walls stained and the altarcloth mildewed 
 and moth-eaten, no hassocks on which to kneel, the Prayer Book 
 and Bible of the minister tumbling out of their bindings through 
 damp. Such as had attention paid to them were done up to 
 look neat and comfortable, without taste or reverence. I remem- 
 ber going to see a church near Cambridge, and remarked to the 
 sexton that the parson had no kneeling-stool. " Don't want 
 one," said he ; " he alius balances hisself between his chest and 
 the end of his backbone, when he's prayin'." 
 
 Very often the font was made a receptacle for dusters, which 
 however never seemed to have been used. Cobwebs hung from 
 the ceilings, bats occupied the church roof and left stains on the 
 floor and seats, mice had bored their way in, in futile expectation 
 of finding there something to eat. A writer in the Christian 
 Remembrancer in 1841 compares the churches, for the neglect 
 into which they had fallen, to the abandoned temples of an 
 effete paganism. " If dirt and damp, if crumbling rafters and 
 tottering walls, if systematic neglect and wanton mutilation 
 were to be found in the one case, most assuredly they are in the 
 other; the owls and the bats have been permitted to dwell 
 in both ; and at the porch the long rank grass has testified 
 that the paths of entrance are no longer thronged by daily 
 worshippers." 
 
 Lew Trenchard church had a magnificent carved screen, and 
 was seated throughout with richly carved oak benches. Condy, 
 the artist, had made a water-colour drawing of the interior 
 when in this condition. 
 
 In 1833 my grandfather presented to the living his youngest 
 son, Charles, then in deacon's orders only. And, so as to make 
 the church look trim for the incumbency of his son, he swept 
 away screen and benches and reseated the entire church with 
 deal, pews, painted drab, and all with doors. The linings of 
 the family and the parsonage pews, the altar-cloth, the pulpit 
 hangings were of blue fringed with yellow — the family colours, 
 and even the carved bosses of the wagon roof were painted blue 
 and yellow. There being no vestry, the surplice was hung over 
 the altar rails, and my uncle robed there. No cassock was worn, 
 only a very full surplice with high collar upstanding and reaching 
 above the ears. On " Sacrament Sunday," since 1834 monthly, 
 a black bottle with chalice and paten stood in the midst on the 
 Lord's Table, covered by a piece of white linen. There was a 
 gallery at the west end, with a barrel-organ in it, that played 
 
136 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 a limited number of times. The clerk would give out a psalm, 
 and then successively two lines of the psalm, which thereupon 
 the people sang. As there were few in the congregation who 
 could read, this was necessary. 
 
 A certain number of the clergy were more like petty squires 
 than priests. Thackeray's portrait of the Rev. Bute Crawley is 
 not in the least overdrawn. I have known several of this breed. 
 One was master of the Harriers, dressed like a jockey, wore a 
 check belcher, was credited with a rough tongue — but I myself 
 never heard him send forth a volley of oaths. I have seen him 
 capering like a frog at a county ball, and getting unduly ex- 
 hilarated with champagne at the supper. Sydney Smith thus 
 summed up the first charge of Blomfield, Bishop of Chester, 
 in 1825. 
 
 Hunt not, fish not, shoot not, 
 
 Dance not, fiddle not, flute not. 
 
 But before all things it is my particular desire, 
 
 That once at least in every week you take 
 
 Your dinner with the Squire. 
 
 There was one advantage in the parsons' hunting and dining 
 out, and that was that they did exercise some sort of check 
 on foul and blasphemous language. But as to their having any 
 spiritual influence in their parishes — there was none of that. 
 As a rule they were good men, lived moral lives, drank somewhat 
 heavily, fulfilled their duties in church as they understood them, 
 and in visiting the sick — and that was all. 
 
 I will quote here a South Devon song — only three stanzas 
 from it — to show that a kindly feeling existed towards the hunting 
 parson among his parishioners ; and for the sake of the general 
 reader I will somewhat modify the dialect. 
 
 Passon Endacott, down to Thorn, 
 
 Gudliest chap as iver was born : 
 
 Preaches Zundays, an' rides the rest, 
 
 Does his ridin' by far the best ! 
 
 Passon Endacott, down to Thorn, 
 
 Rides straight, lives straight, fresh as the corn, 
 
 Gudly chap as you iver did see 
 
 Fourteen stun', and he's six foot three. 
 
 He follows the hounds, he does, he does, 
 
 Over the hedges and through the fuzz ; 
 
 He hates but two things, only two — 
 
 Barb'd wire fence, and a zarman new. 
 
THE CHURCH IN COUNTRY PLACES 137 
 
 Passon Endacott preaches short, 
 Ten-minute zarman's just his zort, 
 He jig-jogs round the covert like, 
 And longs to hear the old clock strike ; 
 But, bless you, we don't mind at all, 
 Us reads the 'scriptions on the wall ; 
 There bain't no soul as do not pray 
 For Passon Endacott down Thorn way. 
 
 He follows the hounds, he does, he does, 
 
 Over the hedges and through the fuzz ; 
 
 There's two things welcome down to Thorn — 
 
 A chap in need, an' a huntin' horn. 
 
 Passon Endacott' s good to know, 
 Red-brick face and a head of snow ; 
 'Elps us all with zum good advice, 
 Tho' they say that he bain't too wise. 
 But us do know him well, surely, 
 The biggest heart beneath the sky ; 
 An' when Death calls, an' we'm to pay, 
 Best to have gone old Passon' s way. 
 
 He follows the hounds, he does, he does, 
 
 Over the hedges and through the fuzz ; 
 
 He missed but one thing all his life — 
 
 'Adn't the sense for to get a wife. 
 
 As to the ordinary country parson, his sermons were sadly 
 uninteresting, and in no way appealed to the feelings or the 
 imagination of his hearers. I shall have more to say about them 
 in another chapter. Here I will only quote some lines on a 
 Lincolnshire parish priest, written about 1850 : 
 
 Unhappy pastor of the fens, 
 
 Who Lincolnshire's dull peasants pens, 
 
 Worse than Boeotian is thy fate, 
 
 A soul-and-body-damping state. 
 
 Damp is the meadow's wide expanse, 
 
 Damp is the garden, damp the manse, 
 
 Damp are the church, the walls, the books, 
 
 And damp the congregation's looks ; 
 
 Damp too the surplice, sooth to say, 
 
 On solemn Confirmation day. 
 
 Yet sometimes thou the horrid thrall may'st fly : 
 
 Thy sermons, friend, they only will be dry. 
 
 The bishops, especially such as had been nominated by Lords 
 Shaftesbury and Palmerston, had very little, if they had any, 
 sense of humour. 
 
 I remember the case of the consecration of a church in the 
 North, where a procession was formed of the choir and clergy 
 
138 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 in surplices, closing with the bishop, all but the last singing 
 the Urbs Beata. Rain began to fall, whereupon Dr. Proudie 
 spread his gingham umbrella, beckoned to his wife to hook on 
 to his arm, and the two trotted behind the chanting choir — and 
 to the old Gregorian melody too ! — into church, Darby and Joan, 
 under the wide-spreading parapluie. Mrs. Proudie had that 
 day put on for the first time a shot silk gown — that at all costs 
 must not be wetted. 
 
 A somewhat similar case came under my notice at Lindhurst 
 in Sussex, where the Bishop of Chichester was to hold a con- 
 firmation. A procession was formed. First went the banner, 
 followed by the choir, then the catechumens, next surpliced 
 curates, after them the incumbent, and finally the Bishop and 
 Mrs. Gilbert in a cab slowly proceeding as the procession wound 
 its way singing a psalm. The cabby let down the steps between 
 the verses, and the Bishop gracefully handed out his wife at the 
 Gloria. The curious thing in this case was that the Bishop was 
 a man of great personal dignity, but — they had no notion how 
 to do things in those days. They know better now. 
 
 At Hurst pierpoint, till the present stately chapel was built, 
 service was performed in the undercroft of the hall ; and for 
 a chancel a small brick apse had been thrown out to contain 
 the altar and form the sanctuary. On a certain occasion three 
 bishops were at Hurst, and were accommodated in the sacrarium. 
 By an unfortunate oversight no kneeling desks had been pro- 
 vided for them ; accordingly at the prayers they revolved on 
 their heels, went down on their knees and plunged their faces 
 in the cushions of their chairs, thereby presenting to the school 
 and congregation a sight of three white and black globular 
 masses, one rising above the other. No heads and upper portions 
 of the body were visible, only these rotundities in white lawn 
 and black satin. 
 
 If Bishop Bickersteth of Exeter had possessed the smallest 
 grain of humour, it would have saved him from giving the 
 archdeaconry of Totnes to the late Vicar of S. Andrews', Ply- 
 mouth, as a wedding present, when the aged gentleman married 
 a second wife. Nor can Bishop Baring have had a spark of it 
 in him, or he would not have attempted to introduce Mrs. Baring 
 into the throne, to sit beside him. Only the remonstrance of 
 the Dean made him abandon the introduction. 
 
 The clergy were in many cases quite as ignorant of " how to 
 do things " as were the bishops, and processions were a comical 
 
THE CHURCH IN COUNTRY PLACES 139 
 
 sight in those days. Some wore short surplices and a great 
 deal of stalking leg showing below. But it was especially in 
 the headgear that they varied most. Certain old fellows wore 
 " chimneypot " hats, some college " mortarboards," some 
 clerical " wideawakes," and a few birettas ; some were in white 
 socks and shoes, others in boots with elastic sides. Moreover, 
 in processions it was quite impossible to make the old-fashioned 
 parsons refrain from talking to one another. Whilst the choir 
 was thundering forth " O how amiable are thy dwellings, Thou 
 Lord of hosts : my soul hath a desire and longing to enter into 
 the courts of the Lord " — one heard behind one in low tones : 
 " How is Mrs. Good ? " " Middling, thanks. You know she's 
 had an attack of shingles." " Very unpleasant. I had them 
 once — but they are not dangerous." " Not so long as they do 
 not meet round the body " — and then the choir : " Blessed are 
 they that dwell in Thy house ; they will be always praising 
 Thee." 
 
 Bishops and clergy alike persisted in going up to the north 
 end of the Holy Table, like Chevy Slyme in Martin Chuzzlewit, 
 " always round the corner, sir ! " It was quite usual to see 
 two dignitaries, or a rector and curate, hobnobbing to each other 
 from opposite sides of the altar. But the most ludicrous effect 
 was produced when these two were bishops. I saw the late 
 Bishop of S. Albans (Claughton) and his suffragan of Colchester 
 at a visitation. Each was at an end, and each had been pro- 
 vided with high stool or hassock, so they both projected forward 
 leaning their elbows on the mensa, and as their arms were encased 
 in balloon sleeves, the effect was most grotesque, as though 
 four gigantic puffballs had been placed on the altar. Bishops 
 nowadays have somewhat reduced the exuberance of their sleeves, 
 but I doubt if they have a full idea of the comical appearance 
 they present viewed from behind, in " magpie." 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE CHURCH IN TOWNS 
 
 HITHERTO I have spoken of villages and country 
 parishes. Something must now be said about the 
 Church in towns. The squalor that prevailed in 
 village churches did not exist in such as were in 
 towns, for there the pews were appropriated and let, and it 
 was to the interest of the parson to see that the sacred building 
 was kept clean and well warmed ; and that pulpit and reading- 
 desk, if not the altar, should be of handsome material and be 
 well cushioned. The pews were often let by auction. The 
 congregation was one of listeners, not of worshippers. Occa- 
 sionally a lady knelt. The men sat cross-legged. On entering 
 the pew, a gentleman would cover his face by peering into his 
 hat, he standing. " Mother," said I when a child, " why does 
 my dad smell his hat when he comes into church ? " "Hush, 
 my dear! he is addressing his Maker." "But, mamma, it is 
 the maker of the hat whose name is in the crown." 
 
 In the year 1824 a million was granted by Parliament for the 
 building of churches ; and churches were erected at a wasteful 
 expenditure. They were invariably hideous erections : All 
 Souls', Langham Place, by Nash ; S. Pancras, with its caryatides, 
 copied from the Erechtheum at Athens. Some were in pseudo- 
 Gothic style — gaunt halls, lighted by meagre imitation Perpen- 
 dicular windows, without internal arcades. Mr. F. E. Paget 
 in one of his novels struck a blow at these churches designed 
 by Mr. Compo that entirely discredited them. They were 
 without chancels, but furnished with an alcove in which stood a 
 table draped in crimson velvet, with a chair and a kneeling- 
 stool at each end. 
 
 The pews were all appropriated, except a few bare benches 
 at the end for the poor. A stranger entering a church looked 
 about till he caught the eye of the pew-opener, who found for 
 
 140 
 
THE CHURCH IN TOWNS 
 
 141 
 
 him a seat in one of the deal boxes, and received a sixpence or 
 shilling as a gratuity for so doing. A condition of the hand 
 in which the fingers were permanently flexed, though not quite 
 closed, was known as " pew-opener's rheumatism." 
 
 There were in London, in addition to the parish churches, 
 numerous licensed proprietary chapels, un consecrated for the 
 most part, started for popular preachers, and run as money 
 speculations — such as that of Charles Honeyman, described by 
 Thackeray, concerning which more presently. 
 
 There was occasionally a tumbler of water placed on the 
 pulpit ledge, to enable the orator to refresh himself when getting 
 hoarse. Deaf persons were provided with tubes connected with 
 a voice-receiver beside the pulpit cushion, so as to enable them 
 to hear distinctly. I remember a case in which an old lady who 
 was hard of hearing held the end of this apparatus to her ear. 
 The preacher accidentally upset the tumbler with all its contents 
 into the receiver, with the result that a jet d'eau played into the 
 ear and over the face of the lady. 
 
 McNeile was credited with having a contrivance in his pulpit 
 at S. Paul's, Liverpool, for sitting upon or against, so adjusted 
 with springs and cranks as to enable him when preaching to 
 fling himself forward and from side to side without effort. 
 But I never saw that. 
 
 One of the most startling results of the importance attached 
 to the sermon in the minds of Church-people was the arrange- 
 ment in a Northern church of a movable platform within the 
 pulpit, which could be regulated to accommodate the propor- 
 tions of any preacher by means of a mechanical contrivance 
 worked by the clerk at the foot of the stairs. This functionary, 
 after he had raised the preacher to what he decreed was the 
 proper height, was wont to walk into the body of the church and 
 take an observation as to how high or how low the preacher 
 stood as regarded the cushion, and he could always rectify any 
 fault in his previous judgment by turning a handle at the base 
 of the pulpit, so as to raise or depress the platform on which 
 stood the minister in black. The late Archbishop Longley was 
 wont to say that his gravity was never so nearly upset in 
 church as when, on one of these occasions, the clerk looked 
 up and said, " I think you'll do now, sir." Nor must the 
 Commandments be forgotten, inscribed above the Lord's Table. 
 As to the windows, cut in half by the galleries, they sometimes 
 contained coloured glass in the traceries, of the most glaring 
 
142 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 and offensive crudeness ; and below, to prevent the congregation 
 from looking out at what was passing in the street, or catching 
 a glimpse of blue sky and flying, fleecy clouds, the white glass 
 was ground. 
 
 The pews were so ranged as to command the pulpit ; where, 
 as was sometimes the case, the pulpit and reading-desk were 
 half-way down the church, all occupants of the pews to the East 
 sat with their backs to the altar. 
 
 A very good idea of what the arrangements were in London 
 churches in the Early Victorian period may be gained by 
 looking at Hogarth's pictures of the Industrious Apprentice 
 at Church, and of Religious Fanaticism. There was nothing 
 altered. 
 
 I remember when a small boy in London going on Sundays 
 to — I think it was S. Mary-le-Strand. There were ranges of 
 galleries there one above another, divided off as boxes in a theatre. 
 During the sermon I was wont to look up at these, and imagine 
 them to be cages in a menagerie, and while away the tedious 
 hour by fancying them occupied by tigers, apes, and laughing 
 hyenas. Usually in front of the west gallery, that contained 
 the organ and the singers, was a board on which were inscribed 
 the names of the churchwardens when the interiors of these 
 churches were renovated. 
 
 David Copperfield's experiences in church were much the same 
 as mine : " Here is our pew in the church. What a high-backed 
 pew ! With a window near it, out of which our house can be 
 seen, and is seen many times during the morning's service, by 
 Peggotty, who likes to make herself as sure as she can that it's 
 not being robbed, or is not in flames. But though Peggotty 's 
 eye wanders, she is much offended if mine does, and frowns to 
 me, as I stand upon the seat, that I am to look at the clergyman. 
 But I can't always look at him — I know him without that white 
 thing on, and I am afraid of his wondering why I stare so, and 
 perhaps stopping the service to inquire — and what am I to do ? 
 It's a dreadful thing to gape, but I must do something. I look 
 at a boy in the aisle, and he makes faces at me. ... I look up 
 at the monumental tablets on the wall, and try to think of Mr. 
 Bodgers, late of this parish, and what the feelings of Mrs. Bodgers 
 must have been, when affliction sore, long time Mr. Bodgers bore, 
 and physicians were in vain. I wonder whether they called in 
 Mr. Chillip, and he was in vain ; and if so, how he likes to be 
 reminded of it once a week. I look from Mr. Chillip, in his 
 
THE CHURCH IX TOWNS 
 
 14.3 
 
 Sunday neckcloth, to the pulpit ; and think what a good place 
 it would be to play in, and what a castle it would make, with 
 another boy coming up the stairs to attack it, and having 
 the velvet cushion with the tassels thrown down on his head. 
 In time my eyes gradually shut up ; and from seeming to hear 
 the clergyman singing a drowsy song in the heat, I hear nothing, 
 until I fall off the seat with a crash, and am taken out, more 
 dead than alive, by Peggotty." 
 
 Dr. Stoughton has given a graphic account of the proprietary 
 chapels built in London during the latter half of the eighteenth 
 century. M Their architectural appearance did not invite 
 strangers to enter, and the interior, if not a hindrance, certainly 
 was no help to devotion. Built with plain brick walls, shapeless 
 windows, ugly roofs and tasteless entrances, they presented inside 
 deep galleries, tall pews, and a wide aisle in the middle, blocked 
 up by rows of uncomfortable benches for the poor. There 
 stood a pulpit with a huge sounding-board, just in front of the 
 Communion-table, hiding the Lord's Prayer, the Belief and the 
 Ten Commandments. It rose pagoda-like in distinct stories — 
 three desks, one for the clerk, one for the reader, and one for 
 the preacher. Immense brass chandeliers studded with candles 
 hung down from the ceiling, and the upholstery of the place was 
 most abundant. The preacher leaned over a superb cushion, 
 under which were violet hangings, fringed with gold and the 
 letters I.H.S. The hearers sat in green -lined boxes, on well- 
 stuffed seats, with a vast apparatus of hassocks. Select corners 
 were separated from other parts by heavy curtains, where the 
 privileged could worship unobserved. These chapels in fashion- 
 able quarters were frequented by the rich and the respectable. 
 Carriages, with stylishly-dressed ladies and gentlemen, attended 
 by servants in livery, swept up proudly to the door ; and people 
 attracted by a popular preacher, but not entitled to sittings in the 
 edifice, had to fee a beadle or a female pew-opener." 1 
 
 The following curious account of London churches occurs in a 
 book published in Leipzig in 1834, entitled Bilder ans London, 
 giving pictures of London life at that time, by Otto von Rosen- 
 berg, illustrated by his own pencil. I extract the chapter on 
 Religion along with his notes : 
 
 "The rage, now prevalent in England, to attend church as 
 often as possible during the day, in order to obtain the appear- 
 
 1 Stoughton (J.), Religion in England under Queen Anne and the Georges, 
 ii. 103. London, 1878. 
 
144 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 ance and the reputation of a God-fearing man, has now reached 
 its highest point. 1 
 
 " Formerly it was considered sufficient to attend divine 
 service on Sunday morning and afternoon, but now as well there 
 are prayer- meetings almost daily during the week, that last from 
 three to four hours. These ecclesiastical assemblies serve rather 
 the purpose of inaugurating intrigues, of showing off new dresses ; 
 and I may remark in parenthesis, that the vanity of English 
 gentlemen far surpasses that of the French. If one enters a 
 gentleman's dressing-room when he is preparing to go to church, 
 one sees pomatum, oils, scents, curling-papers, whisker-brushes 
 — in a word, everything that can make a man effeminate. How 
 little such a petit-mattre get-up suits an Englishman, whose 
 characteristics gleam out through his borrowed French get-up, 
 is indescribable. 
 
 " In England every one preaches. The shoemaker casts aside 
 his last, stands like John the Baptist in the open under a tree 
 and preaches ; his apprentice serves as his precentor. Hundreds 
 of folk assemble to hear this marvel, and hundreds take a delight 
 in this nonsense. Quite considerable sums are collected, as 
 free-will offerings, so as to build him a chapel. The honourable 
 cobbler is now installed as preacher, and prays as long and as 
 loud as he chooses. 
 
 "When business fails, a fellow becomes a sectarian, and 
 drives a roaring business, for it is easy enough to find an audience 
 of pious or stupid persons. In Lostwithiel in Cornwall recently 
 a dyer named Pleymer was brought up before the court. He 
 had received a call, he protested, to labour for the salvation of 
 men's souls and to preach of heavenly joys on earth, and for 
 this he abandoned his shop, his wife and children. He spoke 
 most unctuously in his meetings, as also before the jury; and 
 his words were listened to with admiration by his adherents, 
 but by unprejudiced persons were considered to be partly stupid 
 stuff and partly impudence. As, however, witnesses established 
 that he had seduced eight girls and married women, and by all 
 sorts of roguery had extorted money from them, he was pro- 
 nounced ' Guilty ' and was sentenced to seek the salvation of 
 his soul and community of joys in a convict settlement. 
 
 " Half an hour before the beginning of divine service, the 
 
 1 " I have known many highly educated families that regard it as a 
 sin to speak on a Sunday on anything but religious matters. And on 
 this day the Bible was never out of their hands." 
 
THE CHURCH IN TOWNS 
 
 145 
 
 poor children are assembled, who are brought up in an estab- 
 lishment for the purpose in every parish, where they are also 
 clothed. In these are often as many as forty or fifty girls and as 
 many boys ; and these strut from the schoolhouse two and two, 
 with the beadle at their head, and attended by their teachers, 
 male and female. In the church they are separated to join the 
 choirs and sing the psalms during the service and after the 
 sermon. The noblest lady could not be neater nor more cleanly 
 dressed than are these girls. They wear a simple white cap, 
 some tied with blue, others with red ribbons ; the cap covers 
 only a portion of their hair cut short across the brow. The 
 frock is coloured according to the portion of the town to which 
 they pertain — a brown, blue, green material, short in the sleeve, 
 with white cuffs a hand's-breadth turned back. The throat is 
 enclosed within a snow-white kerchief, as clean as are the white 
 aprons. Every child has on the arm a number which is engraved 
 on an oval tin scutcheon of the size of a dollar. The girl who has 
 distinguished herself by her good conduct and intelligence acts 
 as a sort of monitress over a certain number of her companions, 
 and has, hung about her throat, a silver medal. The boys carry 
 their numbers, after the fashion of lower Prussian officials, on 
 their chests. The dress of these boys is ridiculous in the extreme. 
 A cap of coarse wool, with a badge of orange, the tails of which 
 flutter in the wind, hardly covers the top of the head. A linen 
 string to which clerical bands are attached is fastened round 
 the throat. The coat, which is coloured according to the district, 
 has the shape of a short great-coat, from which a piece in the 
 form of a skittle has been cut away below. Yellow leather, 
 tight-fitting, short knee-breeches with buckles, do not help to 
 make these youths more presentable. In order to complete 
 their old-fashioned costumes, they wear blue or black woollen 
 stockings and buckled shoes. 
 
 " On the way to church each boy is required to have his 
 hands turned behind his back and to carry his psalm-book under 
 his arm, and march in profound gravity. The girls carry their 
 hands folded below the breast, also with the prayer-book under 
 their arms. In summer, when it does not rain, or when the sun 
 is over-hot, they carry their round straw hats hung over the 
 arm. In rainy weather they have grey cloaks provided with 
 hoods, that reach below the knee. 
 
 " The church officials wear a very remarkable costume. 
 The three-cornered hat is decorated with a broad gold edging. 
 
 IO 
 
146 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 The cloak, which hangs like a sack over their shoulders, has 
 a collar richly adorned, as also the sleeves, with gold lace. In 
 their hands they carry a long round rod, with the tower of the 
 church to which they pertain surmounting it in silver. Every 
 church has two such functionaries, who stand at the entrance, 
 who conduct the preacher from the sacristy to the pulpit and 
 back again, and open the pews to the privileged persons of the 
 parish. 
 
 " The interior of an English church is very simple and pleasing. 
 In some the pulpit stands in the middle and has connected with 
 it two subsidiary structures, of which one is much lower than 
 the other. The loftiest of all is reserved for the preacher ; the 
 second, which is from two to three feet lower, for the clergyman 
 who reads the proper lessons from the Old and New Testament, 
 appointed for the Sunday. The third is for the clerk, who has 
 to pronounce the Amen that concludes every prayer and to give 
 out the psalms that have been selected by the clergyman to be 
 sung. 
 
 " Most pulpits are of massive mahogany. One great misfor- 
 tune about this arrangement is that, when erected in the middle 
 of God's House, it shuts off the great majority of the congrega- 
 tion either wholly or partially from the altar; and in large churches 
 they cannot hear, for the great pulpit standing before the altar 
 throws back the sound, when the officiant is there, before it can 
 reach the congregation. 
 
 " The famous Scotchman Irving came, like so many others, 
 to London, to make money, and arrived without shoes or stock- 
 ings. By giving lessons he succeeded in a short time in earning 
 enough to hire a roomy building, which he called the Scottish 
 Meeting-house, and there he began to give his religious medita- 
 tions. Presently he obtained so great a renown as a famous 
 preacher, that people stood by hundreds before the door, if 
 only to see him. Then, under the plea of serving for a charity, 
 he charged a shilling for admission, 1 nevertheless his meeting- 
 house was packed from top to bottom. Then the Scottish 
 community contributed huge sums to erect a Scottish church 
 in the Gothic style, and this was completed some four or five 
 years ago. Here Irving carried on night and day, and thundered 
 his prophecies, of which only one has clung to my memory : 
 
 1 " In the Foundling Hospital every one who attends service, where 
 the singing is good, and which, oddly enough, is led by actors and actresses 
 — pays a shilling entrance-fee." 
 
IRVING PRKACHIXi; 
 
THE CHURCH IN TOWNS 
 
 147 
 
 ' The world will not perish by fire, but by water. In this general 
 flood England alone, God-fearing enlightened land that it is, will 
 remain intact, and will see the revival of the days of Eden.' 
 
 "As to Irving's personal appearance, he is well formed, very 
 tall and strong, carries thick black hair that hangs down to 
 his shoulders, and he squints badly with his left eye. In bad 
 or cold weather he wears a long black mantle, dresses in black 
 knee-breeches and silk stockings of the same colour. I never 
 saw an ecclesiastic who looked more like a bandit. As the 
 expression of the above-mentioned lefteye is positively diabolical, 
 all the pews on the right side of the preacher are paid for at a 
 higher rate than on the left. 
 
 " Whilst the introductory prayer is being put up, and which 
 at times lasts longer than an hour, the doorkeepers are for- 
 bidden to admit the late comers, who are often to be reckoned 
 by hundreds, and have to wait in the vestibule. Only when the 
 Amen has been uttered are the doors opened, and the tramp of 
 the incoming crowd is like the roar of Niagara. 
 
 " Several times he has rebuked late arrivals with vehemence, 
 exclaiming, ' Why do you come so late ? ' Whereupon one 
 replied, ' What is that to you, Sir ? ' Moreover he gesticulates, 
 in my opinion, too greatly, and his hands, often stretched to 
 heaven above his head, touch the sounding-board ; and his 
 gigantic size has in it something strange and terrifying." 
 
 Irving was the inventor of the sect that absurdly arrogated 
 to itself the title of the Catholic- Apostolic Church. It possesses 
 about eighty conventicles in England, and originated in the 
 unintelligible j abbe rings of some hysterical women, that were 
 supposed to have the gift of tongues. There was about this 
 period a general craving after prophetic utterances or after 
 interpretations of the Apocalypse. One who ministered to this 
 craving and made money out of it was Dr. Cumming. On one 
 occasion he announced the immediate approach of the great 
 tribulation of the Last Day. It came out that he had not failed 
 at the same time to order in a supply of coals sufficient for six 
 months. Alfred Ainger wrote of him : 
 
 Dr. Cumming, the eminent low-church divine, 
 Who is putting us up to a proximate sign, 
 Now tells us, without any ha'ing and hum'ing, 
 What a final and grievous affliction is coming. 
 
 There were at the time a certain number of clerical adventurers 
 of the type of Charles Honeyman, who performed in proprietary 
 
148 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 chapels ; men ready to have florid services and gush in the 
 pulpit, either high — as high was considered in their days, or else 
 low, just as paid best. They wore — it was the correct thing — 
 lavender kid gloves in the pulpit. One of them was Higgins, who 
 changed his name to Montague Bellew ; he read the Command- 
 ments so effectively as to bring tears into the eyes. 
 
 Thackeray's account of Charles Honeyman applied to this 
 set. " Charles Honeyman's chapel was above Sherrick's wine 
 vaults, and Sherrick ran the chapel as he ran certain theatres ; 
 and Honeyman did his best for his employer by recommending 
 his wines." 
 
 Here is the Rev. Charles in his chapel : "An odour of mille- 
 fleurs rustled by them as Charles Honeyman, accompanied by 
 his ecclesiastical valet, passed the pew from the vestry, and 
 took his place at the desk. Formerly he used to wear a flaunting 
 scarf over his surplice, which was very wide and full; and Clive 
 remembered how his uncle used to puff out the scarf and the 
 sleeves of his vestment, arrange the natty curl on his forehead, 
 and take his place, a fine example of florid church decoration. 
 Now the scarf was trimmed down to be as narrow as your neck- 
 cloth, and hung loose and straight. The ephod was cut straight 
 and as close and short as might be — I believe there was a little 
 trimming of lace to the narrow sleeves, and a slight arabesque 
 of tape round the edge of the surplice. As for the curl on the 
 forehead, it was no more visible than the Maypole in the Strand. 
 Honeyman 's hair was parted down the middle, short in front, 
 and curling delicately round his ears and the back of his head. 
 He read the service in a swift manner, and with a gentle twang. 
 In the sermon, Charles dropped the twang with the surplice, 
 and the priest gave way to the preacher." 
 
 The portrait is not overdrawn. There were these clerical 
 cockscombs in the first half of the Victorian period — Thackeray 
 struck them a stunning blow in his description of Charles Honey- 
 man. But these men did not belong to the sincere Church 
 party, or to that of the earnest Evangelicals. They were 
 mountebanks posturing as ministers of the Gospel, and the 
 proprietary chapels were their booths and stages. Now this 
 type of man has disappeared. There may still be, and there 
 are, clerical fops, and eloquent preachers of vapid sentiment, but 
 they know that men and women with common sense despise 
 them. If a man is an ass, he disguises his ears, and pretends to 
 abhor thistles. 
 
THE CHURCH IN TOWNS 
 
 149 
 
 The dress of the clergy in the eighteenth century had become 
 gradually more and more secular ; at last it consisted in black 
 pantaloons and frock-coat, a white tie and collars standing 
 up on each side of the chin — blinkers they were termed. But 
 Newman wore a long-tailed evening dress coat, and this generally 
 became the badge of the High-Church clergy. I saw Keble thus 
 accoutred a few years before his death, and it must be admitted 
 that the clergy looked very much like waiters. The white neck- 
 cloth is still clung to assiduously by schoolmasters and Broad 
 Churchmen. 
 
 Although fine feathers do not make fine birds, the plumage 
 differentiates the kinds. Moreover, most birds have their winter 
 as well as their summer dress. On the Continent the rustic 
 can always be distinguished from the townsman by his costume. 
 In Germany the Bauer has abandoned knee-breeches and worsted 
 stockings, but remains recognizable by his silver buttons and 
 the peculiar cut of his garments. The French paysan entertains 
 no thought of abandoning his serviceable blouse. Indeed, the 
 labour members of the National Assembly are proud to appear 
 in that distinguishing garment. Servant-maids with us still wear 
 black with white aprons and caps, and in this simple livery are 
 far more attractive than in their Sunday war-paint, when they 
 try to look like ladies and fail in the attempt. Our officers at 
 one time habitually wore uniform, now they entertain no greater 
 desire than to appear in mufti. It is hard to expect Tommy 
 Atkins to salute his superior officer habited in cricketing flannels 
 as gravely and respectfully as when he blazes in full regimentals. 
 In France and Germany officers as well as privates only get out 
 of their uniform to get into bed. 
 
 It is remarkable that among the clergy there should have 
 been such a fluctuation in clerical dress. Before the decline 
 already mentioned, every priest wore a short cassock. Now this 
 is confined to the bishops. With the rise of Tractarianism came 
 in long Noah's Ark coats and the black — vulgarly called " M.B." 
 (mark of the Beast) — waistcoat, the discarding of ties and the 
 wearing of a stiff, circular, so-called " Jam-pot " clerical collar. 
 In the matter of cassocks the High-Church clergy copied those 
 worn in France, buttoned down in front, whereas the Evan 
 gelicals adhered to what was flippantly termed " Nursing cas- 
 socks/' with one button at the shoulder. But the clergy who 
 belonged to neither party wore none at all, and as the surplices 
 were short, there was a great display of leg below. The type of 
 
150 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 cassock affected by the Low- Church clergy is, oddly enough, that 
 of the Jesuits. Of recent years the clergy, like peafowl, have 
 been shedding their tails. They are to be seen in very short 
 coats exposing the seats of their trousers. But this is largely 
 due to the use of the bicycle. On the other hand Dissenting 
 ministers have adopted the discarded clerical coats of the Puseyite 
 parson. Among them is to be seen stricter clerical costume than 
 among the clergy. They have learned that dress goes a long way 
 towards inspiring respect. A countryman will doff his cap to a 
 curate clerically attired who will pass a crop-tailed rector with 
 a lateral jerk of the chin. 
 
 Bishop Ellicott once had up an incumbent in his diocese 
 to rebuke him for wearing a short surplice. " Well, my Lord," 
 he replied, " Man wants but little here below, nor wants that 
 little long — and I may say the same with regard to my surplice." 
 
 Our modern clergy may make the same excuse as was made 
 for the short surplice when they wear their coats cut short at 
 the termination of the spine. 
 
 David's servants were thought to be very scandalously 
 treated when Hanun cut their garments to the shortness now 
 adopted by our clergy (2 Sam. x. 4). They resemble the three 
 blind mice of the round. 
 
 It may be absurd in me, but I respect an Anglican bishop 
 in knee-breeches and apron more than I do. one from America 
 in baggy trousers. A beautiful young huntress was the admira- 
 tion of the field in her bottle-green tailor-made habit and velvet 
 cap. Her horse took a hedge of thorns and fell on the farther 
 side. The gentlemen were dismounted and on the spot at once, 
 but could see nothing of the lady. The only objects visible 
 were a skirt fluttering in the hedge, and a jackanapes of a boy 
 in green jacket and corduroys, to whom they administered a 
 kick, and an injunction as a "confounded little nipper" to get 
 out of the way while they explored the ditch for the missing 
 beauty. A lovely girl in habit is one thing — without her skirt 
 she is naught. 
 
 A book has on its cover a title suitable to its contents. Why 
 should a treatise on Pastoral Theology be labelled Roderick 
 Random, or one upon " The Whole Duty of Man " have on the 
 back Sports and Pastimes of the English ? 
 
 There are conditions of life, says Dickens in Oliver Twist, that 
 acquire a peculiar value and dignity from the coats and waist- 
 coats connected with them. " A Field-Marshal has his uniform ; 
 
THE CHURCH IN TOWNS 
 
 151 
 
 a Bishop his silk apron ; a councillor his silk gown ; a beadle his 
 hat and lace. What are they ? Men — mere men. Dignity, and 
 even holiness too, sometimes are more questions of coat and 
 waistcoat than some people imagine." A difficulty is felt in 
 dealing with the insane to prevent them from tearing off their 
 clothes, and although it would be going too far to consider 
 it madness in the clergy when they divest themselves of their 
 uniform, it is indicative of indiscretion. A priest should bear 
 the cognizance of a priest, never knowing when he may be 
 needed. Sterne in Tristram Shandy declares that the outer and 
 the inner man are so much of a piece, that if you ruffle the one 
 you rumple up the other. So much of a piece are they that we 
 cannot but suspect that the secularizing of the exterior of a 
 priest indicates a corresponding secularization within. 
 
 It was presumably due to the mediocrities who entered Orders, 
 at one time that the Church was supplied with feeblings as can- 
 didates for Orders. Formerly it was supposed that there had 
 been a Pope Joan. At the period referred to, an idea must 
 have got abroad that a number of Betsy Janes had surreptitiously 
 entered the ministry ; for to insist on their masculine character 
 the feeblest curates took to growing moustaches, then peculiar 
 to the military. The he-goats complained to Jupiter that the 
 Nannies had been accorded beards. " Suffer them," replied 
 the god, " to enjoy their empty honours, so long as yours is the 
 virility." This certainly applied at one time, not so much now: 
 poor effeminate, languid creatures, without force, without intellects 
 could only show the public that they were not females in cassocks 
 by a scrubby growth on the upper lip. 
 
 The sermons of the period were for the most part deplorably 
 uninteresting. There was no manner of doctrinal teaching, 
 no building up in the Faith, except among the High-Church 
 clergy. The vast bulk of those who occupied the pulpits were 
 mildly orthodox, but they taught nothing ; they contented them- 
 selves with moral exhortations, and pressed on their hearers 
 lessons these latter were perfectly able to draw for themselves, 
 and truths they had never doubted. They greatly affected 
 taking as their text a passage from the first lesson for the Sunday, 
 and we had to endure every year the same platitudes on " Are 
 not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all 
 the waters of Israel ? " or " Is it a time to receive money, and 
 to receive garments," etc. ? ; or Jehoiakim cutting the roll with 
 his penknife and throwing it into the fire ; or Samuel's lecture 
 
152 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 to Saul, "To obey is better than sacrifice "; or a laboured apology 
 for that infamous act of treachery by Jael the wife of Heber ; or 
 from the New Testament, Felix trembling. 
 
 It so fell out that I had heard a sermon on Felix trembling 
 at Brighton ; next Sunday I had Felix trembling again in London. 
 For the following Sunday I was staying with my maternal uncle, 
 then curate in North Devon, and I said to him, " For pity's sake 
 do not let us have Felix trembling on Sunday morning.'' I had 
 forgotten all about this, when a few years later I was in Exeter 
 and went to S. David's Church. To my surprise I saw coming 
 up the nave, to be escorted to the pulpit, my uncle in cassock and 
 gown. As he passed my pew he caught my eye and gave a little 
 start. He afforded us a very good sermon on Blind Bartimseus. 
 After the service I went to him in the vestry, whereupon he caught 
 me by the arm and said : " You rascal, you might have seriously 
 confused me. I was going to preach on Felix, whom I had trem- 
 bling in my pocket, but on seeing you I recalled what you said 
 three years ago. Happily I had Blind Bartimseus in the other 
 pocket, and Felix must remain till a more convenient season." 
 
 Whoever now looks into and thinks of using the sermons 
 printed during the period from 1800 to 1870 ? 
 
 When a widow leaves a parsonage she often gives the tub 
 containing the old written sermons of her husband to his suc- 
 cessor ; faithful, loyal soul, thinking that his old parishioners 
 would relish the same that they had heard before so often. I 
 do not suppose that they would have recognized any of them, 
 because none would contain anything calculated to lodge in 
 their minds. 
 
 When I was in Essex, I purposely read on Sunday morning a 
 sermon by one who became a bishop ; it was from one of a series 
 of his discourses supposed to be very plain and very profitable. 
 On a certain Sunday by mistake I preached the same sermon 
 I had employed the Sunday before, and did not recognize it till 
 I came to the end, and found my pencil note signifying the date 
 on which it had been preached. I was distressed and spoke 
 about it to several of my congregation. Not one had noticed 
 the fact. My reason for using this collection was that I deemed 
 it advisable that the congregation should have the thoughts of 
 some other preacher than myself. I used those sermons — I think 
 they were in three series — for three years, and then threw them 
 into the fire. I can remember the subject of one only of them — 
 and that was a prose version and moralizing of some poem ; 
 
THE CHURCH IN TOWNS 
 
 153 
 
 for it was the only one of those 150 sermons that contained an 
 idea — and that was borrowed. 
 
 A certain old-fashioned parson had just about fifty-two 
 sermons written and kept in a drawer, one for each Sunday in 
 the year, and during an incumbency of over twenty years 
 annually preached the same sermons. In one of them was an 
 allusion to a fox, and the fox was ever expected to put in its 
 appearance on its proper Sunday. But on a particular occasion 
 the parson thought to disguise the identity of his sermon with 
 that of previous years by employing the term " a crafty quad- 
 ruped " in place of the name of the beast. As he and the con- 
 gregation were leaving the church, the old warden came up to 
 him and said, " Eh, but Mr. William, where be the fox hiding 
 to now ? " 
 
 At Pau in the Pyrenees, at the English chapel, the chaplain 
 always gave the identical sequence of discourses. In one 
 occurred something about a white bird. We had been at Pau 
 for the winter of 1847 and returned to England in the spring of 
 1848. In the autumn of 1849 we wen "t to Pau again. I betted 
 with my brother that we should have the M white bird " again, 
 and the bet was for five francs. Sure enough, on the special 
 Sunday the " white bird " again fluttered. " Stump up," 
 said I, nudging my brother: M I have won the bet." 
 
 Then there ensued a change in the character of the discourses. 
 Some preachers sought to engage the attention of the audience 
 by introduction of anecdotes. Now I have heard some of these 
 anecdotal preachers, and they have so stuffed their sermons 
 with stories that one has come away forgetting what they were 
 intended to emphasize. One anecdote is quite enough. 
 
 Sermons are nowadays not quite so colourless as of old. Still, 
 more teaching is needed, and less of commonplace moralizing. 
 They are too long in the morning. When Mr. Weller objected 
 to his son's love-letter to Mary as " rayther short," " Not a 
 bit of it," answered Sam. " She'll wish there was more, and 
 that's the great art o' letter- writing." It is equally so of preach- 
 ing. Does it ever occur to English clergy that one main reason 
 why so few men attend church at eleven o'clock on Sunday is that 
 they do not wish to hear a sermon ? They have not been educated , 
 like the Roman Catholics, to attend an early Eucharist, and then 
 to have the rest of the day for motoring along the roads or 
 sculling on the river ; and accordingly they " cut " church alto- 
 gether. The Evensong is at a time when they are dressing for 
 
154 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 dinner, and therefore they cannot go to that. During the week 
 they have had exhausting mental work, and their strained nerves 
 need relaxation. The entire morning is broken into by a lengthy 
 service, compounded of Matins, Litany, Ante-Communion and 
 a sermon. Moreover in winter the days are short and the best 
 part of the day is the morning. The Sabbath was made for man 
 and not man for the Sabbath ; and that applies to the Christian 
 Lord's Day as well as to the Jewish day of rest. If those who 
 would go motoring on the Sunday would but remember that 
 Worship of God is a Christian duty they are bound to dis- 
 charge, and go, not necessarily to communicate, to the early 
 celebration of the Eucharist — then they are free. 
 
 But to return to the sermon. We live in an age of condensation. 
 Sixty years ago, when our insides needed rectifying, senna-tea 
 was administered in cupfuls, black draughts in a tumbler, 
 castor-oil was shot down our throats from a table-spoon. Now 
 we swallow pillules coated with gold leaf or collodion. Sixty 
 years ago letters occupied four sides of a sheet and were crossed 
 and recrossed ; now half a dozen lines on a postcard suffice. 
 Consider the verbosity of old novels. Sir Charles Grandison and 
 Clarissa Harlowe, each in seven volumes, and each volume con- 
 taining on an average 370 pages. What verbal padding is in 
 Scott's novels ! Thackeray's Vanity Fair is told in 520,000 words. 
 Plays, once protracted through five acts, are now brought to 
 three. A whole ox is reduced to a small pot of Bovril. A preacher 
 should bear this in mind ; if he has anything worth saying, he 
 can say it in ten minutes. In one of our cathedrals — it may 
 have been customary in others and be so still in the same — the 
 doors were locked during the sermon. Only by giving tokens of 
 pressing necessity would the verger allow egress. Could a finer 
 instance be given of the incapacity of the Canons to maintain 
 the interest of a congregation ? Yet they did that, and were 
 not ashamed. I was thus locked in one Sunday. Next day I 
 saw a man in a farm-yard working a chaff-cutter. " Do the cattle 
 like this dry stuff ? " I inquired. " Whether they like it or no, 
 they have got to eat it. We have nothing else to give them." 
 
 A parson who had painfully prepared a sermon divided into 
 several heads, one day in the pulpit forgot the order of his parts 
 or missed a page or two. On returning to the vestry he said 
 apologetically to the clerk : "I am afraid I lost some of my 
 heads." " Sir, if you had only one you would not have lost 
 that." 
 
THE CHURCH IN TOWNS 
 
 155 
 
 I have listened to preachers in the London suburbs, able 
 preachers too, and listened eagerly, hoping to obtain some ideas 
 to use myself ; but in the first place the discourses were too 
 long, and in the second there were too many themes — they jostled 
 and ran down each other, like the ships of the Armada in Calais 
 Harbour ; and I came away without recollecting any. If there 
 were ideas in the sermon they were too many — some good, some 
 indifferent. Sometimes there are really none. On a carte in a 
 French hotel was written in English : " The wines at this estab- 
 lishment are of such a quality as to leave Mr. Traveller absolutely 
 nothing further to hope for," and of how many hundreds of 
 sermons is not this the epitaph ! The preacher should never 
 forget the maxim, Ne quid nimis. A little boy taken to a Natural 
 History Museum was shown a gigantic hippopotamus. The 
 urchin managed to get his head inside the gaping jaws, and on 
 withdrawing it exclaimed, " Lor, mother, there's nothing in it ! " 
 And the same may be said of the majority of the sermons we 
 hear. I have listened to discourses very eloquent , with plenty 
 of florid decoration, but containing no idea. Preachers should 
 be careful not to be like the kettles hung on the oaks of Dodona, 
 that clashed in the wind, and were listened to as delivering 
 oracles, but emitted nothing save sound. 
 
 The late Mr. Knight Watson, who worshipped at S. Andrew's, 
 Wells Street, and was a liberal contributor to the expenses of 
 the church, was solicited one day by the churchwardens for a 
 donation towards the re-flooring of the pews, as the joists were 
 affected by dry-rot. " I know nothing about the floor," he 
 said, " but I know there is plenty of dry-rot in the pulpit." 1 
 
 If a preacher has something to say, he can surely say it in a 
 quarter of an hour. What he has to say is all the better for 
 condensation. Attention cannot be maintained for longer, unless 
 the preacher has exceptional powers, and then all but the main 
 theme is made up of oratorical froth. 
 
 A sermon must have a kernel, a single kernel, and the 
 elocutional verbiage that is projected around serves only to 
 obscure it. Many parochial clergy are obliged to preach twice 
 a Sunday, and they do their very best, and their best is often 
 poor stuff. In fact, a demand is made on them that is beyond 
 their capacity. There be fifty-two Sundays in the year. Two 
 sermons on the Lord's Day, others on Christmas Day, Ascension, 
 and week-days in Lent and Good Friday make up about 115 
 1 This found its way into Punch. 
 
156 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 sermons in the year. More is exacted than the most able man 
 could accomplish satisfactorily. They are driven to take a text, 
 chew it, and administer it thus to their audience, as nurses 
 feed babies. 
 
 Before the Christian era, Horace gave this lesson : 
 
 Quicquid praecipis, esto brevis ; ut cito dicta 
 Percipiant animi dociles, teneantque fideles. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE TRACTARIAN MOVEMENT 
 
 IDEAL very briefly with the first stage of the Church 
 Revival, partly because, as stated in my Preface, this stage 
 has been fully described by many writers, and treated of 
 in several biographies ; also because I was a late arrival. 
 The Tractarian movement began in 1833, I was not born till the 
 ensuing year, and I did not go up to Cambridge till 1852, as 
 pupil to the Rev. Harvey Goodwin, afterwards Bishop of Carlisle, 
 and did not become a member of the University till 1853 ; and 
 the great debacle was in 1845. Consequently I was not brought 
 in contact with any of the Oxford leaders, and when I was at 
 Cambridge there were none of the party in residence. The first, 
 the Oxford chapter, had closed. There ensued a lull before the 
 second came into notice. There are plants, such as the Noli-me- 
 tangere, that, when their seed is matured, at a touch, perhaps 
 only when swept by a burning sunbeam, explode, and the grains 
 are scattered far and wide. It had been so at Oxford. The 
 doctrines of the Church had ripened in Oriel. Now the pro- 
 ductive process was at an end there, and the dispersion, the 
 diffusion of the seeds over England, ensued. They took some time 
 to germinate. " There was silence in heaven about the space of 
 half an hour; " and then the deadly warfare must begin again 
 between the woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under 
 her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars — and the red 
 dragon : the Church and the World, the Church with Michael and 
 his angels on her side, the world backed up by all the powers 
 of evil, of Erastianism and Unbelief. 
 
 From what has been already said it will have been seen that 
 every element of a Church Revival existed in the iVnglican 
 communion, but had not been called into activity and mani- 
 festation. 
 
 There were many thoughtful men who saw that there must 
 come a change in the Church of England if she were not to be 
 
 157 
 
158 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 torn down and laid in the dust. Whately even sketched forth 
 his conception of a Church in 1826 as an organized community, 
 founded by Christ Himself, and endowed by Him with spiritual 
 powers, and whether in connection with the State or not, having 
 its own moral standard, spirit and character. On the other 
 hand, Dr. Arnold divided the world into Christians and non- 
 Christians. A belief in Christ sufficed to admit a man, whether 
 baptized or not, into the brotherhood — the Church. Each man 
 might believe as much or as little as he pleased. As to the 
 organization of the Church, that was in no case of Divine in- 
 stitution, and for the most part it had a mischievous tendency. 
 To minister the Word was of Divine appointment, nothing else. 
 Sacraments were signs of Divine love, but of no special import- 
 ance, and any Christian might use them or not at his pleasure. 
 
 Such a Church would be tolerant of every sort of misbelief, 
 but not of definite faith. In fact Arnold might be spoken of 
 in this respect as was Vertumno by Bishop Ken : 
 
 He fall Religions opens the wide gate, 
 Damns none but those who enter by the strait. 
 
 Dr. Arnold's view of the Church, though it might be that 
 of the man of the world and the Statesman, who did not look 
 deep into such matters, was not one to commend itself to earnest 
 minds. It was the reduction of a highly articulated organization 
 into something of a consistency much like sterilized frog-spawn ; 
 which would inspire disgust, but not love. In Oxford and 
 throughout the country in quiet parsonages men were to be 
 found with very different conceptions of what the Church was. 
 They held the view of Dr. Whately, but they wanted it to become 
 not a view only, but a recognised fact to be acted upon. They 
 could not look into their Prayer Books without seeing that the 
 Church claimed to be something very different from what it was 
 represented by Dr. Arnold, and was supposed to be by the men 
 of pleasure and the ignorant. They could not fail to discern 
 that the Church was not a mere State establishment ; but that 
 it claimed an origin not short of the Apostles of Christ, that it 
 claimed as well to speak with their authority, and that it was 
 an organized society founded by Christ Himself. 
 
 And this feeling, widely spread, sought a voice through which 
 to speak and proclaim what it believed. It could not speak 
 through Convocation — that was muzzled. This was found in 
 Newman, Keble and the other Tract writers. Like a fresh 
 
THE TRACTARIAN MOVEMENT 159 
 
 breeze, the proclamation of these verities dissipated the vapours 
 that had clouded so many brains ; and men — lay and clerical 
 alike — exclaimed : " This is what we have always believed, this 
 is what we were taught in childhood ; but it was never put so 
 plainly before us that we could distinguish every outline." 
 
 The first to articulate with distinctness, in the nineteenth 
 century, the claims of the English Church, was Dr. Charles Lloyd, 
 who had been tutor to Sir Robert Peel, and was appointed 
 Divinity Professor at Oxford. He selected as the subject of a 
 course of Divinity Lectures the History and Structure of the 
 Anglican Prayer Book, a subject which led him and his pupils 
 after him to the examination of the missal and the breviary, 
 and to the exhibition of the Book of Common Prayer as, in fact, 
 a translation and adaptation of these sources. 
 
 To his lectures resorted John Henry Newman, Edward Pusey, 
 and among the younger men R. Hurrell Froude, Robert and 
 Isaac Wilberforce, and Edward Denison. Unquestionably it was 
 the seed then sown that germinated later. Sir W. Palmer did 
 but follow out the line indicated by Dr. Lloyd when he published 
 his Origines Liturgiccz. 1 The fact of the origin of our Liturgy 
 had been well known to the Caroline divines, and had been noted 
 by Sparrow in his Rationale, but it had dropped into oblivion. 
 Men's minds had been too much engrossed with the controversy 
 against Deism to think of the structure and antecedents of the 
 Liturgy. Dr. Lloyd was created Bishop of Oxford in 1827, but 
 as he died in 1829 did not live to see the rooting and germination 
 of his teaching. 
 
 " On 14th July, 1833," Cardinal Newman tells us in his 
 Apologia, " Mr. Keble preached the assize sermon in the Uni- 
 versity pulpit. It was published under the title of National 
 Apostasy. I have ever considered and kept the day as the start of 
 the religious movement of 1833." This notable sermon was the 
 expression of alarm felt by a large body of Churchmen amid the 
 triumphs of the Reform Bill, that the new Ministry was preparing 
 to invade the rights and alter the Constitution of the Church, 
 and interfere with the Prayer Book. It had suppressed ten Irish 
 bishoprics, in defiance of Church opinion, and there was no 
 calculating how far-going and how drastic would be the treat- 
 ment of the Church in England. A meeting was held at the 
 
 1 Palmer had actually begun the book before Dr. Lloyd opened his 
 lectures. He laid it aside, but resumed the work after the death of Dr. 
 Lloyd. 
 
160 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 close of July in the parsonage of Mr. Hugh James Rose, con- 
 sisting of four friends, and it was decided to produce a series of 
 Tracts suitable for the times. 
 
 That little party assembled in Hadleigh Rectory comprised 
 the host, Mr. Hugh James Rose, Mr. William Palmer, Mr. A. 
 Percival, and Mr. R. Hurrell Froude. 
 
 The state of mind in which these friends met has been described 
 by one of them, Mr. Palmer, in his Narrative of Events, published 
 in 1843 and republished in 1883. " We felt ourselves assailed 
 by enemies from without and foes within. Our prelates insulted 
 and threatened by Ministers of State. In Ireland ten bishoprics 
 suppressed. We were advised to feel thankful that a far more 
 sweeping measure had not been adopted. What was to come 
 next ? Was the same principle of concession to popular clamour 
 to be exemplified in the dismemberment of the English Church ? 
 We were overwhelmed with pamphlets on Church Reform. . . . 
 Or. Arnold of Rugby ventured to propose that all sects should be 
 united by Act of Parliament with the Church of England. Re- 
 ports, apparently well founded, were prevalent that some of the 
 Prelates were favourable to alterations in the Liturgy. Pamph- 
 lets were in wide circulation recommending the abolition of the 
 Creeds (at least in public worship), especially urging the expulsion 
 of the Athanasian Creed ; the removal of all mention of the 
 Blessed Trinity ; of the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration j 
 of the practice of Absolution. We knew not to what quarter 
 to look for support. A Prelacy threatened and apparently 
 intimidated ; a Government making its power subservient to 
 
 agitators, who avowedly sought the destruction of the Church 
 
 And, worst of all, no principle in the public mind to which we 
 could appeal, an utter ignorance of all rational grounds of attach- 
 ment to the Church ; an oblivion of its spiritual character, as 
 an institution, not of man but of God ; the grossest Erastianism 
 most widely prevalent, especially amongst all classes of politi- 
 cians. There was in all this enough to appal the stoutest heart ; 
 and those who can recall the feeling of those days will at once 
 remember the deep depression into which the Church had fallen, 
 and the gloomy forebodings universally prevalent." 
 
 After the miserable struggles between Esau and Jacob in 
 the womb of the Mother Church in the reign of Elizabeth, there 
 had risen to the front a strong Church party, and the revival 
 had been anti-Calvinistic. After the Rebellion, when Puritanism 
 had enslaved the land, there was again a revival, that was anti- 
 
THE TRACTARIAN MOVEMENT 
 
 161 
 
 Presbyterian. And now, after the long tyranny of Latitudinarian- 
 ism and Erastianism, there must be an upheaval, and a revival 
 of the spiritual claims of the Church. It was the special work 
 of the Oxford Tractarians to bring into prominence and to justify 
 the principle of the Church as the Kingdom of Christ upon Earth, 
 and the Sacraments as the appointed channels of His Grace. 
 
 Something had to be done, and done at once. That was 
 felt. The eyes of the clerical sleepers must be opened. The 
 ignorance of the laity must be dispelled. The tide, if possible, 
 must be turned. An opportunity — a golden opportunity — had 
 offered, never likely again to recur, for the Bishops to obtain 
 for the Church that freedom of speech and power of adjusting 
 herself to changed conditions of life which she absolutely needed. 
 The Reform Bill had totally altered the relations between the 
 Church and the State. No guarantee whatever existed against 
 the Ministry being deadly foes of the Church, Rationalists, 
 Socinians, Roman Catholics, Jews, Dissenters ; and in their 
 hands would be the appointment to the highest offices in the 
 Church, and the power to legislate for the Church. What the 
 Bishops should have done was to demand, as the price of their 
 votes for the Bill, that the Church should have accorded to her 
 the same liberty that was enjoyed by the Dissenting communi- 
 ties. At the time the Government would willingly have granted 
 so reasonable a demand. But instead of doing so, the Bishops 
 took the very opposite course to that which they ought to have 
 adopted. " Combien d'hommes de qui la mediocrity a ete* le 
 veritable crime ! " In the First Reform Bill of 183 1, twenty-one 
 Bishops voted against it ; and when the Bill was carried in 
 1S32, it was only by nine votes in the House of Lords, so that 
 the prelates might have made what terms they liked. Instead 
 of that, the course they took exasperated the Government, and 
 roused the hostility of the people ; worst of all, it induced the 
 impression to become prevalent that the Dissenters were the 
 friends of the liberties of the people, whereas the Church was op- 
 posed to them. In the exasperation of the populace, the Bishop's 
 palace at Bristol was attacked by the mob and burnt down. 
 
 Nothing was to be hoped for from the prelates. 1 If the Church 
 
 1 Ubi homo timidus erit in rebus dubiis, nauci non erit. 
 
 Quibus res timida aut turbida est, 
 Praesunt turbare usque, ut ne quid possit conquiescere. 
 
 Plaut., Mostell, v. 1. 
 
 1 1 
 
162 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 was to be saved it must be by the clergy, and the clergy were 
 roused to the task by a little band of men at Oxford. No help 
 whatever was to be expected from the Evangelicals. In all 
 that concerned the Church as a body they were afflicted with 
 ophthalmia. They fumbled with individual souls, to force their 
 shibboleths upon them. That was all. If anything was to be 
 done, it must be by men who stood above the parterre, men who 
 could look back as well as look ahead. Such men were now to 
 come to the front. 
 
 The first of the Tracts for the Times appeared on September 9, 
 1833, an( i was from the pen of John Henry Newman. He tells 
 us himself on what principle he started: " I had a supreme 
 confidence in our cause ; we were upholding that primitive 
 Christianity which was delivered for all time by the early teachers 
 of the Church, and which was registered and attested in the 
 Anglican formularies and by the Anglican divines. That ancient 
 religion had well-nigh faded away out of the land, through the 
 political changes of the last 150 years, and it must be restored. 
 It would be in fact a second Reformation — a better Reformation 
 — for it would be a return, not to the sixteenth century, but to 
 the seventeenth. No time was to be lost, for the Whigs had 
 come to do their worst and the rescue might come too late. 
 Bishoprics were already in course of suppression ; Church 
 property was in course of confiscation ; Sees would soon be 
 receiving unsuitable occupants." 1 
 
 The Oxford movement seemed about to carry all before it. 
 Its success was phenomenal, but a check ensued due to want of 
 discretion on the part of one of the writers. Isaac Williams, 
 a man of saintly life and simple character, wrote the tract on 
 " Reserve." Every sensible man sees that it is unwise to turn a 
 bull's-eye light upon eyes that have been accustomed to twilight, 
 to stuff with strong meats a convalescent who has hitherto 
 subsisted on gruel. And Isaac Williams advocated reserve in 
 the communication of Catholic doctrine. But he was misunder- 
 stood. It was supposed that these writers had a pack of Popish 
 doctrines up their sleeves, to be leisurely produced as folk were 
 prepared to receive them. Alarm and suspicion were generated. 
 
 Then appeared the famous Tract Ninety, from the pen of 
 Newman, in the spring of 1841. Its purport was to show that the 
 Thirty-nine Articles did not condemn authorised Roman doctrine, 
 for they appeared before Roman doctrine had been finally pro- 
 1 Apologia pro Vita sua (1876), p. 43. 
 
THE TRACTARIAN MOVEMENT 163 
 
 mulgated by the Council of Trent. What they did condemn were 
 popular exaggerations. Newman showed that the Articles were 
 capable of a Catholic interpretation, and that they were inclu- 
 sive rather than exclusive, worded with purposeful vagueness in 
 order to comprehend those — and they were the majority of the 
 nation — who clung to old usages and beliefs, as well as such as 
 had been infected abroad with the new foreign beliefs. As I 
 have said in a former chapter, the object of the compilers was 
 to comprehend as many as possible within the National Church, 
 to make it like the tree of Nebuchadnezzar's vision, extending her 
 boughs throughout the land, sheltering in them the birds of the 
 air and beneath them the beasts of the field. 
 
 Roman theologians had addressed themselves to the same 
 task — Cassander, Francis a Santa Clara, and Dupin. 1 
 
 The Articles were dated 1563, and the Papal Confirmation of 
 the Tridentine Canons did not take place till January 26, 1564. 
 
 What is now known to every student of the Reformation in 
 England was not known, or known but by a very few, then. The 
 Articles were drawn up as a compromise between men who 
 were quite willing to break with the Pope and get rid of gross 
 and flagrant abuses, but were not willing to abandon the old 
 theology, and on the other side, men imbued with Protestant 
 prejudices, but yet not unlearned in the teaching of the Fathers. 
 The Catholics were content to have the abuses denounced, so 
 that the Catholic faith should remain intact ; and the Protestants 
 insisted on the introduction of articles capable of a Lutheran 
 or a Calvinistic interpretation ; and these Articles must be read 
 and subscribed to nowadays in the light of a compromise of the 
 sixteenth century that no longer affects our present tenets. 
 
 But the publication of Tract Ninety was, to say the least, 
 injudicious, and Newman was not justified in issuing it till it 
 had been approved by the other writers. As it was, only Keble 
 and Williams saw it in proof. 2 
 
 Newman next deliberately fomented the exasperation felt 
 consequent on the appearance of the Tract, by publishing the 
 Remains of R. Hurrell Froude, who in his letters had expressed 
 admiration for the Roman Church, its ceremonies and its beliefs. 
 
 1 Dupin wrote his Commonitovium, which was forwarded to Archbishop 
 Wake in August 171 8. It is an ingenious attempt to interpret the Thirty- 
 nine Articles of the Church of England in a sense not repugnant to the 
 doctrines and standards of the Church of Rome. 
 
 2 Isaac Williams tried hard to dissuade Newman from publishing. Auto- 
 biography, ed. Sir G. Prevost (1893), p. 108. 
 
164 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 Newman was a self-willed man, and he felt a malicious pleasure 
 in shocking Protestant feeling. Two years previously he had 
 written what he afterwards declared was intended to be his 
 " last word as an Anglican to an Anglican " — why then did he 
 go back on what he had purposed ? With the smallest grain 
 of common sense Newman must have foreseen the consequences, 
 the conflagration that such a Tract was bound to produce. And 
 then, why did he aggravate it by throwing on another faggot ? 
 
 It is quite true that many of the propositions laid down by 
 Newman are now accepted as well founded, owing to our further 
 knowledge of the conditions of religious feeling in the days of 
 Elizabeth ; but it was a fatal, an unpardonable error of judg- 
 ment to produce his thesis at a time when ignorance was so 
 rife and prejudice so keen. 
 
 Hitherto hardly any one in authority had spoken against 
 the movement. It had, to some extent, become popular — in 
 Oxford eminently so among the ablest and the holiest of her 
 sons. But now, with the publication of this Tract, all was 
 changed. Four tutors, of whom H. B. Wilson of S. John's, 
 A. C. Tait of Balliol, who was to become Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury, were the most conspicuous, at once denounced it, and the 
 Board of the Heads of Houses issued a condemnation. After 
 that ensued a tempest of suspicion and hostility, and loud outcries 
 against the writers of the Tracts as men disloyal and conspiring 
 to Romanize the Church of England — dishonest in interpretation 
 of her Articles, by taking them in a non-natural sense. For 
 over forty years the party was thus branded. Its principles 
 were savagely attacked alike by Latitudinarians, who themselves 
 used largely a non-natural interpretation, by Evangelicals, who 
 were notoriously guilty of depraving the teaching of the Church, 
 and by frightened Churchmen. " Slowly and painfully, amid 
 opposition, discouragement and desertion, it had to work its 
 way to public recognition, as one of many possible theories of 
 the English Church, which at least seemed to have the power 
 of making men earnest and active. Further than that it can 
 hardly be said that organized public opinion has as yet 
 gone." 1 
 
 Every movement produces a host of free-lances and skirmishers 
 who go far ahead of the main army. It was so notably among 
 the Tractarians. A fissure soon appeared between the sober 
 and sound men, who had been brought up from childhood in 
 
 1 Wakeman, History of the Church of England (1904), p. 474. 
 
THE TRACTARIAN MOVEMENT 165 
 
 Church principles, and who loved the Church as their spiritual 
 mother, and a party of hot-headed enthusiasts such as Ward 
 and Oakeley, who scoffed at the Anglican Communion, exag- 
 gerated all its weaknesses, and belauded everything that was 
 Roman, whilst shutting their eyes to the blemishes of the Papal 
 Church. This disloyal spirit found utterance in Ward's Ideal 
 of a Christian Church (1844). But it had been preceded by 
 articles in the British Critic, so hostile to the claims of the English 
 Communion that it lost its subscribers, and perished ignomini- 
 ously in the autumn of 1843. Ward's book was condemned by 
 the University of Oxford and himself degraded from his Univer- 
 sity degrees. Ward had claimed a right to hold the entire circle 
 of Roman doctrine whilst remaining a member of the English 
 Church — a monstrous claim ; and the condemnation of his 
 book was amply justified. 
 
 These men elbowed out, or tried to elbow out, the cooler 
 fathers of the Oxford movement. The relation was much like 
 — as has been remarked — that of the Jacobins to the Girondists, 
 men self-willed, impatient of control, restless, dissatisfied, and 
 despising those who clung to the old way. 
 
 In 1850, Dr. Hook wrote of this class : " I now find them 
 calumniators of the Church of England, and vindicators of the 
 Church of Rome ; palliating the vices of the Romish system, 
 and magnifying the deficiencies of the Church of England ; 
 sneering at everything Anglican, and admiring everything 
 Romish ; students of the breviary and missal, disciples of the 
 schoolmen, converts to medievalism, insinuating Romish 
 practices in their private, and infusing a Romish tone into 
 their public devotions ; introducing the Romish confessional, 
 enjoining Romish penance ; adopting Romish prostrations, 
 recommending Romish litanies ; muttering Romish shibboleths, 
 and rejoicing in the cant of Romish fanaticism ; assuming some- 
 times the garb of the Romish priesthood, and venerating without 
 imitating their celibacy; defending Romish miracles, and receiving 
 as true the lying legends of Rome ; almost adoring Romish 
 saints, and complaining that we have had no saints in England 
 since we purified our Church." 
 
 This is to a limited extent true ; every stream as it rushes 
 over impediments throws up a froth, and these men were the 
 froth that lodged elsewhere than in the current that flowed on 
 steadily, divinely guided, in the Anglican Communion. It was 
 such as these who produced suspicion, and did much to hamper 
 
166 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 the progress of the movement. They went — after having done 
 incalculable mischief to the cause. 
 
 What neither the Heads of the Houses at Oxford nor the 
 Bishops on their bench saw was that there could not have been 
 so widespread and enthusiastic a movement for reform unless 
 there had been a real cause for it. The sole wise policy, when- 
 soever and wheresoever there is impatience for a reformation, is 
 to see where is the focus of the agitation, and what is its raison 
 d'etre. If the Bishops in England at the outbreak of Trac- 
 tarianism had possessed any wisdom they would have recognized 
 that it was a force, a living force, and had they attempted to 
 direct it, they might have done with it what they would. When 
 a whale tore a hole in the vessel that contained Baron Mun- 
 chausen, he stopped the leak by sitting on the orifice. They 
 adopted the Munchausen method. How could these Bishops 
 suppose that their puny efforts would staunch the gap and drive 
 back the waves ? 
 
 In 1841, Sumner of Chester, Boustead of Lichfield, Maltby of 
 Durham, and in 1842 Copleston of Llandaff , Pepys of Worcester, 
 Musgrave of Hereford, Thirlwall of S. David's, Blomfield of 
 London, even Denison of Salisbury and Bagot of Oxford, with 
 varying degrees of decision, charged against the movement. 
 E pur si muove. Dr. Pusey wrote : "I remember Newman 
 saying, ' Oh, Pusey ! we have leant on the Bishops, and they 
 have broken down under us !' ... I thought to myself, 1 At 
 least I never leant on the Bishops. I leant on the Church of 
 England.' " 1 
 
 Dr. (afterwards Sir Edward) Barry, an Irish physician, who 
 came to London, and is mentioned by Boswell, maintained that 
 death was due to active pulsation, and that to be healthy 
 every possible means must be employed to reduce the pulse to 
 its slowest beat short of stopping altogether. In their dealings 
 with the Church the Bishops were of Barry's opinion. 
 
 For many generations no writers had written with such force 
 and good faith to rally Churchmen to the side of the Bishops, 
 none had pointed out so clearly their Apostolic authority, and 
 had so impressed on all Churchmen the duty of allegiance to it, 
 as did the early Tract writers. And now the Bishops turned 
 against them. The Tractarians had sought, like Aaron and Hur, 
 to stay up the arms of the episcopate, whilst the war raged 
 between the Church and the World, and now — it was as though 
 
 1 Life, ii. 236. 
 
THE TRACTARIAN MOVEMENT 167 
 
 Moses smote them in the face with clenched fists, and refused 
 their advocacy. It is hardly to be wondered at, that so many 
 hearts failed, that to many confidence in the Church of England 
 broke down, when Heads of Houses, Bishops, Ministers, Judges, 
 Journalists combined to denounce the movement, and say " We 
 have no part with you." Discouragement, despair, took hold 
 of their spirits, and they turned their backs on a Church which, 
 as they supposed, disowned them as her children. 
 
 The stream of secessions to Rome began with Mr. Sibthorp, 1 
 who had been a distinguished Evangelical preacher ; he joined 
 the Church of Rome in 1841. They became very numerous ; 
 parish priests, college fellows, noblemen and ladies of rank, 
 even schoolboys, went to Rome, despairing of the English 
 Church, which they considered could not escape wreckage, and 
 that there was no hope of obtaining recognition and respect for 
 Church principles either from the State or from the public. 
 
 The Evangelicals and Broad Churchmen exulted. These men, 
 said they, have thrown off the mask at last, and revealed them- 
 selves as Papists at heart whilst they were in the Established 
 Church. They have been traitors all along, and such as remain 
 are cowards eating the bread of the Protestant Church whilst 
 sapping the foundations. 
 
 The extraordinary fact is that not only did these Evangelicals 
 persuade themselves that this was the case, but this also was 
 the popular opinion throughout the land, proclaimed by the 
 press, from the pulpit, and on the platform. Let us see whether 
 any justification whatever existed for this view of the Trac- 
 tarians. 
 
 Now the Evangelicals notoriously disregarded the commands 
 of the Church, and as notoriously and avowedly disbelieved in 
 certain doctrines she enunciated in her formularies. 
 
 Indeed, they entered into a league to obtain the revision of 
 the Book of Common Prayer, the elimination of all those rubrics 
 they did not observe, and the excision of all those doctrines 
 in which they did not believe. Who then were the traitors ? 
 Certainly not the Tractarians, who strove to bring practice up 
 to the requirements of the rubrics, and teaching to be in accord- 
 ance with the Book of Common Prayer. For this they were 
 denounced. Let me take one illustration : 
 
 1 Sibthorp returned to the English Church in 1843, "verted" again 
 in 1865. He died in 1879, and was buried by his own desire with the 
 burial service of the English Church in the Lincoln cemetery. 
 
168 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 120 gr. 
 12 gr. 
 12 minims 
 6 drachms 
 
 Aquae quantum suff. 
 
 Now let us suppose that the patient fills his bottle with a mixture 
 of castor oil, senna and Epsom salts in place of what is ordered. 
 A practitioner, finding him in a debilitated condition, inquires 
 what medicine he has been taking. The sick man produces 
 the mixture and the prescription. " Good Heavens ! " exclaims 
 the medical man, " this is not what has been ordered you. 
 Chuck this mess away and go back to the original prescription. 
 As far as I can see and smell, there is nothing in your bottle 
 that was required except Aqua quantum suff." 
 
 This is precisely the position assumed by the men of the 
 Oxford movement. They said : "Go back to the principles 
 and practice enjoined in the Prayer Book, and throw away all 
 the nauseous stuff you have imported from Geneva and Scotland, 
 from France and from Holland. 
 
 How completely the public generally misconceived the situa- 
 tion may be seen from a cartoon that appeared in the Hornet, 
 in which the Bishop of London (Tait) is represented as arresting 
 a Puseyite burglar attempting to force an entry into a Protestant 
 church. Whereas, as a matter of fact, it was the Tractarian 
 party that maintained the House and guarded its treasures 
 against those who would throw them out of the window, strip 
 it of its valuables, and leave it empty, swept and desolate. 
 
 In the Ely fens, the soil, spent, moss- and weed-grown, has to 
 be regenerated by digging up the subsoil, and that rich subsoil 
 is spread over the surface and proves a mighty fertilizer. That 
 fat subsoil has ever been in situ, but has lain unobserved because 
 overlaid. The High-Church party was digging into the rich 
 Catholic subsoil, bringing it to day, and spreading it over the 
 face of the Church in faith, looking for a harvest. 
 
 At Oxford the Church Revival was doctrinal ; it took another 
 form in the sister University. 
 
 The Cambridge Camden Society started a magazine called the 
 Ecclesiologist, advocating correct principles of Church building 
 and furnishing. In 1841 it had a rare chance of carrying these 
 principles into action. The Norman round church of S. Sepulchre, 
 Cambridge, partly fell down, and the Cambridge Camden 
 
FALSE KEYS 
 
THE TRACTARIAN MOVEMENT 169 
 
 Society undertook the restoration. The work was then excel- 
 lently done, its only weak point being the stained glass, the 
 true principles of coloration and manufacture being at that 
 time not understood. 
 
 In 1848 the Society adopted a seal designed by Pugin. In 
 the midst were figures of the Virgin and Child, between S. George, 
 S. Etheldreda, S. John and S. Mark. The Rev. F. Close of 
 Cheltenham published a sermon against the Society full of quo- 
 tations from their organ, the Ecclesiologist, and showed himself 
 especially indignant about the seal. Mr. Close's sermon was 
 entitled " The Restoration of Churches is the Restoration of 
 Popery." Mr. Close — afterwards made a dean, on the principle 
 then acted on, all but invariably, of putting a man into a place 
 for which he was entirely unsuited — Mr. Close was a much- 
 admired Evangelical preacher, with a choir of rapturous females 
 circling round his car, like Guido's picture of Apollo and the 
 Hours ; only for the fair Horce we must substitute ancient 
 spinsters. 
 
 The movement in Cambridge for a return to Gothic archi- 
 tecture was but a part of the general revolt against the cult 
 of the Ugly that had prevailed in the eighteenth century. 
 
 Pierre de Coulevin says : 
 
 " Beauty ! Cromwell, the Reformation, the Puritans had 
 expelled it, as they had Colour and Grace. Under their action, 
 the garments became gloomy, the lines rigid, the physiognomies 
 hard and muddy, the movements of the body automatic. They 
 had created that special type of Hideousness which for a long 
 time was the amusement of the rest of Europe. It was a 
 reaction against the softness, the sensuousness, the Catholicism, 
 above all a reaction of the Masculine against the feminine, intro- 
 duced by the Stuarts, and which menaced the genius of the race. 
 
 " In the midst of last Century, the Unknown Isle had an 
 altogether glacial appearance. One might have supposed that 
 it belonged to a different planet, a planet at a remote distance 
 from the sun. The houses were grey, the roofs flat, the interiors 
 cold and bare, life of oppressive uniformity." 1 
 
 But nowhere had Ugliness so enthroned herself as in the 
 House of God j and when a wave of revolt against its domination 
 rolled over the land, then inevitably its waters entered the 
 Churches to regenerate them. 2 
 
 1 L'lle Inconnue, p. 373. 
 
 2 In Humphry Clinker, Smollett writes : " The external appearance of an 
 
170 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 It is not a matter of surprise if many of those who had been 
 reared in the cuit of the Ugly should resent the change, and 
 cling to the old deformities. The natives of East Africa draw 
 down the upper lip to their chins, and their ear-lobes to their 
 shoulders, and ring the cartilages of their noses. These dis- 
 figurements they esteem beauties, and fail to appreciate beauty 
 as God created it. 
 
 The movement was assisted by ridicule being turned upon 
 the worshippers of Ugliness. 
 
 Welby Pugin, in his Contrasts, held up to public scorn the taste 
 of his day. He showed, among other things, what S. Saviour's, 
 Southwark, had been and what it had become, when the nave 
 was pulled down and replaced by a miserable white-brick erection. 
 Little did he dream then that the beautiful church would be 
 restored to the condition in which it had been before its partial 
 destruction. Paget also, in S. Antholin's, described with great 
 humour Mr. Compo and a church of his erection ; and Paley 
 in The Church Restorers gibbeted Mr. Carter. This frightened 
 architects, lest they should be put in the same category as 
 Mr. Compo or Mr. Carter. 
 
 In the face of so much ignorance, prejudice and barbarism, 
 it might well have seemed hopeless to effect a revolution in 
 ecclesiastical art, ritual or dogma. But, as Calonne said to 
 Marie Antoinette : " Si la chose est possible, elle est faite ; si 
 elle est impossible, elle se fera." 
 
 old cathedral cannot but be displeasing to the eye of every man who has 
 any idea of propriety and proportion, even though he may be ignorant of 
 architecture as a science ; and the long slender spire puts one in mind of 
 a criminal impaled, with a sharp stake rising up through his shoulders. 
 There is nothing of this Arabic architecture in the Assembly rooms (at 
 York), which seem to me to have been built upon a design of Palladio, and 
 might be converted into an elegant place of worship." 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE VICTORIAN BISHOPS 
 
 HE Church in the Victorian age, like Alonzo in The 
 Tempest, might ask : 
 
 Give us kind keepers, Heavens ! What are these ? 
 
 and alas, the answer must have been that of Sebastian : 
 A living drollery, 
 
 or rather " a tragedy " for the Church — only in themselves " a 
 drollery." I am sorry to have to write of the bishops of the 
 period, as I must. They helped to make Church history, and 
 they must be judged by what they were and what they did. 
 
 In the early days of the nineteenth century the bishoprics 
 were bestowed on men of political influence — if not so themselves, 
 yet belonging to families with such; or were connected with 
 noble families. Lord Auckland, who had been chaplain to King 
 William IV, was given the bishopric of Bath and Wells, and he 
 was succeeded by Lord Arthur Charles Hervey. The Hon. John 
 Thomas Pelham, son of the Earl of Chichester, was made Bishop 
 of Norwich; to the Hon. Richard Bagot, son of Baron Bagot, 
 was accorded the bishopric of Oxford, and later that of Bath 
 and Wells. He had married a daughter of the Earl of Jersey. 
 The Hon. George Pelham, son of the first Earl of Chichester, was 
 made Bishop of Bristol, then transferred to Exeter, and thence 
 to Lincoln. Horatio Powys, given the bishopric of Sodor and 
 Man, was son of the second Baron Lilford. Pepys of Worcester 
 belonged to the family of Earl Cottenham. Lord George Murray 
 was made Bishop of S. David's, and he was the son of the Duke 
 of Athol, and his son George was given the bishopric of Rochester. 
 Edward Grey, Bishop of Hereford, was the brother of Earl Grey. 
 And so on ; as the Times said : " Their names are not only 
 written in the Book of Life, but also in the Peerage." Or else 
 they were heads of colleges, masters of great public schools, or 
 
172 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 were noted for their Greek and Latin scholarship. Most ex- 
 ceptionally were they men who had done parochial work. 
 
 One instance may be given to show the methods by means 
 of which mitres were supposed to be acquired. The Rev. Charles 
 Sumner was travelling tutor to the son of the Marquess of Conyng- 
 ham. When they were in Switzerland, the youth fell in love 
 with the daughter of a Genevan pastor, Mile. Mounoir, and the 
 tutor saved his pupil from a social calamity by himself marrying 
 the young lady. 1 In reward for this service, so it was said at 
 the time, he was given one preferment after another, then the 
 bishopric of Llandaff, and in 1827 that of Winchester, which he 
 held for forty-two years. He was a man of stately appearance 
 and courtly manners, but a narrow-minded Evangelical. He 
 refused to license John Mason Neale to the curacy of Guildford, 
 because he belonged to the Cambridge Camden Society, that 
 concerned itself with the revival of Gothic architecture ; and 
 for years he kept John Keble's curate, the Rev. Peter Young, 
 in deacon's orders. 
 
 A clergyman who had seceded to Rome wished to return to the 
 Anglican Communion. He opened communications with Bishop 
 Sumner, and lived in retirement for three years, with the avowed 
 purpose of resuming work in the English Church. The pro- 
 bationary term having expired, the Bishop heard — apparently 
 from a Roman Catholic priest who wished to hinder his return- — 
 that the penitent clergyman had been seen in a Roman Catholic 
 chapel ; whereupon the Bishop wrote to him in a strain which 
 effectually destroyed all wish to become again a member of the 
 Anglican Communion. 
 
 Mr. F. Arnold in a book quoted below says of him : " Dr. 
 Sumner, if he had not been Bishop of Winchester, would have held 
 a very modest and unpretending position of his own — in plain 
 words he was a man of limited intelligence, strong prejudices, 
 
 1 Mr. Arnold, in Our Bishops and Deans (London, 1875), throws doubts 
 on the accuracy of the story. But the Conyngham influence was un- 
 questionably exerted strongly to get him advanced. Even when a curate, 
 King George IV was induced to nominate him to a canonry at Windsor, 
 and this was only not effected through the remonstrance of Lord Liverpool. 
 It is significant that in the Life of Bishop Sumner by his son the Marchioness 
 of Conyngham is not once mentioned, yet it was due to her that royal 
 patronage literally showered benefits upon him. Between April 182 1 and 
 November 1827 he was made Historiographer, Chaplain to the King, 
 and Librarian in Ordinary ; Vicar of S. Helen's, Abingdon ; Canon of 
 Worcester ; Canon of Canterbury ; Dean of S. Paul's, Bishop of Llandaff, 
 Bishop of Winchester. Mr. G. Sumner draws a discreet veil over the 
 Marchioness and what she did for her protege. 
 
THE VICTORIAN BISHOPS 
 
 173 
 
 and of commonplace abilities. While Presbyterians were thank- 
 ful for the sympathy which they have received from him, and 
 he was willing to act in conjunction with Dissenters and others 
 on the widest possible platform, the great Church movement in 
 this country received from him only a very languid measure of 
 support." This is an understatement : he opposed the Church 
 movement in every way he was able. He hardly ever spoke in 
 the House of Lords, and wrote nothing worth reading. 
 
 Some of the Evangelical prelates learned to be broad in sym- 
 pathy with those with whom they were brought in contact in 
 their dioceses, and who belonged to the High-Church school. 
 Sumner learnt nothing : 
 
 Homine imperito nunquam quidquam injustius, 
 Qui, nisi quod ipse fecit, nihil rectum putat. 
 
 Terent., Adelphi, i. 2. 
 
 On his appointment to Llandaff he spoke out loudly in 
 disapprobation of translations, and within a twelvemonth 
 was himself translated to Winchester. " This will please the 
 Marchioness of Conyngham," said the King. He was wont to 
 attend annually the May meetings at Exeter Hall. He was a 
 great grower of orchids, and had magnificent conservatories at 
 Farnham Castle. He succeeded in bringing his brother John 
 Bird into notice with George IV, and this latter was given the 
 bishopric of Chester in 1838 by Peel ; and in 1848 the arch- 
 bishopric of Canterbury, which he obsessed till 1862. When 
 Bishop of Chester, immediately on his consecration, John Bird 
 Sumner denounced the Tractarians and their work as the " under- 
 mining of the foundations of the Protestant Church by men who 
 dwell within the walls ; " and the bad faith of those " who sat 
 in the Reformers' seat, and traduced the Reformation." In a 
 later charge he described the movement as the work of Satan. 
 
 George Davys was made Dean of Chester and Bishop of 
 Peterborough because he had been tutor to Princess (afterwards 
 Queen) Victoria from 1827 to 1837, so tnat ne began to instruct 
 her when she was eight years old. He was made Bishop in 1839. 
 He was an Evangelical ; he did what he could to enlighten 
 ignorant country folk in Church truths. He wrote Village 
 Conversations on the Liturgy of the Church of England in 1820. 
 Village Conversations on the Offices of the Church in 1825, and 
 A Village Conversation on the Catechism in 1836. A simple, 
 amiable and pious man, who would have done well in a country 
 
174 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 cure, but was wholly out of place as a bishop, as might be a 
 corporal suddenly elevated to be a general of a division . 
 
 Lord Beaconsfield in Tancred describes the bishops appointed 
 by Sir Robert Peel : 
 
 " The Arch-Mediocrity who then governed the country was 
 impressed with the necessity of reconstructing the Episcopal 
 bench on principles of personal distinction and ability. But his 
 notion of clerical capacity did not soar higher than a private 
 tutor who had suckled a young nobleman into University 
 honours ; and his test of priestly celebrity was the decent editor- 
 ship of a Greek play. He sought for the stewards of the mysteries 
 of Sinai and of Calvary among third-rate hunters after syllables. 
 These men, notwithstanding their elevation, with one exception 
 subsided into their natural insignificance ; and during our agitated 
 age, when the principles of all institutions, sacred and secular, 
 have been called in question ; when alike in the senate and the 
 market-place, both the doctrine and the discipline of the Church 
 had been impugned, its power assailed, its authority denied — 
 not a voice was raised by these mitred nullities, either to warn 
 or to vindicate; not a phrase escaped their lips or their pens 
 that ever influenced public opinion, touched the heart of the 
 nation, or guided the conscience of a perplexed people." 
 
 But there was one notable exception to the quality of the 
 Peelite Bishops, and that was Samuel Wilberforce, who was 
 appointed to the bishopric of Oxford in 1846. To some extent 
 he owed his elevation to the respect with which his father had 
 been regarded, a man of the early Evangelical school; but 
 chiefly to his abilities as a public speaker. I met him two or 
 three times ; his presence was commanding, and he had a fine, 
 sonorous organ. He was very ready to catch a point and turn 
 it to advantage. I remember a visit he made to Hurstpierpoint 
 College. At that time the chapel was the undercroft of the hall. 
 Access to it was obtained from the cloisters through a very dark, 
 unlighted antechapel, if such can be called what was little other 
 than a cellar. The Bishop was to preach in the evening, and the 
 procession formed in the cloister. The season was All Saints' 
 Eve. The Bishop grasped the situation, and preached on the 
 Continuity of the Church in Paradise with that on Earth. As 
 the procession went singing through the cloisters so moved 
 on the living Church; then came the descent into the dark 
 crypt of Death, but beyond that could be seen the illumina- 
 tion of the throne of God, to which we were all moving, and 
 
THE VICTORIAN BISHOPS 
 
 175 
 
 from which the light streamed in our faces as we made the dark 
 descent. 
 
 He was the first of the Bishops of the Victorian age to show 
 what the duties of a bishop were. He hastened about his 
 diocese, visiting the clergy, confirming, encouraging, comforting. 
 Realising how miserably inefficient the preparation was for 
 Holy Orders, he instituted the Cuddesdon Training College, for 
 young men after leaving the University. 
 
 He may truly be said to have recast the whole idea of the 
 Episcopate, and to have successfully raised the tone of clerical 
 life. 
 
 Cuddesdon Training College was violently assailed by Mr. 
 Golightly, who sent his accusations against it in a pamphlet to 
 all the bishops. Some of them became nervous, and Bishop 
 Wilberforce invited them to his palace at Cuddesdon to in- 
 vestigate the teaching and practices there for themselves. They 
 came. In the College chapel, on the east wall right and left of 
 the altar, one of the students had painted figures of saints in 
 sepia. Bishop Wilberforce covered them all over with a panelling 
 of oak. When he visited the chapel with his timorous flock 
 of bishops he, with his own hands, removed the altar-cross and 
 set it on the credence table. 
 
 He had inherited from his Evangelical father an intense 
 horror of Rome, and this was deepened by the secession of his 
 brother Robert Isaac in 1854, as we ^ as n ^ s other two brothers, 
 his brothers-in-law with one exception, and his only daughter 
 with her husband. 
 
 At one time he was high in favour at Court, and intimate 
 with Prince Albert. But when he protested against the ap- 
 pointment of Hampden to the bishopric of Hereford, and later 
 when he endeavoured to obtain some justice to be done to the 
 Catholic party, the Prince and the Queen, who were both bitterly 
 prejudiced against it, showed him marked coldness. It was 
 not till 1869 that he was transferred to Winchester, on the 
 nomination of Mr. Gladstone. 
 
 Bishop Wilberforce was commonly called " Soapy Sam " 1 — 
 
 1 On the occasion of a Cuddesdon festival, the luncheon tent was 
 decorated with evergreens, and behind the episcopal chair was inscribed 
 in large letters S.O. and close by A. P., the initials of Alfred Potts, the 
 first principal. "Soap!" exclaimed the Bishop. " That is too personal : 
 take those letters away." 
 
 The vice-principal was Liddon. The Bishop said — "Now I have here 
 a pott with the lid-on." 
 
176 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 as he used to say, because he came out of every transaction 
 with clean hands, not because he was supposed to be fulsomely 
 gracious to every one with whom he was brought in contact, 
 without real sincerity at the back. But this was an unjust 
 charge against him. At a time when prelates were so puffed 
 up with their own consequence that they showed what they 
 were by chill of manner towards their subordinates, and treated 
 their clergy de haut en has with no graciousness and no sympathy, 
 Wilberforce studied to be gentle and courteous to all, to the 
 humblest curate, and the gruffest churchwarden. It was because 
 this was so unusual that people could hardly believe it was 
 prompted by a truly gentlemanly feeling. The text given him 
 by Dr. Littledale, with a change of sex ran : " He brought forth 
 butter in a lordly dish." 1 It was generally thought that the 
 ambition of his life was to become Archbishop of York, he 
 being of a Yorkshire family and understanding the Yorkshire 
 character intimately. That he would have been enthusiasti- 
 cally welcomed there and would have advanced the cause of 
 the Church there enormously cannot be questioned. For that 
 reason possibly he was not given the chance. Of the immense 
 debt of gratitude the Church owes and will ever owe to Bishop 
 Wilberforce we are hardly yet in a position to realize. He was 
 the balance wheel which kept all from over-precipitation and 
 a run to ruin. 
 
 Ashurst T. Gilbert was one of the Peel Bishops. He had 
 been Principal of Brasenose College in 1822, and was raised 
 to be Bishop of Chichester in 1842. I shall have to speak 
 later of his harsh treatment of John Mason Neale. I often 
 saw him when I was at Hurstpierpoint, and he struck me as 
 hard and unsympathetic. 
 
 Lord John Russell was Prime Minister from July 6, 1846, to 
 February 27, 1852. Lord John Russell's convictions in matters 
 religious were of the vaguest, though at one time he attended 
 
 1 I have given in this chapter the texts Dr. Littledale considered 
 applicable to the bishops of his time. The younger clergy to-day know 
 nothing of this remarkable man. He was of encyclopaedic knowledge 
 and astounding memory, and was one to whom it was possible to refer 
 on every question connected with Ecclesiastical history with certainty 
 of enlightenment. He was an invalid, and obliged to lie for some hours 
 daily on his back ; but he rarely, if ever, missed celebrating early and daily 
 at a sisterhood hard by Red Lion Square, where he occupied a flat. He 
 wrote many of his ablest articles in the Church Times, and was noted for 
 his caustic wit. If he hit hard, it was at abuses. Actually he was the 
 most tender-hearted of men. Being an Irishman, he was intensely anti- 
 Roman, but he was a strong Anglo-Catholic . He died in 1890 (January 11). 
 
THE VICTORIAN BISHOPS 
 
 177 
 
 S. Paul's, Knightsbridge. He and his party regarded the Church 
 with some contempt, and would have been not unwilling to see 
 her shipwrecked. They did their best to bring about this when 
 they nominated to be captains and officers of the vessel men 
 who knew nothing of, and cared less for, marinership. 
 
 Lord John's appointments were mostly bad. That of Hamp- 
 den to Hereford (1847) was done to outrage the feelings of the 
 Church party at Oxford. For Hampden lay under censure 
 of heresy by his University. The Archbishop of Canterbury 
 (Howley) and the Bishop of Ripon (Longley) wrote in conjunc- 
 tion a strong letter to the Premier ; and a " Remonstrance " was 
 signed by thirteen bishops. All was in vain — Hampden was 
 appointed. It was high time for Churchmen to ask : Is the 
 Church, because established, to be overridden by the State 
 in a manner that no sect would tolerate ? 
 
 Sumner was made Archbishop of Canterbury. He was a 
 mere nose of wax, to be moulded to turn up or turn down, to be 
 snub or bottle-shaped as the Prime Minister fingered him. He 
 supported Mr. Gorham against the Bishop of Exeter, and insti- 
 tuted him into his living in defiance of his own bishop. Sumner 
 was vehemently denunciatory of the Oxford movement. Hinds, 
 on the recommendation of Archbishop Whately, whose secre- 
 tary he had been, in 1849 was given the bishopric of Norwich, 
 which he resigned in 1857 after marrying his cook. 
 
 Disraeli took off Blomfield, Bishop of London, in Tancred. 
 "He combined a great talent for action with very limited 
 powers of thought. Bustling, energetic, versatile, gifted with 
 indomitable perseverance, and stimulated by an ambition that 
 knew no repose, with a capacity for mastering details, and an 
 inordinate passion for affairs, he could permit nothing to be 
 done without his interference, and consequently was perpetually 
 involved in transactions which were either failures or blunders. 
 He was one of those leaders who are not guides. Having little 
 real knowledge, and not endowed with those high qualities of 
 intellect which permit their possessor to generalize the details 
 afforded by study and experience, and so deduce rules of conduct, 
 his Lordship, when he received those frequent appeals which 
 were the necessary consequence of his official life, became obscure, 
 confused, contradictory, inconsistent and illogical. The oracle 
 was always dark. Placed in a high post in an age of political 
 analysis, the hustling intermeddler was unable to supply society 
 with a single solution. Enunciating second-hand, with char- 
 
178 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 acteristic precipitation, some big principle in vogue, as if he 
 were a discoverer, he invariably shrank from its subsequent 
 application the moment that he found it might be unpopular 
 and inconvenient. All his quandaries terminated in the same 
 catastrophe — a compromise. Abstract principle with him ever 
 ended in concrete expediency. The primordial tenet, which had 
 been advocated with uncompromising arrogance, gently subsided 
 into some second-rate measure recommended with all the artifice 
 of an impenetrable ambiguity. The Bishop, always ready, had 
 in the course of his episcopal career placed himself at the head 
 of every movement in the Church which others had originated, 
 and had as regularly withdrawn at the right moment, when 
 the heat was over, or had become, on the contrary, excessive. 
 Furiously evangelical, soberly high and dry, and fervently 
 Puseyite, each phase of his faith concludes with what the 
 Spaniards term a transaction." 
 
 Utcumque in alto ventus est, Epidice, exin velum vortitur. 
 
 Plaut., Epidic. i. i. 
 
 Disraeli's portrait is unfair. Blomfield was indeed " infirm of 
 purpose," but he did really good work. In 1836 he issued an 
 appeal for funds to build fifty new churches in London, which 
 met with remarkable success. "But it was reserved to him 
 to eclipse all his services to the Church, and to surpass even 
 his scheme for providing the population of London with adequate 
 church accommodation, by calling attention to the fact that 
 in our rapidly extending Colonies we were either spreading an 
 unavowed but most real Presbyterianism, or giving over these 
 rising countries to actual infidelity. When he made his appeal, 
 the foreign dominions of the British Empire had only nine 
 Bishops of the Anglican succession, of whom seven were wholly 
 or mainly dependent on grants by the State. Although Bishop 
 Blomfield had to combat in the mass many and numerous objec- 
 tions, he was permitted to see the practical accomplishment of 
 his scheme ; it was on Whitsun Tuesday, 1841, that the Arch- 
 bishops and Bishops sent forth the declaration which launched 
 the Colonial Bishoprics Fund, and before the year ended Bishop 
 Selwyn was on his way to New Zealand, and in one day five 
 Bishops for Colonial sees were consecrated in Westminster 
 Abbey." But he had his faults. No party in the Church could 
 trust him. Trusting to him was like Israel relying on Egypt, 
 " on which, if a man lean, it will go into his hand and pierce 
 
THE VICTORIAN BISHOPS 
 
 179 
 
 it." But with all his weaknesses Blomfield did a great work 
 and was an active prelate. 1 
 
 At S. Barnabas, Pimlico, Blomfield forbade the Invocation 
 before the sermon. " If you don't say a collect, and don't say 
 it west, I will withdraw your licence," he said to the curate 
 in charge. Referring to a metal cross on the retable, he said : 
 " If it cost me my see, I will have that cross removed." Again, 
 in 1852, he forbade the placing of flowers on any occasion upon 
 the Altar. Blomfield seems to have treated the Church accord- 
 ing to the order of the boatswain in the Tempest: " Lay her 
 a-hold, a-hold ; set her two courses." 
 
 To return to the prelates nominated by Lord John Russell. 
 Tancred had cried out, " I want to see an angel at Manchester " 
 ■ — and Lee was appointed. Musgrave was made Archbishop 
 of York in 1847, translated thither from Hereford ; he was a 
 strong Evangelical and opposed the restoration of Convocation. 
 He was the son of a Cambridge tailor, a man of very limited 
 intelligence. He advanced his brother Charles to be Archdeacon 
 of Craven. His motto was Quieta non movere, and he opposed 
 the revival of any sort of deliberative action among the clergy 
 of the Archdiocese. Like Strepsiades in The Clouds he might 
 have said : " Well, as it is the fashion, let us snore cosily 
 wrapped up." 
 
 Lord Palmerston became Prime Minister on February 10, 
 1855, and remained in power till February 25, 1858 ; but he 
 was again Prime Minister June 18, 1859, and remained so till 
 November 6, 1865, when Lord John — created Earl Russell, was 
 again in power till July 6, 1866. On December 28, 1852, Lord 
 Aberdeen became Prime Minister, till February 10, 1855. He 
 nominated Lord Auckland to the see of Bath and Wells in 1854, 
 John Jackson to Lincoln in 1855, Hamilton to Salisbury in 1854 — 
 an admirable appointment. 
 
 " Conscious as I am," said Bishop Hamilton in a charge to 
 his clergy, " of many grave faults of character, I am not conscious 
 of being a coward in the avowal of my principles. I have never 
 concealed from anyone that I am what is called a High Church- 
 
 1 Sydney Smith's opinion of him was not so different : " The Bishop 
 of London is passionately fond of labour, has certainly no aversion to 
 power, is of a quick temper, great ability, thoroughly versed in ecclesiastical 
 law, and always in London. When the Church of England is mentioned 
 it will only mean Charles James of London, who will enjoy greater power 
 than has ever been possessed by any Churchman since the days of Laud, 
 and will become the Church of England here upon earth." — First Letter to 
 Archdeacon Singleton. 
 
180 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 man. I was not so when I was ordained, but I became so many 
 years before I was Canon of Salisbury ; and when I declare that 
 I number this change among the many mercies which I have 
 received from my God, I can truly say that these my adoptive 
 principles have ever made me the more anxious never to bear 
 false witness against others, and that instead of drying up, they 
 have cherished in my heart a spirit of charity towards those 
 who, whether in our Church or beyond its limits, are in some 
 matters not one with me," 
 
 Powys was sent to Sodor and Man in 1854. The late Dr. 
 Littledale gave this text for Powys : " Man being in honour 
 hath no understanding," which was appropriate enough. 
 
 John Jackson was a shy man, with a somewhat awkward 
 manner ; when at Stoke Newington he did a good work, before 
 he went to S. James's, Piccadilly. He was a staunch friend of 
 The Universities' Mission in Central Africa, and he ordained 
 Edward Steere, afterwards Bishop of Zanzibar, although he had 
 been rejected by Phillpotts, Bishop of Exeter, as not being a 
 graduate of Oxford or Cambridge. He was, as Bishop, especially 
 when moved in 1869 to London, too much under the influence 
 of Archbishop Tait. He was, however, a tolerant man, and 
 maintained throughout an affectionate intercourse with Robert 
 Brett of Stoke Newington, whose worth he could well appreciate, 
 though in Church matters not seeing eye to eye. He had 
 a story — whether of his own wife or not, I cannot say. The 
 lady, a bishop's wife, complained of the psalm : " Old men and 
 maidens, young men and children, praise the name of the Lord," 
 that there was no invitation to old ladies to join in the chorus. 
 " My dear," said the Bishop, " you forget : there is a call to ' Ye 
 dragons and all deeps.' " His text was appropriate : " Giving 
 no offence to any man, that the ministry be not blamed." 
 
 Lord Palmerston was a very Gallio in religious matters, and 
 he allowed his kinsman, Lord Shaftesbury, to recommend 
 nullities for the vacant mitres. The Hon. Charles Baring, brother 
 of Lord Northbrook, a prejudiced Evangelical, Chaplain -in- 
 ordinary to Queen Victoria, was appointed to the see of Gloucester 
 and Bristol in 1856, and advanced to Durham in 1861. " Bless 
 thee, Bottom, bless thee, thou art translated." In the diocese 
 he was by the clergy variously called Overbearing and Past- 
 bearing. In 1867 he deprived the Hon. F. R. Grey, Rector of 
 Morpeth, of the office of Rural Dean for the offence of wearing 
 a black stole with three gold crosses embroidered on it, and for 
 
THE VICTORIAN BISHOPS 
 
 181 
 
 using the Invocation before the sermon. How he dealt with 
 Dr. Dykes shall be told elsewhere, and here again the grievance 
 was a stole — but this time coloured. For some such reason 
 he turned the Rev. C. J. Naters out of Trimdon, where he was 
 locum tenens. His angry warfare against stoles caused Dr. 
 Littledale to give as his text : "A prey of divers colours, a 
 prey of divers colours of needlework on both sides, meet for the 
 necks." Some verses relative to Bishop Baring passed from 
 hand to hand in the diocese : 
 
 " Since Shaftesbury Durham's latest Bishop chose, 
 Leading the Dean and Chapter by the nose, 
 Each high-bred horse attached to Charles's Wain 
 Has plunged impatient of the bearing-rein. 
 
 Great Bear inquires if such high-mettled steeds 
 Are just the cattle suited to his needs : 
 And vows no stall shall feed high-stepping nag, 
 To kick o'er traces and upset the drag. 
 
 Henceforth regnante Carolo, each cleric 
 O'er Cuthbert's lands, from Darlington to Berwick, 
 Shall dare no pace, but crawl and creep and shuffle, 
 Xor neigh, but sniff with Puritanic snuffle." 
 
 Hitherto from the time of the reconstitution of the chapter in 
 the time of Charles II it had been the custom for the Canons to 
 bow to the Altar on entering and on leaving their stalls ; but 
 those Canons nominated by Baring refused compliance with 
 the traditional usage. So opposed was he to all signs of corporate 
 life in the Church that he declined to attend the first Pan- 
 Anglican Congress in 1867. 
 
 The Rev. F. Arnold, in his book on Our Bishops and Deans, 
 employs the whitewash brush copiously, but he is constrained to 
 say of Bishop Baring : " One of the grave defects of our present 
 laws is that the Bishop possesses a tyrannical power over the 
 curates of his diocese, whom he can dismiss and inhibit without 
 any cause shown, by a wave of the hand and stroke of the pen. 
 This power is generally allowed to lie dormant, but it is at any 
 time liable to be exercised in a vindictive and indiscreet way. 
 Unsatisfied by the immense power he possesses, the Bishop has 
 aimed at its expansion by demanding written pledges both 
 from incumbent and curate, which they are unable to give. The 
 Bishop then lays the parish under an interdict, refusing the aid 
 it urgently requires, and coolly remarking 1 that it is almost 
 
182 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 invariably the result of any transgression of the law that the 
 innocent are involved in the consequences, and often suffer more 
 severely than the offender/ " I shall give an instance of his 
 dealing in this way in another chapter. 
 
 Bishop Harold Browne was at one time incumbent of 
 S. Sidwell's, Exeter. He was appointed to Ely in 1864, and trans- 
 lated to Winchester in 1873. His appointment to Ely was by 
 Lord Palmerston, who felt that the partisan nominees of Lord 
 Shaftesbury were too numerous, and the quality too poor ; and 
 that he must placate moderate men by the appointment of one 
 who was a scholar and not in any way extreme. 
 
 Harold Browne's great work was that on the Thirty-nine 
 Articles, and it was characterized by judgment and fairness. 
 The Bishop sympathised warmly with the Old Catholics, and 
 attended the Bonn Conference. He wrote to the Bishop of 
 Melbourne : "I call myself an old-fashioned English Churchman, 
 and I find more to repel me in any one of the extreme schools in 
 England than I do in anything I have seen or heard of the Old 
 Catholics. Now I do not wish to expel from my own communion 
 any of the adherents of the three schools within it. The Church 
 ought to hold them all, or it will become a sect." 
 
 Thomson was given Gloucester and Bristol when that see 
 was vacated by Baring, but he was advanced to the arch- 
 bishopric of York in 1862, after he had been Bishop of Gloucester 
 and Bristol for ten months only. He was a very able man, one 
 of the few shrewd men of the party, and there can be little doubt 
 that his rapid promotion was mainly due to the desire of Lord 
 Shaftesbury to have a strong man in the North to tread out the 
 sparks of Catholic teaching and worship that had already been 
 kindled there. A characteristic entry in the Diary of Bishop 
 Wilberforce, May 27, 1873, is to this effect : " Dinner at Arch- 
 bishop of York's. A good many Bishops, both of England and 
 Ireland, and not one word said which implied we were apostles. 
 Eheu, eheu, very low." 1 
 
 In May 1868 appeared the second Report of the Ritual Com- 
 mission, relative to the use of lighted candles on the altar at 
 
 1 A story was told of him, that when walking one day with the Bishop 
 of Oxford, he remarked on the coincidence in his family affairs with his 
 advancements. How his marriage coincided with the year of his ordina- 
 tion, and each baby as it arrived marked as well a step higher in the 
 Church. "It is devoutly to be hoped, Archbishop, that Mrs. Thomson 
 will stop having more." "Why so ? " inquired the Archbishop, flushing 
 angrily. " Because there are only two steps more that you could mount — 
 Canterbury or Heaven. And you are not fit for either." 
 
ARCHIUSHOP THOMSON 
 
THE VICTORIAN BISHOPS 
 
 183 
 
 the Holy Communion. There were two lawyers who contended 
 that they were lawful, two that they were not. The Archbishop 
 of York gave the casting vote against them. 
 
 When Thomson was Bishop of Gloucester he opposed in 
 Convocation the purpose of Bishop Gray to consecrate a bishop 
 for the Orange Free State. The Bishop of Oxford thereupon ad- 
 ministered a well-deserved dressing, observing that " when they 
 were taking into consideration so important a matter, to treat 
 it with contumely, or to try to induce others to do so, was not 
 the conduct which a brother who had joined in prayer to God 
 for guidance to them in their deliberations should pursue," and 
 Bishop Thomson's resolutions and amendments were negatived 
 without discussion, one after another, and the diocese of 
 Bloemfontein was founded. 
 
 Thomson was succeeded in Gloucester and Bristol by Ellicott, 
 who was at first hostile to the Church revival. He was a good 
 Greek scholar, and wrote Commentaries on the Pauline Epistles, 
 and acted on that ill-fated Revision of the Bible. He was a 
 small man with a long nose. The High- Church programme he 
 did not understand, nor that it was historically connected with 
 the past — and the best past — of the Church of England. 1 
 
 To Carlisle Villiers was appointed — an Evangelical, and one 
 who opposed Convocation, and voted for the Divorce Bill. He 
 was translated to Durham in i860. He was not there very long ; 
 long enough, however, to appoint his son-in-law, named Cheese, 
 to one of the best livings in his gift : Houghton-le-Skerne, worth 
 £1,300 per annum. This provoked a cartoon in Punch. A poor 
 needy parson is by a table, whereon stands a Stilton cheese, 
 and the Bishop is decanting over it a bottle of port, labelled 
 £1,300, and saying : "I am exceedingly sorry, dear brother in 
 the Church, but you see I have not a drop for you, I have poured 
 it all into my Cheese." It is said that this cartoon so wounded 
 Bishop Villiers that it led to his death. 
 
 After the appearance of this picture, the bishops became 
 more cautious in their nepotism. They took care to shuffle 
 their cards. They did not give their " fat " livings to their 
 own relations, but to the sons and sons-in-law of other bishops, 
 
 1 Bishop Wilberforce notes of him when on the Ritual Commission: 
 " Bishop of Gloucester, as always, now hot and intemperate in trying to 
 force on condemnation of vestments. I said the Church of England 
 was the church of liberty. The Bishop of Gloucester : 1 Let them go to 
 Rome ; why not ? A very good communion — next best to ours.' " Life, 
 iii. 216. 
 
184 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 who acknowledged the favour by accommodating those of the 
 obliging archbishop or bishop in their more distant dioceses. 
 
 Villiers was succeeded in Carlisle in i860 by Samuel Walde- 
 grave, another strong Evangelical, who opposed surpliced choirs 
 and harvest thanksgivings. In 1868 he refused to be at a stone- 
 laying because there was to be a harvest thanksgiving associated 
 with it, and not only did so himself, but wrote round to some of 
 the clergy in the neighbourhood to dissuade them from attending. 
 
 " To introduce choral services, and as it would seem surpliced 
 processions into our mountain valleys, is, to say the least, an 
 innovation. To do so in direct contravention of the well-known 
 opinions and wishes of the Bishop, to whom you have sworn 
 obedience, is something more. If that choral service is accom- 
 panied by any peculiar ceremonies, even in a modified degree, 
 of harvest celebrations such as have recently occupied so much 
 public attention, the matter is still worse." Thus wrote the 
 Bishop to the Rev. E. Shuttlebotham of Woodland. The Rector 
 replied that what he had sworn was to yield canonical obedience, 
 not to obey every private fancy of the Bishop. 
 
 " It appears that a copy of your Lordship's letter to me was 
 sent to Mr. Robinson 1 with a request that he would make the 
 contents of it known, and prevent all whom he could influence 
 from attending the service to be held at Woodland to-day. 
 Mr. R., on opening the letter and finding it addressed to myself, 
 thinking it an original one, at once sent it on to me by his servant. 
 It seems, then, your Lordship, not content with administering a 
 severe rebuke, without waiting to give me an opportunity of 
 saying a word in my own defence, without even making against 
 me any specific charge, had determined that my castigation 
 should be made public, and that, if possible, a prejudice should 
 be raised against me in this neighbourhood. I must respectfully 
 but firmly protest against such treatment.' ' 
 
 John Thomas Pelham — " the Butler," as he was nicknamed 
 in his diocese — was given the bishopric of Norwich in 1857, 
 after the scandal of Samuel Hinds ; he was an old-fashioned 
 Evangelical. In 1872 he had the frankness to admit that, after 
 so many years under his pastoral charge, in every particular 
 denoting practical work and spiritual zeal, his diocese had not 
 merely stood still, but had actually gone back, save that there 
 were not quite so many churches where was only one service on 
 
 1 The Bishop wrote to other clergy in the same way that he did to Mr. 
 Robinson. 
 
THE VICTORIAN BISHOPS 
 
 185 
 
 Sundays as there had been a decade ago. And it may be asserted 
 with confidence that whenever in one of these dioceses there 
 was any progress at all, it was in no way due to the Bishop, 
 and that where it manifested itself it was hampered by him. 
 Dr. Littledale's text for Pelham was : " I am a fool for Christ's 
 sake." There is this to be said for Bishop Pelham, that he ad- 
 vocated an increase of the Episcopate, having found his diocese 
 unwieldy. He was prepared to sacrifice a good slice of the 
 receipts for the proposed see if he could obtain a division of that 
 of Norwich, He advocated the creation of eight new sees, and 
 the reduction of the incomes of the then existing bishops, so 
 that each of the prelates of these new sees might have £3,000 
 a year apiece. 
 
 Mr. Swinburne in his delightful book, Memories of a School 
 Inspector, 1 has a story of a certain bishop whose name he does 
 not give, nor where was his see. When this prelate was very 
 old, and the diocese was getting thoroughly tired of him and 
 wishing for a successor, he visited for the first time a well-known 
 country rector, who by his zeal and benevolence had won the 
 hearts of his parishioners. He had likewise spent very lavishly 
 of his private means on church and schools. The living was 
 good and in the gift of the bishop, and his lordship had either 
 a relation or a toady to whom he desired to present it. 
 
 Almost his first remark to the rector as he drove up was — 
 " Don't you think it high time that another should enjoy this 
 living ? Wouldn't it be better for the people ? " Be it noted 
 that this parson was twenty years younger than the bishop. 
 
 On reaching the church his lordship began to pray extempore, 
 intimating to Almighty God that the time had come for the 
 " Spirit of the Lord to permit his brother to entertain the idea 
 of making way for a successor." The rector listened in dismay. 
 Then the prayer went on : " And that not my brother only, but I, 
 too, should do my duty." Now, thought the rector, he is coming 
 to the point — he is referring to his own retirement. Not a bit 
 of it. The bishop proceeded : " Put it into my heart, O Lord, 
 to find him a good successor." 
 
 After that, it need hardly be said, the rector did not see his 
 way to resignation. 
 
 It was Bishop Pelham who is reported to have once told his 
 congregation that " England was an island entirely surrounded 
 by water." 
 
 1 P. 33. Published by McDougall, 191 1. Price 2s. 6d. 
 
186 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 Selwyn was Bishop of Lichfield from 1867 to 1878, after having 
 done noble work as Bishop in New Zealand. 
 
 He saw clearly that the Colonial Churches must be inde- 
 pendent, an idea abhorrent to the Erastian party in England; 
 and he had the boldness to ignore the hesitations and timidity 
 of the English Bishops, and the difficulties raised by the lawyers, 
 and motu proprio to get suffragan bishops ordained for the 
 dioceses he constituted in New Zealand, without troubling to 
 refer home for legal permission. 
 
 At the Wolverhampton Church Congress, when expatiating 
 on the independence claimed by the Colonial Churches, Lord 
 Harrowby interrupted him by saying, " You have cut the 
 painter." At once Bishop Selwyn retorted : " No ! we have 
 not cut the painter ; it has parted of itself, and we are now 
 forging a more enduring cable, like the invisible and immaterial 
 bonds that anchor the planets to the sun." 
 
 His best powers had been exhausted in the Colony, and he 
 was out of touch with, and did not understand the problems 
 that demanded solution in the Mother Church at home. Con- 
 sequently, knowing what his abilities were, and how skilfully he 
 had organized the Church in New Zealand, his tenure of the see 
 of Lichfield was somewhat of a disappointment. 
 
 Francis Jeune was given the bishopric of Peterborough in 
 1864. He had been made Dean of Lincoln by Palmerston, but 
 vacated the deanery for the palace of Peterborough the same 
 year. He was a determined opponent at Oxford of Dr. Pusey 
 and the writers of the Tracts for the Times. At Oxford, Liddell, 
 Dean of Christ church, Thomson, afterwards Archbishop of York, 
 and Jeune, Master of Pembroke, were fast friends, and were 
 often seen walking together. They went by the nicknames of 
 the World, the Flesh and the Devil. One day Miss Jeune was in 
 High Street with a friend, when they saw the three strutting 
 along the pavement together. " Oh ! " said Miss Jeune, " here 
 come the World and the Flesh." "And the other carries his 
 designation in his face," added the friend. Jeune was a re- 
 markably ugly man. Jeune was high in favour with the Prince 
 Consort. His text was : "I will run after this man (the Prince) 
 and take something of him." Jeune belonged to a Huguenot 
 family settled in Jersey. 1 His eldest son, Chancellor of eight 
 dioceses, Judge in Probate and Divorce, and then Judge Advocate 
 General, was created Baron St. Helier. The Bishop refused to 
 attend the Pan- Anglican Conference of 1867. 
 
 1 See what has been said, p. 146. 
 
THE VICTORIAN BISHOPS 
 
 187 
 
 Worcester was accorded to Philpot, Master of S. Catherine's 
 College, Cambridge, a nest of Low Churchmen. He sent the 
 case of the Rev. R. W. Enraght, Vicar of Holy Trinity, Bordesley, 
 to be tried by Lord Penzance on the usual charges. Special 
 stress was laid upon the use of wafer bread, and a sacrilegious 
 and ignorant man was bribed by the Birmingham Protestants 
 to go up to Communion and secrete the Blessed Sacrament. It 
 was taken into Lord Penzance's Court as an " exhibit " to be 
 used in evidence at Mr. Enraght's trial. Strong and indignant 
 feeling at this outrage was wide extended, and Bishop Philpot 
 was appealed to, as Mr. Enraght's diocesan, to put a stop to 
 the scandal, but he did nothing. He hardly ever attended the 
 House of Lords, never the Upper House of Convocation, and 
 refused to permit diocesan conferences. After floating as King 
 Log in his see from 1861 to 1890, he resigned. 
 
 J. S. Perowne, of Huguenot extraction, of a family settled 
 at Norwich on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and in- 
 heriting Huguenot misbeliefs, was made Dean of Peterborough. 
 At a Church Conference, and again in a pamphlet, he disputed 
 the divine and apostolic origin of Episcopacy, and advocated the 
 recognition of the orders in various Protestant sects. For this 
 he was patted on the back by Drs. Parker and Clifford, and 
 belauded by the whole Liberationist press. 
 
 In reward for his liberality of opinion he was given the 
 bishopric of Worcester in 1890. At his consecration he was 
 asked : " Are you ready, with all faithful diligence, to banish 
 and drive away all erroneous and strange doctrine contrary 
 to God's Word ? " And he made answer : "I am ready, the 
 Lord being my helper." Whereupon he was consecrated. He 
 had in his diocese the Rev. C. E. Beeby, Vicar of Yardley Wood, 
 near Birmingham, who published in Creed and Life (1898), and 
 afterwards in Doctrine and Principles (1900), his denial of the 
 verities of the Christian Creed, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, 
 the Virginal Birth, the Divinity of Christ, the Atonement, and 
 the facts of the Resurrection and the Ascension. Of the first 
 of these books, the Bishop said that it was " an honest attempt 
 to deal with great spiritual problems," but added that he 
 disapproved of parts. He took no steps against Mr. Beeby. 
 Again in 1903 did Mr. Beeby write against the Virginal Birth, 
 in the Hibbert Journal. The Bishop allowed him to go on in 
 his parish teaching the coarsest heresy. Did he ever read, in 
 Ezekiel, the sentence of God — " I will even deal with thee, as 
 
188 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 thou hast done, which hast despised the oath, in breaking the 
 covenant ? " 
 
 Rochester was given to an Evangelical — Wigram, 1860-1867. 
 He visited portions of the diocese that had never seen a bishop 
 previously. He was a good man, but left no mark in the see ; 
 he was known for little else than as the author of a Practical 
 Elementary Arithmetic, 1832. Of most of these Shaftesbury- 
 Palmerston bishops in their sees, one might say with Puck : 
 " What hempen homespuns have we swaggering here ? " 
 
 Thorold was created Bishop of Rochester in 1877, the appoint- 
 ment being made by Lord Beaconsfield. Later, in 1890, he was 
 accorded the bishopric of Winchester by the Marquess of 
 Salisbury. He was an Evangelical of little mental capacity, 
 but of intense earnestness, that showed when he spoke. He 
 started on his episcopal career with the determination to 
 ostracize all Catholics, but he soon found out his mistake, for 
 they were the best, hardest, and most successful workers in his 
 diocese, whereas the most prominent of the Evangelical clergy 
 did practically no parish work. And, as Thorold had a high 
 opinion of work, he changed his policy. His son went over to 
 Rome, and became a monk. Strange to say, this made the 
 father better disposed towards High Churchmen than before. 
 He was an earnest little man, very much alive to his own 
 importance, and willing latterly to recognize merit wherever he 
 saw it. 
 
 After holding himself aloof from churches that were in the 
 hands of advanced Churchmen, he was at last hesitatingly 
 induced to hold Confirmations at S. Stephen's, Lewisham, and 
 S. John's, Kennington ; and afterwards said that he had never 
 witnessed such reverent order and such devotion, and that he 
 found he had made a great mistake in his previous judgment. 
 
 Thorold had been reared in the straitest school of Evangeli- 
 calism by an adoring widowed mother and two elder sisters 
 of somewhat morbid piety. To save him from contamination 
 from the " world," he was not sent to a public school ; and at 
 Oxford he obtained no higher distinction than an honorary 
 fourth in mathematics. As incumbent of S. Giles-in-the-Fields 
 he did well. From S. Giles he moved to S. Pancras in 1869, 
 and was given a canonry at York by Archbishop Thomson. 
 His own private means were ample, and his duties at S. Pancras 
 well paid. He was nominated by Lord Beaconsfield to the see 
 of Rochester in 1877, which he accepted without the faintest 
 
THE VICTORIAN BISHOPS 
 
 189 
 
 whisper of Nolo episcopari, for from childhood he had enter- 
 tained the highest opinion of his own abilities to discharge any 
 duty and fill any post offered him. A reviewer of his Life by 
 C. H. Simkinson wrote : " There is something which jars on our 
 sense of congruity in the late occupant of a diocese whose neces- 
 sities were so overwhelming as those of South London, spending 
 large sums upon decoration and furniture of the castle (Farnham) 
 in which the successors of William of Wykeham were housed. 
 The symmetry of a life of high and noble effort is marred by 
 the undue appreciation in which the Bishop evidently held ■ the 
 pomp of circumstance,' and its dignity is lowered as we read 
 of lavish outlay upon flower-beds and hanging gardens, upon 
 Japanese wall-papers and costly tapestries. ... In an age 
 wherein extravagance and luxury trench so forcibly on wealth 
 that should be devoted to higher uses, simplicity of living and 
 disregard of outward show are imperative in those who bear 
 rule in the Church." 
 
 Only less luxurious was Bishop Thorold's setting at Selsdon 
 Park when Bishop of Rochester, where his " splendid hospi- 
 tality inevitably suggested at times a painful contrast with the 
 position of the poorer clergy struggling in the thickest of the 
 light." He was notably successful as a beggar for diocesan 
 needs. 
 
 And yet of Thorold this may be said. It was he who appealed 
 to the Universities to establish Missions in the south of London ; 
 and the Cambridge and Oxford Houses in those parts have had 
 noble results. Many a young man has been brought thereby 
 face to face with the miseries and the godlessness of those be- 
 nighted regions, and has learned what it is to labour for souls. 
 
 Archibald Campbell Tait, born in Edinburgh of Scottish 
 Presbyterian parents, was given the bishopric of London in 
 1856. When at Balliol he had been leader of the attack on 
 Tract Ninety ; he had been made Dean of Carlisle in 1849, but 
 neither understood nor sympathized with Cathedral worship 
 and order. When in 1856 he lost five little daughters through 
 an outbreak of scarlet fever, Queen Victoria, to solace his paternal 
 feelings, got Lord Palmerston to nominate him to the see of 
 London. From first to last he was greatly influenced by his 
 early Presbyterianism. He was not a Calvinist, he was on the 
 contrary a Latitudinarian ; and he was mentally and spiritually in- 
 capable of understanding and appreciating the Anglican position, 
 as distinct from that of any Established form of Protestantism in 
 
190 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 Germany or Switzerland. His sympathies throughout his career 
 were with Presbyterianism. Definitions of the verities of the 
 Faith he disliked ; and he had vague ideas as to what the Sacra- 
 ments were. From first to last he supposed that it was his mission 
 to oppose the Catholic revival. He persecuted Mr. Liddell of 
 S. Paul's, Knightsbridge, for having a stone altar ; he withdrew 
 the licence of the Rev. A. Poole because he heard confessions. 
 Evangelicals he favoured, not because he held their principles, 
 but because they gave no trouble by insisting on unpopular 
 doctrines. The men with whom he really sympathized were 
 the Broad Churchmen, and such as believed in the Church as a 
 State creation appointed to teach only what the State desired 
 to have taught, and to act only as the State bade them act. He 
 was consistently hostile to all such as believed in the Church 
 as a spiritual society, with her own laws and spiritual powers. 
 He voted for the Divorce Act, and he encouraged Bishop 
 Colenso. There was always a puzzled, dissatisfied expression 
 on his face, like that of a schoolboy set to work out a problem 
 beyond his capacity. When he preached the Consecration sermon 
 at All Saints', Margaret Street, he refrained from the least 
 expression of sympathy with, or congratulation on, the energy, 
 the self-sacrifice and devotion of the heart to God which had 
 raised that noble and sumptuous pile, merely coldly remarking 
 that he hoped the church might prove " a fresh help to those 
 whose tastes it gratifies." 1 
 
 It was the clergy of S. Michael's, Shoreditch. wearing coloured 
 stoles, that he is reported to have rudely ordered : " Take away 
 those ribbons." 2 Of his treatment or rather neglect of dealing 
 with the troubles in the S. George's-in-the-East riots, something 
 shall be said in another chapter. 
 
 Bishop Wilberforce felt deeply the cold and repellent attitude 
 adopted by Bishop Tait towards the advanced clergy. He 
 wrote in 1856, concerning Father Lowder's mission in London 
 Docks: " I quite long to go and cast myself into that mission. 
 It must depend on the men in high places at any one moment 
 whether the work prospers or not. It is, I mean, not the Church 
 
 1 There is this to be said for Archbishop Tait, that, finding what a 
 scandal was caused by the sacrilegious production in Court of a conse- 
 crated wafer at the trial of Mr. Enraght, he obtained it and reverently 
 consumed it in his own chapel. 
 
 3 Mr. Mackonochie and Mr. Lowder declared that this was a fiction of 
 Dr. F. G. Lee — they never heard the Bishop say this. Dr. Lee's imagina- 
 tion sometimes ran away with him, and the story was, I understand, 
 traced to him. 
 
THE VICTORIAN BISHOPS 
 
 191 
 
 of England, but the men who are on their trial. The Church has 
 enough life, but evils may bring the wrong man to the top ; if 
 only now we had a Bishop of London who would go and spend 
 a day or two in Wapping and gain the full trust of these zealous 
 men, what might we not do ? " 
 
 Bishop Tait's system of patronage provoked a good deal of 
 comment. Even such an adulator as the Rev. F. Arnold, who 
 lays on his praise of the bishops with a trowel, says : " He is a 
 man who always takes care of friends. Chaplain after chaplain 
 has been made bishop, or has had a bishopric offered to him. 
 Livings have been distributed to all within the charmed circle. 
 He not only takes care of his friends, but of his friends' friends. 
 Sometimes he puts round pegs into square holes, and square 
 pegs into round holes ; as when he sent men of severe learning 
 and retired, studious habits, into the incumbencies of vast poor 
 parishes, as the readiest means of providing for them. . . . 
 We are not aware of any instances in which the Archbishop has 
 sought out any scholar of eminence, or curate of prolonged 
 services, unless a popular cry or powerful interest has been 
 brought to bear on the selection." 
 
 The Erastianism of Tait when Bishop of London was never 
 more conspicuously marked than in a debate in the House of 
 Lords in 1867, on the Colonial Church, when he showed in his 
 speech that he thought the Colonial Church, though not estab- 
 lished by law, should be reduced under the supremacy of the 
 Crown, so that appeals in ecclesiastical causes would be heard 
 in the same manner as English appeals. To this Bishop Wilber- 
 force retorted: "It should be remembered that the Church of 
 England in the Colonies is a purely voluntary body, like the 
 Wesleyans or any other body of religionists having an internal 
 regulation of its own, but having no connection with the Crown 
 except as subjects of the Queen. " 
 
 Tait's words in an Episcopal Council in 1858 on Missionary 
 Bishops were : " Bishops in Roman Catholic countries were 
 sent by the Pope ; in our country the bishops should be sent 
 by the Queen, who stood in the same place as the Pope. The 
 State, and our connection with it, was our greatest blessing, 
 and there would be great danger to the Church in injuring our 
 connection with it. The same result might be obtained by 
 dividing the existing dioceses and giving them the superinten- 
 dence of their missions, and then the Queen would come in. 
 After all, is the measure desirable ? Is there any accuracy of 
 
192 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 data for supposing that bishops are of any use ? Surely it 
 is better, if you have bishops, to have them backed up by the 
 State." 1 
 
 Early in 1874 the Bishops met and determined that a Bill 
 for enforcing discipline in ritual matters must be pushed forward, 
 and the conduct of this Bill through Parliament was committed 
 to Archbishop Tait. It was read a second time in the House 
 of Lords, but when it came into committee it was met with 
 a flood of amendments. The most important of these were 
 introduced by Lord Shaftesbury. They virtually destroyed the 
 Court of Arches, and in its place set up an entirely new tribunal, 
 wholly secular and lay. The Archbishop was determined to 
 legislate at all costs, and when he found that he could not rely 
 upon Churchmen of any school to secure the passing of the Bill 
 which the Bishops had proposed, he supported that of Lord 
 Shaftesbury. It was then that Dr. Littledale applied to him the 
 text, " Take thy bill and sit down quickly." 
 
 He had already, in 1868, been appointed by Lord Beacons- 
 field to the see of Canterbury. Facts have conclusively shown 
 that the Act, so far from appeasing strife, tended to aggravate 
 it, whilst it inflicted the additional grievance on the clergy that 
 it invented a Court in which they felt that they could not 
 even defend themselves without being disloyal to the Church 
 of which they were ministers. 
 
 After 1878 his health began to fail, and towards the end of 
 1882 he took to his bed, and there attempted to undo some 
 of the mischief which he had accomplished. He persuaded Mr. 
 Mackonochie to resign the benefice of S. Alban's, Holborn, so as 
 to avert prosecution by the Church Association. He felt in 
 a vague way that he might have done wrong throughout his 
 episcopate, and had the courage to admit the possibility, so 
 that finally he may have felt, like Saul of Tarsus, "It is hard 
 for thee to kick against the pricks." 
 
 Robert Bickersteth, another of the Palmerston-Shaftesbury 
 appointments, was sent to Ripon, an important see comprising 
 within it the manufacturing towns of Leeds, Bradford, Wake- 
 
 1 Bishop Wilberforce wrote to Gladstone, November 6, 1861 : "The 
 Bishop of London, who professes to disbelieve in the power of Episcopacy 
 apart from Prelacy, has constantly opposed every attempt we have made 
 to extend our missionary episcopate, and has sought to bind our poor 
 Church in new fetters." The day was named for the consecration of the 
 Bishop of Honolulu by the Archbishop of Canterbury and Bishops of 
 Chichester and Oxford, when the Bishop of London interfered and got it 
 postponed sine die. 
 
THE VICTORIAN BISHOPS 
 
 193 
 
 field, Dewsbury, Huddersfield, Halifax, Barnsley — in fact, all 
 the great teeming manufacturing portion of Yorkshire, leaving 
 to the archbishopric only Sheffield of this busy, thriving and 
 thickly populated region. What was needed, and needed im- 
 periously, was an able, active ruler, full of energy and organizing 
 capacity. Bickersteth was none of this. His proper sphere 
 would have been a proprietary chapel in Cheltenham or Bath. 
 A severe, but not unjust critique was passed on the fulsome and 
 undiscriminating panegyric passed on him by his son, in the 
 Church Quarterly Review, No. 48 (1887). He occupied the throne 
 of Ripon from 1856 to 1884. 1 He was a narrow Evangelical ; he 
 voted for the Divorce Bill and for marriage with a deceased 
 wife's sister. I shall have more to say of him presently, as I 
 was in his diocese from 1864 to 1866. He was a sincerely pious 
 man, desirous of doing what was right as far as his lights went, 
 but those lights illumined but a very small radius. 
 
 It cannot be said that the bishops nominated by Lord Beacons- 
 field were a great improvement on the nonentities of the Palmer- 
 ston-Shaftesbury appointment, with the notable exception of 
 Lightfoot to Durham. Magee was a witty, fluent, Irish popular 
 preacher and platform orator. He came to England frankly to 
 push his fortunes. He wrote : " I confess that a presumptuous 
 dream I had of doing good in the Irish Church by raising a 
 standard of liberality and moderation in theology and politics 
 is dissipated by an experience of five years. ... I am a speaker 
 only, and cannot bring myself to howl in Ireland after the 
 fashion approved by Irish Churchmen." He took the pro- 
 prietary " Octagon " Church at Bath, and thence was promoted 
 to be Dean of Cork. Next he was given the see of Peter- 
 borough by Disraeli because he made a brilliant speech against 
 the Disestablishment of the Irish Church. As Bishop he was 
 active in his diocese, but — as he said — he picked out the High 
 Churchmen and threw them over the hedge into his neigh- 
 bour's garden. A great work of Church extension and levelling 
 up of Church life and practice was accomplished in the large 
 towns of Northampton and Leicester in his time, but how far 
 he had a hand in this is hard to determine. The Bishop 
 was wont to come and take up his abode in Northampton 
 
 1 Bishop Wilberforce in his Diary, May 15, 1858, wrote: "Discussion 
 at S.P.G. on Missionary Bishops. A painful occasion. Carlisle and 
 Ripon utterly disbelieving in Christ's appointment (of Episcopacy). Alas ! 
 alas ! Lord forgive them — they know not what they do." 
 
 13 
 
194 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 for two or three weeks together, living in rooms, where he 
 was accessible to the clergy at any time. This he did also in 
 other parts of his diocese. In 1891 he was promoted to the 
 Archbishopric of York by the Marquess of Salisbury, but he 
 died shortly after. 
 
 Disraeli had accurately defined the procedure of his pre- 
 decessors as Prime Ministers in the choice of bishops : " Find 
 a man who, totally destitute of genius, possesses nevertheless 
 considerable talents ; who has official aptitude, a volubility 
 of routine rhetoric ; who, embarrassed neither by the principles 
 of the philosopher nor by the prejudices of the bigot, can assume 
 with a cautious facility the prevalent tone, and disembarrass him- 
 self of it with a dexterous ambiguity the moment it ceases to be 
 predominant — such a man, though he be one of an essentially 
 small mind, though his intellectual qualities be less than moderate, 
 with feeble powers of thought, no imagination, contracted 
 sympathies — such a man is the individual whom kings and 
 parliaments would select ... to rule the Church." 
 
 Such being Disraeli's judgment of the appointments by 
 previous Prime Ministers, one might have expected that he 
 would be conscientious and judicious in such matters. But the 
 catching of votes stood with him above principle ; and to please 
 the Evangelicals Lord Beaconsfield advanced to episcopal thrones 
 men of ultra-low opinions. One would almost think that 
 Disraeli was playing the prank of the lord in the Induction to 
 Taming the Shrew, when he took up these individuals who knew 
 nothing of Church doctrine and Church order, and had them 
 conveyed into episcopal palaces, vested them in lawn, and got 
 them addressed as " My Lord." 
 
 Am I a lord ? 
 Or do I dream, or have I dream'd till now ? 
 I do not sleep ; I see, I hear, I speak ; 
 I smell sweet savours, and I feel soft things ; 
 Upon my life, I am a lord indeed, 
 And not a tinker, not Christopher Sly, 
 Well, bring our lady (our diocese) hither to our sight, 
 And once again, a pot o' the smallest ale. 
 
 Ryle was appointed to the newly-created see of Liverpool. It 
 was he who persecuted Mr. Bell-Cox of S. Margaret's, Liverpool, 
 and had him sent to prison. Ryle had himself been a member of 
 the Church Association, called into being to prosecute High 
 Churchmen, so that he was quite ready, like Herod, " to vex 
 
THE VICTORIAN BISHOPS 
 
 195 
 
 certain of the Church." Ryle was the author of a book entitled 
 Knots Untied, published under the auspices of the National 
 Protestant Church Union. He untied knots only to produce 
 a tangle. The book teems with theological misconceptions and 
 unproven assertions. It was issued as a sort of text-book of 
 Protestantism in the Church of England. He counsels laymen 
 to forsake their parish churches if the clergy do not preach 
 " the Gospel " as he understood it. But two can play at that 
 game. He urged " lawsuits wherever there is a reasonable hope 
 of success." And this was the sort of man that the Prime 
 Minister planted in the Church. Did that half-reclaimed Jew 
 do so out of mockery ? 1 
 
 When one considers Ryle's bigotry, his narrow partisanship, 
 his treatment of the parish of S. Margaret's, and his obtaining 
 the imprisonment of Mr. Bell-Cox — the text applied to him does 
 not seem inappropriate : " Where shall wisdom be found ? and 
 where is the place of understanding ? The sea (read see) saith, 
 It is not in me." There is, however, something to be said for 
 Bishop Ryle, that towards the end of his life he softened con- 
 siderably, and, probably because he was heartily ashamed of 
 what he had done to the Vicar of S. Margaret's, he went out 
 of his way to be gracious to Mr. Bell-Cox. As that priest 
 said in a letter to me, " his kindness and confidence were most 
 touching." It speaks highly for Ryle's character, that he was 
 ready by act, though not by words, to admit that he had done 
 wrong. 
 
 More than that, too many of the Evangelical clergy in his 
 diocese, whom he had at first favoured, he discovered to be 
 men of words and not of deeds, and that the work for souls, 
 the reclaiming of the fallen, and the building up in the faith and 
 in the love of God, and to a spiritual life, was effected by the 
 clergy working upon Catholic lines. He was large-hearted enough 
 to recognize this. No ordinary man could have done so. And 
 he changed his conduct towards them. It is evidence of his 
 genuine sincerity and humility of spirit that he did this. And 
 as one of his clergy said to me : " He came here as Saul the 
 persecutor, and became to us Paul the Apostle." 
 
 James Fraser was offered by Gladstone and accepted the 
 bishopric of Manchester, because he had worked as Assistant 
 Commissioner to the Education Commission in 1858. He became 
 
 1 Bishop Wilberforce wrote in 1867 of Disraeli : "Not a bit a Briton 
 but all over an Eastern Jew." 
 
196 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 bishop in 1870. He was hard-working, and had no " side." He 
 is described as " striding about his diocese on foot, carrying his 
 own blue bag containing his robes, stopping runaway carts" 1 — 
 that is to say he did so once — " and talking familiarly with 
 every one he met." In fact he would talk to any one who would 
 listen to him ; he was garrulous to an extreme. 
 
 Of Fraser might be said, as of Gratiano : He " speaks an in- 
 finite deal of nothing. His reasons are as two grains of wheat 
 hid in two bushels of chaff : you may still seek all day ere you 
 find them, and when you have them, they are not worth the 
 search." His most grievous blunder was in not vetoing the 
 Miles Platting case, and in approving the consequent imprison- 
 ment of the Rector. He received a severe castigation in the 
 Northern Convocation from Dean Lake and Canon Owen. 
 
 But if Bishop Fraser took an unfortunate line in the matter 
 of S. John's, Miles Platting, he behaved with great firmness in 
 the case of S. John's, Cheetham Hill, in 1884. The benefice was 
 in the Bishop's gift, and became vacant by the resignation of 
 Mr. Lund, who had a young Mr. Gunton as his curate. A 
 memorial signed by upwards of 1,800 parishioners requested the 
 Bishop to present this curate to the living. A great many of 
 the subscribers were Dissenters. But Bishop Fraser had sight 
 of a sermon and paper and letter by Mr. Gunton, in which he 
 expressed so distinctly his Socinian views, and spoke of Christ 
 as man " differing only in degree from ourselves," that he 
 refused to institute him ; remaining unmoved amidst the 
 vituperations of the press and of speakers at indignation 
 meetings, and taunts that he had always advocated that the 
 parishioners should have a voice in the nomination of their 
 priest — and now that the voice had spoken emphatically, he 
 would not listen to it. 
 
 Mr. Swinburne describes a school-opening he attended : "I 
 myself heard him speak — when introducing a deputation he 
 took up three-quarters of the hour allotted to that person whom 
 people had come from miles to hear. His lordship was there to 
 speak on Education, but he opened the meeting by referring to 
 his sisters in Christ : ' My sisters in Christ, blessed with affluence 
 
 1 It was, I have been told, a very small affair. A boy was delivering 
 parcels from a little tradesman's cart, and leaving it to give up one, the 
 horse or pony trotted or cantered off without the driver. Bishop Fraser 
 easily stopped it, and gave the reins to the lad who was running after. 
 The most was made of this — and, as may be seen by the quotation above, 
 the one incident is swelled to many. 
 
THE VICTORIAN BISHOPS 
 
 197 
 
 in my old parish ' — here a digression occurred to contest the 
 views expressed by certain smiles among his audience, that 
 the expression ' sisters in Christ ' was open to objections. The 
 next digression went to prove that the opinion of his 1 sisters 
 in Christ blessed with affluence ' curiously coincided with the 
 rougher materials not so blessed, to whom it had been his privilege 
 to minister in mining districts, and that characteristic was — 
 breathless anxiety on the part of his audience to hear it — but 
 several more digressions ensued before our curiosity was allayed, 
 and we learnt that his sisters in Christ always complimented him 
 on ' going straight to the point,' that was to say to the root 
 of the matter ; and what was the matter before them ? why 
 Education. 
 
 "Education, he informed us, was a Latin word — yet one 
 more digression to prove the utility of the study of dead lan- 
 guages. This digression became multiplied in the shape of 
 reasons why his audience, chiefly fisher-folk, should not be dis- 
 couraged if they did not understand Latin, and were not thus 
 in a position to be as accurate as his lordship ; and to prove 
 his accuracy he proceeded to explain to them what that word 
 education meant. ' Education comes from educo, a Latin word 
 meaning " I build up."' " 1 
 
 That this is no caricature may be judged by Bishop Fraser's 
 address to the working men at the Leeds Congress in 1872. 
 Bishop Wilberforce thus describes it in a letter to the Rev. 
 Hugh Pearson, October 10, 1872 : " Bishop of Manchester starts 
 by saying they are not working men — that only a few are (cry of 
 ' Show of hands,' and 75 per cent, hold up their hands). Tells 
 a good story of his squire in Berkshire, who told him that he 
 should have been a tippler and a poacher — says he, but having a 
 comfortable house, is not tempted to tipple at the Black Dog, 
 and smoke churchwardens (now he is speaking very well indeed) . 
 Why do not the poor hear us gladly ? Now has just scalped 
 poor Gloucester and Bristol, but well and tenderly as if he loved 
 him. Now he is praising Mr. Joseph Arch. Now he has made 
 a great blunder : says ' the order of the Angel was, Go stand in 
 the Temple and speak the words of this life. We don't want 
 heaven and paradise 10,000 years hence, but what is to help 
 you to-day ? ' The Greek, brother Fraser, won't bear it. Now 
 again, he is very good : * Do you read your Bibles for yourselves ? 
 Do you pray ? ' Now he is speaking very mischievously, ap- 
 1 Swinburne (A. J.), Memories of a School Inspector, p. 52. 
 
198 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 pealing to the Wesleyans about surplices, etc., and contrasting 
 them with winning living souls ; and so he stops, applauded 
 for the last bit of mischief — leaving, as Lord Nelson said, the 
 impression that ' the kingdom of God is not meat and drink ' 
 means 'there are no sacraments'" (Life of Bishop Wilberforce, 
 iii. 399). 
 
 It was of Bishop Fraser that one of his leading incumbents 
 remarked, when a conference was convened to consider by 
 what means the episcopal hands might be strengthened : " Alas I " 
 with a sigh, "it's his head that wants strengthening." 
 
 When the Indian famine occurred, and English hearts were 
 stirred with compassion, and purses were opened to send relief 
 to the starving natives, Bishop Fraser did his utmost to dis- 
 courage this generous sympathy, on the plea that it was the 
 business of the State to relieve the distress. 
 
 He objected to house-to-house visitation by the clergy, saying, 
 " It will be done mechanically, and I do not believe any spiritual 
 fruit will flow from it." 
 
 At the Bath Church Congress he said : " When I heard my 
 Right Rev. brother, the Bishop of Chichester, plead for a life 
 of devotion, I hoped that the word ' devotion ' might be meant to 
 include devotion to duty as well as devotion on the knees in 
 prayer, for we bishops, who have the care of so many churches 
 upon us, have but little time to give up to those hours of prayer 
 which we feel we do most earnestly need." It would have been 
 well for him had he spent more time on his knees, and less in 
 blathering on a platform. One of his canons remarked after his 
 death, that he seemed to be much more interested in the doings 
 of Dissenters than in the work of the Church. 
 
 A highly eulogistic Life has been written of Bishop Fraser 
 by Mr. Diggle, now Bishop of Carlisle ; another by Mr. Tom 
 Hughes. 
 
 There was a surgeon at Wakefield who, when riding by the 
 workshop of a sexton-stonecutter, saw that the man had wrongly 
 spelled an inscription on a monument. " Heigh ! " said he, 
 "you have made a blot there." "Never mind, Sir," replied 
 the man; "cover it over. I have covered over many a blot 
 of yours." 
 
 And what biographies may be written, when all the blots 
 are covered over ! 
 
 The story is told of Thackeray that, as he was passing a fish- 
 monger's shop, before which stood a couple of barrels of oysters 
 
THE VICTORIAN BISHOPS 
 
 199 
 
 labelled respectively is. a dozen, and is. 3^. a dozen, he re- 
 marked to a companion, " How the shilling bivalves must hate 
 those at one-and-three ! " But one would say rather, " How they 
 must fear them ! " Small beer would never suffer Bass's pale ale 
 to be advanced to table till it had stood and become unpalatably 
 flat. It is alarmed at the energy and effervescence of the latter. 
 
 According to Sir Francis Younghusband, who made the 
 memorable march to Lhassa : " It is not the ordinary man, 
 however much he may develop his mediocrity, that is most 
 wanted. It is the exceptional man. It is the man with just 
 that touch which we cannot positively define, but which we all 
 instinctively recognize as genius. There is a superabundance of 
 ordinary men, and it must be admitted that they do ordinary 
 work very much better than geniuses. But it is the genius alone 
 who, when the occasion arises, will flash a ray through the masses 
 of ordinary men, and make them do what they would never do 
 with any amount of development of their ordinary qualities." 
 Now the English parsons are mostly ordinary men, but it is 
 precisely among such, as in the army, that genius has a special 
 work to do — to illumine, to guide, to galvanize into activity. But 
 it is precisely these who were crushed and driven away by the 
 bishops, and who had no chance of promotion, no prospect of 
 getting a living from the Crown, the Chancellor, or any public 
 body. From among the mediocratics the bishops were chosen. 
 
 The Shaftesbury-Palmerstonian bishops as little resembled 
 the great prelates of the past, Andrewes, Laud, Bull, Butler, 
 Pearson, as an empty coal-barge in a sluggish canal, at night, 
 illumined by a tallow dip in a dingy lantern, resembles a man-of- 
 war breasting the waves in dazzling sunlight. Both are vessels — 
 that is all. 
 
 These bishops and deans and canons who owed promotion 
 to their Evangelical opinions were good men, smug and plausible, 
 but not scholars, without force of character, and power to com- 
 prehend what were the needs of the Church of England. 
 
 It was a change from the Peel and Russell bishops to those 
 of Palmerston, hardly an improvement. 
 
 Aliter catuli longe olent, aliter sues. 
 
 Plautus. 
 
 What was felt, and felt bitterly by the High-Church clergy, was 
 how completely the bishops cringed to the man in the street. 
 If the press denounced ritual, confession, high doctrine, they 
 
200 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 hastened to echo the same in their charges. I venture to quote 
 from a poem that passed in MS. about this time. It was entitled 
 " The Marionette Dancer." A strange masked piper placed 
 puppets on the pavement and bade them caper to his tune, as 
 he worked a string that set them in motion. I have space for 
 but a few lines. 
 
 Then he held up with a contemptuous yawn 
 
 A doll in rochet, and with sleeves of lawn. 
 
 " This one I got, half-form'd, from one whose trade 
 
 Was making saints ; but this aside he laid, 
 
 For how a saint, he asked, be fashioned 
 
 With knot at heart, and dry-rot in the head ? 
 
 Rejected, but in prelate's vesture set, 
 
 He makes no saint, but makes a marionette. 
 
 Obedient to whatever I may please, 
 
 Bows, cringes, leers, advances, stands at ease, 
 
 Opinions taking from the daily papers, 
 
 And as the rabble whistle, feebly capers." 
 
 I interrupted him and said, " I pray, 
 
 Tell me, are these dolls rattling thus all day ? " 
 
 He answered with a shrug of shoulder, " Aye ! 
 
 And when they're broken, out of joint, and fail 
 
 To please the mob, then of no more avail, 
 
 I cast them in yon box." — The box was black, 
 
 Bearing a coffin -plate, inscribed Oblivion. 
 
 Then, I would move away, but paused awhile 
 
 To ask, " Strange piper, with sardonic smile, 
 
 Winding your threads, casting your dolls away, 
 
 With fallen mask, tell me thy name, I pray ? " 
 
 He raised himself, as after me he hurl'd 
 
 The answer fiercely, " Sir ! I am the World." 
 
 There is a hackneyed story of an artist painting the Assumption 
 who was accorded a vision of cherubs. " Messieurs, asseyez-vous 
 s'il vous plait," said he. " Helas, mais nous n'avons pas de 
 quoi ! " they replied. These Palmerstonian bishops reversed the 
 condition. They could take their seats, but they had no heads. 
 It is not angels only that hover over us, but paper kites as well. 
 
 One of them gave a lecture on Geology, mainly based on 
 Hugh Miller's Testimony of the Rocks, and spoke in it of a Megale- 
 iherium, whereupon he was held up to ridicule by the Saturday 
 Review. This same bishop went to a Church opening, and was 
 handed the programme of the service. The Benedictus was to 
 be sung. " Benedictus ! Benedictus i " he exclaimed. " That is 
 something Popish — I will not allow that." 
 
 The same prelate sent for one of his incumbents, and took 
 
THE VICTORIAN BISHOPS 
 
 201 
 
 him to task for advertising the preaching of a Mission priest 
 as that of the Rev. Father So-and-so. " It is unscriptural, 
 it is against the Word of God," said the bishop, quoting 
 S. Matthew xxiii. 9, " Call no man your father, etc." " But, my 
 Lord," replied the priest, " how about yourself ? Are not we 
 to address you as the Right Reverend Father in God ? " The 
 bishop collapsed at once. 
 
 For awhile these bishops clogged the wheels of the Church. 
 They originated nothing, they had no programme, no definite 
 aims, no organizing power. Those of the party who were in 
 Colonial sees were conspicuous failures. Australia was a dumping- 
 ground for them, and in no Colony did the Church prove so 
 feeble. These Palmerstonian prelates have happily now all 
 dropped away, leaving not a trace behind, save volumes of 
 charges, for which a second-hand bookseller would not give 
 sixpence a ton. There is much to be said for the bishops of this 
 period. They had a most difficult course to steer. The great 
 bulk of the people, ignorant and prejudiced, were opposed to the 
 Church movement. The Court, the Press, the Lawyers were 
 against it. Unhappily, with the exception of Bishop Wilberforce, 
 there was no commanding genius among them with a wide 
 outlook. There were some devout and orthodox prelates, but 
 they had not the force of character and the ability to stand up 
 for the cause of the Church. They led sweet and holy lives — 
 that was all. The majority of the bishops were mediocrities, 
 men of low intelligence, narrow views, and hearts quaking before 
 the voice of the press and the shout of the vulgar. They were, 
 rightly enough, earnest for personal religion, but they had no 
 conception of anything beyond individualism. They were 
 conscientious, but their consciences were enclosed within a hazel 
 nutshell. They had no prophetic outlook into the future ; they 
 had no scales wherein to weigh forces. Canute had his chair 
 planted on the sands, and bade the tide respect it. It did not — 
 it rose and submerged his seat. But these prelates sat on their 
 thrones and screamed and charged against the tide that swelled 
 and which they were powerless to control. The evil was due 
 to the Prime Ministers, who selected for bishops men who were 
 ignorant of steering to act as pilots among the sandbanks of the 
 day ; men who had no knowledge of where was deep water ; 
 poor, inept blunderers put in charge of the vessel of Christ's 
 Church, who ran her from side to side, groping their way, devoid 
 of knowledge and not even understanding the compass. 
 
202 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 The Colonial sees were for the most part rilled with favourites 
 of the Church Missionary Society, and with home nonentities. 
 An old pupil of mine, a devout Churchman, went to Australia 
 to a diocese obsessed by one of these. The Bishop invited him 
 to supper. The meal ended, at which were several youths, the 
 company resolved itself into a prayer-meeting over the rinds of 
 cheese and the dregs of home-made ginger-beer. The Bishop 
 tripped about asking each guest to " put up a prayer," and giving 
 each his cue. My pupil turned hot and cold, and when his turn 
 came, in a tremulous voice began to pray for a blessing to descend 
 " on the Bishop of this Diocese and on his wife — 1 Thou who hast 
 promised to save both man and beast ' " — and came to a fright- 
 ened stop. In the dead silence that ensued, the Bishop pro- 
 nounced a sonorous Amen. Whereupon Mrs. Bishop heaved her 
 head above the chair rail and flashed a threatening glance at her 
 spouse. " Amen " signifies " so it is," as well as " so be it." 
 
 Mr. H. G. Wells in Kipps gives a very true picture of one of 
 these men, returned to England. " He derived much help from 
 a ' manly ' sermon, delivered in an enormous voice by a large, 
 fat, sun-red clergyman, just home from a colonial bishopric he 
 had resigned on the plea of ill-health, exhorting him that what- 
 ever his hand found to do he was to do it with all his might." 
 These men were incorrectly termed " returned empties." 
 Empties they were not, for they were full of pomposity and 
 self-complacency — at least such were some of those that I came 
 across. 
 
 Happily there were others, notable types of Colonial and 
 Missionary bishops, working upon definite Church lines. 
 
 The unhappy thing was that the bishops, with the exception 
 of a very few, did not understand the movement, as the necessary 
 outcome of the Catholic seed that had ever been in the English 
 Church, but had been trampled on, overlaid with paving-stones, 
 battered down, but had never been killed. Much excuse must 
 be made for them. With regard to Archbishop Tait, though he 
 had conformed to the Church, his Scottish training left a de- 
 cided influence on his character and mind. The old adage is 
 true that wine evermore retains the flavour of the soil in which 
 it grows. 
 
 A gentleman near Whitby holds lands on a singular tenure. 
 He is bound once in the year to mount his horse, gallop into 
 the sea, and drive a wattle into the sand. He then gallops back, 
 and the next wave washes his wattle away. The Victorian 
 
THE VICTORIAN BISHOPS 
 
 203 
 
 bishops were much like that gentleman. They supposed that 
 they held office subject to the condition that they should yearly 
 ascend their hobbies, make a dash into the waves of religious 
 conviction rolling up from the depths of fervid hearts, and plant 
 their petty protests, which next moment would be cast indignantly 
 aside, and which no one could suppose would restrain the rising 
 tide which swells obedient to a Divine impulse. 
 
 But assuredly these prelates should have endeavoured to 
 obtain some comprehension of the principles of that party 
 against which they levelled all their batteries. Whereas, from 
 their own description of it, they did not understand it at all — 
 they never even attempted to understand it. There was one 
 among them with ability, and that was Thomson, who had 
 Scottish shrewdness. But the movement had already grown 
 beyond his control. A man once put his foot down on the 
 bubbling spring which was the source of the Thames. " Now," 
 said he, " all the ships and barges below London Bridge will 
 stick in the mud." Thomson put down his foot, but not on the 
 spring, and the water overflowed his instep, rose above his knee. 
 
 As to being leaders, the bishops appointed by Lord Palmerston 
 were leaders only in the same way that is a wheelbarrow which 
 the man in the street thrusts before him. 
 
 It may be interesting at the present day to compare the 
 treatment of Ordinands now with what it was formerly. Now 
 most of the bishops gather about them those preparing for the 
 ministry not merely to prove their knowledge, but to kindle 
 their devotional feelings. They are kind and considerate, and 
 where they have room, lodge them in their palaces. 
 
 An old friend has furnished me with an account of his ordina- 
 tion by one of the Shaftesbury-Palmerstonian bishops in the 
 sixties. 
 
 " The vicar of X desired to have me as his curate, and I went 
 to town by appointment and called on the bishop in the morning 
 at his lodgings, whilst breakfast was on the table, at the hour 
 fixed by himself. It did not occur to him to offer me even a 
 cup of coffee or a bit of toast. I had come up by an early train 
 from a distance, to meet him by appointment, and had had no 
 breakfast. He received me stiffly and ungraciously, and required 
 me to go to his cathedral city for examination for the ordination, 
 that was to take place, not on Trinity, but on Whit-Sunday. 
 The candidates were expected to lodge in the town and to 
 walk out some considerable distance in the morning to the 
 
204 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 palace, where examination began at 10 a.m. At noon a meagre 
 refection was served to us, ham-sandwiches and very small beer, 
 in the hall, of which we partook standing. Meanwhile lunch was 
 being carried into the dining-room for his Lordship, chaplains 
 and family ; and whilst they were feeding, the butler intimated 
 to us that we were expected to walk about the grounds. This 
 we did, and heard the clatter of knives and forks in the dining- 
 room. 
 
 " At length we were suffered to return into the palace, when 
 the comestibles had been carried from the dining-room in which 
 we were examined, but from which the smell of the meal had 
 not been dissipated. 
 
 " Nothing could have been set more unsuitable for drawing 
 out the knowledge of a candidate than the papers we were 
 required to answer. They were keys to taps from which might 
 flow a stream of unctuous twaddle. Our principal examiner was 
 a man considered a burning and shining light of the Evangelical 
 school, if that can be called a school where there is no scholarship. 
 
 " The man who was supposed to have passed best, and was 
 set to read the Gospel on the Sunday, he was a literate, who 
 dropped every ' h,' but could write sheets of pious vapourings. 
 In conversation with him afterwards I learned that he could 
 spell out Greek words, but knew little or no Latin. Yet this 
 windbag had the audacity, on entering his curacy, to publish the 
 very first sermon he preached. It was an impertinence of the 
 Bishop to distinguish such a man above the heads of Oxford and 
 Cambridge men, some already Masters of Arts. 
 
 "We were ordained in the private chapel of the palace robed 
 in black gowns, and the Bishop preached empty nothingnesses 
 to us for an hour. After that, we were invited to lunch with 
 him." 
 
 I was in the diocese of Ripon under Bishop Bickersteth from 
 1864 to 1866. He was so unsympathetic that he was called in 
 the diocese " the Bleak Bishop." He was wont to give copies of 
 Simeon's Skeletons of Sermons or Clayton's Sermons, which had 
 no sale, to all candidates for Holy Orders in his diocese. Richard 
 Collins, afterwards of S. Saviour's, Leeds, said to him : " My 
 Lord, I venture to ask, with the prophet : Can these dry bones 
 live ? Do you know, my Lord, what the Dean [Erskine] has 
 said of Simeon's Skeletons ? " " No, Mr. Collins ; I should be 
 very glad and interested to learn his opinion." " Well, my 
 Lord," he said, " ' You might as well expect results from them as 
 
THE VICTORIAN BISHOPS 
 
 205 
 
 you might look for an oak-tree to grow out of a broomstick 
 stuck in the earth.' " 
 
 The second-hand booksellers in Leeds, Bradford and other 
 towns in the diocese would not look at copies when offered them, 
 they had such a glut on their shelves ; and it was not an unusual 
 sight to see slabs of bacon in pork-shops placed on the counter 
 labelled " 4^. only " sustained by one of Simeon's lucubrations 
 upon Justification, or to receive a pennyworth of " bull's-eyes " 
 in a cornet from one of Clayton's Sermons on Assurance. The 
 gift was kindly intended, but was not appreciated in any case. 
 It was a standing joke among Ordinands that if every one had 
 a skeleton in his cupboard at home, they went off from Ripon 
 each with one in his portmanteau. 
 
 In the palace grounds were pits, caused by the sudden collapse 
 of the strata. Below the surface at some depth were subter- 
 ranean streams, never seen, that corroded the sandy conglomerate 
 through which they flowed, and which latter suddenly gave 
 way, leaving a concavity above. The Bishop was greatly afraid 
 lest some day such a catastrophe should befall his house, and 
 he, his family and chaplain should go down quick into the pit. 
 What he did not see was that this was a figure of the poor un- 
 digested, incoherent Evangelicalism in which he believed ; and 
 that there were currents, deep and strong, flowing beneath the 
 crust, causing the Protestantism of the Established Church to 
 give way everywhere, and where least expected, and that these 
 currents were irresistible. 
 
 I went from Ripon diocese to that of York, where I was for 
 five years under Thomson, who was then Archbishop. I had 
 been appointed by Viscountess Downe, who was building a church 
 in an outlying portion of the parish of Topcliffe, and who also 
 paid the stipend of the perpetual curate. But the vicar of 
 Topcliffe was the actual nominator. I had resigned my curacy 
 at Horbury and made ready to move to Dalton, when an in- 
 explicable hitch occurred. I went to Topcliffe to see the vicar. 
 He showed me letters from the Archbishop suggesting " dodges " 
 — I can give them no other name — by which he might exclude 
 me. I said that this was very unfair : he, the vicar, had written 
 to me offering the curacy of Dalton, and on the strength of that 
 I had left Horbury. 
 
 The vicar, Mr. Hawkins, a sturdy, straightforward English- 
 man, burst out— " I will not do the Archbishop's dirty work 
 for him. If he objects to you, let him act openly and above- 
 
206 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 board." The Archbishop did not desire to fall out with Lady 
 Downe, who had several livings in the diocese in her gift, as also 
 some " peculiars " which Dr. Thomson wished very greatly to 
 get under his own jurisdiction. So eventually I was instituted. 
 Dr. Thomson had been Provost of Queen's College, Oxford, in 
 1855. In 1861 he was made Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol. 
 Struck by his appearance, so it was said, Queen Victoria had him 
 transferred to York after he had been ten months in his first see, 
 and he remained Archbishop for twenty-eight years. Of his 
 ability there could be little doubt. As to his religious opinions • 
 I should say they were Erastian, and he only postured as a 
 Low Churchman because he was strongly opposed to the High- 
 Church party ; and he used the Evangelicals as they served his 
 ends. Here is an example of his methods. 
 
 At Bridlington the parish church was in the hands of the 
 so-called Simeonite Trustees. There were residents in the 
 popular watering-place who could not endure the way in which 
 the services were conducted in the church, and the sour doctrine 
 there delivered made their gorges heave. Now an adjoining 
 parish was in good hands, and the incumbent of this erected an 
 iron mission chapel on his side of the boundary, and appointed 
 to it a curate to conduct the services suitably. At this end of 
 Bridlington a good number of villa residences were being erected, 
 in fact, it was spreading towards the iron chapel ; and here also 
 a Sisterhood had a convalescent home. The chapel was always 
 crowded and the services hearty. The Archbishop exerted him- 
 self to get a church built a stone' s-throw off, on the Bridlington 
 side of the frontier, and no sooner was this completed and a 
 strong Evangelical had been appointed to it, than he withdrew 
 the licence of the curate, and also that for the iron chapel. This 
 naturally led to the migration from the watering-place of all 
 such as were Churchmen at heart. 
 
 Archbishop Thomson was a portly man, pompous in manner, 
 and the text applied to him by Dr. Littledale was appropriate : 
 " God, I thank thee that I am not as other men are." In the 
 evening at dinner, in purple velvet, with purple silk apron and 
 stockings and silver shoe-buckles, he presented a stately figure, 
 but his face had lost its handsomeness when I knew him. The 
 writer in the Dictionary of National Biography states that he 
 was very popular with the artisan class, presumably at Sheffield. 
 I never was at Sheffield, so I cannot say; but I have little 
 doubt that he was valued by the Dissenters, as doing his best 
 
THE VICTORIAN BISHOPS 
 
 207 
 
 to hinder Church work in the place done upon definite Church 
 lines. His dread of anything like a manifestation of corporate 
 life in the Church induced him to remain sulking at Bishop- 
 thorpe, when he refused to attend the Pan-Anglican Conference. 
 
 He objected strongly to my having non-communicating at- 
 tendance at Dalton. I said that I would stop it at once if he 
 would point out to me the rubric requiring the withdrawal of 
 such as did not purpose communicating. " But the children — 
 I don't approve of the presence of the children." " Your 
 Grace — it was the same with the Apostles : they also objected 
 to the children approaching Christ. History repeats itself." 
 
 It is only fair to say that when Bishop Fraser of Manchester 
 appealed to him for his opinion relative to the doctrine held and 
 taught by Mr. Gunton, of S. John's, Cheetham Hill, his decision 
 was prompt, just and orthodox ; and that he took steps to expel 
 Mr. Voysey from his cure, when he contravened the first prin- 
 ciples of the Faith. 
 
 When I left Dalton for the rectory of East Mersea, to which I 
 was presented by the Crown, he told me that he had given a 
 glowing account of my work and a strong recommendation of 
 myself to Mr. Gladstone, who had written to him about me. I 
 was aware of the value of that. He knew nothing of my work, 
 and he wanted greatly to get rid of me out of his diocese. 
 
 At East Mersea, to which I was presented in 1871, I was in the 
 diocese of Rochester till its subdivision, and then was in that 
 of S. Alban. Claughton was Bishop ; he was the son of the 
 steward of Lord Ward's estates. He was a man of considerable 
 presence. He did well at Oxford and was made Professor of 
 Poetry. I never saw a line of poetry written by him. He 
 married the sister of Earl Dudley, his pupil, who befriended him 
 throughout life, and together with Bishop Wilberforce obtained 
 for him the bishopric of Rochester. When the see was divided, 
 he took that of S. Alban. He resided in Danbury Park. 
 
 In the Middle Ages a struggle ensued relative to Investitures, 
 Gregory VII objecting to the reception of the pastoral staff by 
 a bishop from the king. But now, under the Public Worship 
 Regulation Act, the English Bishops eagerly pressed their 
 crooks into the hands of the Ex-divorce Judge, Lord Penzance; 
 and Claughton was the first to make this base surrender, and 
 send the Rev. A. Tooth to him for condemnation and im- 
 prisonment. 
 
 Claughton's daughter, Amelia Maria, widow of the Hon. 
 
208 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 Augustus Anson, married the Duke of Argyll. She was his 
 second wife. By his first wife the Duke had Lord Lorne, 
 who married Princess Louise. Dr. Littledale's text for Bishop 
 Claughton was: " He that giveth his virgin in marriage doeth 
 well." 
 
 Through these alliances Bishop Claughton became intimate 
 with Royalty. A photographer took a portrait of the Princess 
 of Wales and the Bishop looking over an album together. The 
 artist published this under the title " The Princess and the Bishop 
 studying the Sacred Scriptures," and the picture had in con- 
 sequence a considerable sale among pious females. The younger 
 brother became successively Bishop of S. Helena, and Colombo, 
 ultimately ending his days as Canon of S. Paul's, Archdeacon of 
 London, and Chaplain-General of the Army. When he went to 
 Ceylon he declared " that he was going to lay his bones amid 
 his adopted flock ; " but second thoughts were best, and he did 
 uncommonly well for himself on his return to England. He was 
 succeeded by Jermyn, a good man if there ever was one. He 
 really broke down through repeated dysentery attacks, and had 
 to give up. He became Bishop of Barking, and afterwards of 
 Gibraltar. The first Bishop of Colombo was Chapman, who 
 had been an Eton master. At one time it was possible to 
 encounter stalking together arm-in-arm down the Quadrant 
 three " returned empties " from Colombo. After the resignation 
 of Jermyn a long delay ensued before another man was nominated 
 to Ceylon, lest he also should get a call to return home, and 
 London would laugh to see four of these ex-Colombites marching 
 together arm in arm. 
 
 Bishop Claughton of Rochester did well as parish priest at 
 Kidderminster. Although I was eight years in his diocese I 
 saw him but twice ; on one occasion he exchanged half a dozen 
 words with me. 
 
 When first made bishop he received two invitations to stay 
 the night, from a parish where he was going to confirm — one 
 from the squire, the other from the churchwarden, a farmer. 
 Now in Essex nearly every farmhouse is entitled a " Hall," and 
 as the churchwarden wrote from "Hightree Hall" the Bishop 
 accepted his invitation, supposing the writer lived in the biggest 
 place, and was the more important of the two. He was vastly 
 mortified on reaching his destination to find that the " Hall " 
 was a farmhouse, pervaded by the smell of the stables and 
 cowhouse. 
 
THE VICTORIAN BISHOPS 
 
 209 
 
 A very good bishop was Christopher Wordsworth of Lincoln. 
 He was appointed by Disraeli in 1868, when the latter said to 
 him that he had recommended him to the Queen " because I 
 have confidence in your abilities, your learning, and the shining 
 example which you have set, that a Protestant may be a good 
 Churchman." 
 
 He was an earnest prelate, visiting throughout his diocese. 
 Through him the see of Southwell was created. It used to be 
 told of William Sewell of Exeter, that before going to sleep every 
 night he looked under his bed to see that no Jesuit was secreted 
 there. Bishop Wordsworth was almost as fanatical in his horror 
 of Rome, and the Pope, whom he firmly believed was Antichrist. 
 I met him at the Alt Catholik Congress at Cologne, when he made 
 a speech in Latin, which none could follow, owing to his Anglican 
 pronunciation of the tongue. Happily he had had his address 
 printed, and it was distributed about the hall. I heard several 
 German professors exclaim at the beauty of the Latin. In 
 the debate on the Public Worship Regulation Bill he withstood 
 Archbishop Tait to the face, but his opposition was disregarded. 
 
 Henry Phillpotts of Exeter was the son of an innkeeper of 
 the Bell at Gloucester. It is remarkable that this well-known 
 tavern should have given to the world two such remarkable men 
 in the religious world as Whitefield and Phillpotts. Whitefield 
 was born in it, and after his father's death his brother continued 
 to keep the inn. 
 
 Phillpotts was a bit of a pluralist, for along with the bishopric 
 of Exeter he held one of the rich canonries of Durham. He 
 was the Athanasius of the day. He was not a man of much 
 presence — indeed his face was plain and did not bear a pleasant 
 expression. In his diocese he was not liked ; and his nepotism 
 gave great offence. 
 
 It is of the Bishop that the story is told, how that, sitting by 
 a lady at lunch, she said to him : " Oh, my Lord, do you not 
 think that Devonshire is very like Switzerland ? " " Very," 
 he replied, " except that in Devonshire there are no mountains, 
 and in Switzerland there is no sea." 
 
 Sitting by another, and noticing that she crumbled her bread 
 at table, he remarked, " I fear I make you nervous." " Oh, 
 dear no ! It is a habit I have acquired. When I sit by a bishop 
 I crumble with one hand, when by an archbishop I crumble 
 with both." 
 
 When my uncle, the rector of the parish I am in, went up to 
 
210 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 see the Bishop on some occasion or other, it happened to be 
 a very cold day, and he wore a white woollen muffler about his 
 throat. Without thinking of removing this, he was introduced 
 into the study. The Bishop looked hard at him and said : 
 
 " Do you contemplate committing suicide ? " 
 
 " My Lord ! " 
 
 " By hanging," pursued the Bishop : "I perceive that you 
 have already adjusted the rope." 
 
 Joseph Dornford, who had been tutor of Oriel, took the 
 rectory of Plymtree. One day he went to the palace in ducks. 
 Henry of Exeter said to him sternly : " Mr. Dornford, are those 
 white trousers quite clerical ? " 
 
 " Oh, my Lord ! They have washed white ! " was the reply. 
 
 " Then I perceive," retorted the Bishop, " that the dye from 
 your trousers has run into your necktie, which I notice is black." 
 
 I shall say nothing concerning Bishop (afterwards Archbishop) 
 Temple, nor Bishop Bickersteth of Exeter, as they belong to 
 recent times. 
 
 At no period since that of the Caroline prelates have we had 
 so able a set of Bishops as at the present time. Some of them 
 are determined to show that the tail is no longer to wag the dog ; 
 they will be leaders ; and when such men take up a position as 
 leaders, they will find thousands who will follow them. 
 
 Only in the far North and in certain Western dioceses lingers 
 on the old tradition of long standing, of sending to them extreme 
 Evangelicals, as sulky children are put in a corner. 
 
 But generally the type of our English bishops is now high ; 
 and under their direction no one need despair of the future of the 
 Church in our land. 
 
 In very truth, we have had some splendid bishops, men of 
 whom any Church might be proud — great scholars, strong in their 
 faith, staunch in their Churchmanship, full of human sympathy, 
 most lovable ; such as Lightfoot, Westcott, Creighton, Stubbs, 
 Benson, and Gore, who is with us still. Men — and Churchmen, 
 after the feeblings of a former generation, men who could 
 govern and direct, and who could be trusted. Looking back on 
 the past, one could only say with Ferdinand Fabre, " O Sainte 
 Eglise Catholique, il faut bien que quelque chose de divin reside 
 en toi, puisque tes pretres n'ont pu reussir a te perdre." I 
 would but change one word, with reference to England, and read 
 eveques in place of pretres, and that of the past. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 ROUGH WEATHER 
 
 IF the Evangelicals were bitterly hostile to the movement on 
 religious grounds, so also were the Broad Churchmen led 
 by Dr. Arnold, and Latitudinarians under Lord John 
 Russell. The former were Erastian, and would cheerfully 
 have stretched the pegs of the Establishment so as to shelter 
 all kinds of Christians under its undenominational canvas tent ; 
 the Latitudinarians were indifferent in religious matters, looking 
 on all religions with impartiality as more or less superstitious. 
 If the Evangelicals attacked with bluster that could do little 
 permanent harm, the Broad Church and Latitudinarians assailed 
 with subtlety far more deadly, for at one time they had all the 
 power of the Crown and State at their back. 
 
 It would appear as though it was with intent to outrage the 
 feelings of High Churchmen that Dr. Hampden was promoted to 
 the bishopric of Hereford. He had been previously appointed 
 Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford, and his Bampton Lectures 
 had been condemned by the University as heretical, and he 
 himself had been denied a voice in the nomination of University 
 preachers. 
 
 To offend not High Churchmen only, but Churchmen generally, 
 Dr. Lee was given the newly founded bishopric of Manchester, 
 although charged, almost certainly unjustly, with drunkenness 
 and with being tipsy even during the performance of divine 
 service. Although the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop 
 of London visited Lord John Russell, the Prime Minister, and 
 implored him to have these charges investigated before Dr. Lee 
 was consecrated, he absolutely refused to do so — thinking it was 
 an unwarranted charge, and an insult to investigate it. The 
 appointment was at once carried out. The bishoprics as they 
 fell vacant were filled with Erastian prelates, and at a later date 
 with Evangelicals. 
 
 211 
 
212 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 There were two bishops of decided Church opinions : Denison 
 of Salisbury (1837-1854), and after him Hamilton (1854-1869). 
 Blomfield of London was a man none could trust ; he shifted 
 his political views, and in Church matters was unreliable. Like 
 Reuben, he was unstable as water. 
 
 In 1842 Bishop Phillpotts in his Triennial Visitation specially 
 referred to the Oxford Tracts. While utterly condemning 
 Tract Ninety, he upheld the general teaching of the Tracts, 
 and referred more especially to the Unity and Authority of the 
 Church, the necessity of the Sacraments and the value of the 
 Liturgy ; and then proceeded to urge, as he had done three years 
 previously, " the duty of a faithful observance of the Rubrics. 
 True it is, that inveterate usage may be pleaded for the non- 
 observance of some of them. But of those not all, perhaps not 
 one, may have been irreclaimably lost. Be it our care to revive 
 what we may ; but certainly not to permit any others to fall 
 into disuse." 
 
 Stimulated by these admonitions of their Bishop, many of 
 his clergy instituted changes in the procedure of public Church 
 services, and amongst these the adoption of the surplice in the 
 pulpit. There was no provision in the rubric for any change of 
 vesture in the Communion Service, at which alone a Sermon 
 was contemplated. The priest in surplice left the altar for the 
 pulpit, and returned from the pulpit to the altar to continue 
 the Liturgy. These changes, however, excited expressions of 
 discontent, resulting in some parishes in disputes and open 
 ruptures. In 1844 at Helston in Cornwall there were dis- 
 turbances, and on October 4 the doings of the incumbent, the 
 Rev. W. Blunt, became the subject of judicial investigation by 
 the Bishop. Eight matters of complaint were enumerated: 
 
 (1) The use of the surplice in preaching. 
 
 (2) Extempore preaching instead of a read sermon. 
 
 (3) Disuse of a prayer before the sermon. 
 
 (4) Extempore address on the Second Lesson in the evening 
 instead of a formal read sermon. 
 
 (5) Requiring the whole congregation to remain throughout 
 the Communion Service, though not all communicating. 
 
 (6) Refusing the Holy Communion to a parishioner baptized 
 by a Roman Catholic. 
 
 (7) Refusing to read the Burial Service over an unbaptized man. 
 
 (8) Refusal to marry without production of the Baptismal 
 Register. 
 
ROUGH WEATHER 
 
 213 
 
 Some of these charges seem to us at this day very astounding. 
 In the case of No. 6 Mr. Blunt was clearly in the wrong. 
 
 The judgment of the Bishop was pronounced on October 23 ; 
 and with regard to the surplice he pointed out that it was the 
 sole legal dress ; its use was enacted by Edward VI, reversed by 
 Mary, and re-enacted by Elizabeth, and that he purposed to 
 order all clergy to wear it in their ministrations if the other more 
 costly vestments were not provided by the parish. 
 
 In accordance with this notification the Bishop issued his 
 " Order " (November 20, 1844) to the same effect. 
 
 This produced excitement throughout the diocese. Parish 
 meetings to protest against it were generally summoned, when 
 on December 3 the Bishop issued a letter "to a Rural Dean," 
 suggesting that obedience to the " Order " might be deferred till 
 a subsequent Sunday, " in order that you may all be able to 
 satisfy your people that the use of it (the surplice) is adopted 
 by you not from any preference on your own part but from 
 obedience to your Bishop." 
 
 At S. Sidwell's by Exeter, Francis Courtenay, the incumbent, 
 had for three years adopted the surplice in the pulpit, together 
 with the observance of some other disused orders in the Rubrics ; 
 but on December 8, in consequence of the excitement caused 
 by the judgment in the Helston case, and the " Order," several 
 of the congregation walked out of church when Mr. Courtenay 
 ascended the pulpit in surplice, as had been his wont. 
 
 By December 12 nearly all the city parishes met in vestry 
 and had their say, and on this day was held the vestry meeting 
 of the united parishes of S. Sidwell and S. James, comprising a 
 population of about 9,000. The meeting was conducted decor- 
 ously, and an address was drawn up to the Bishop, expressing 
 the regret of the parishioners that changes should be made in 
 the Service by the revival of obsolete usages. To this the Bishop 
 made a courteous reply on December 18, going over the grounds 
 again, and requesting that the opposition should be withdrawn 
 and his authority respected. 
 
 On December 23 the Bishop issued a letter to the clergy, in 
 which, after alluding to the agitation against the use of the 
 surplice in preaching, he withdrew his " Order " as respecting 
 that garment, but added that where now used without offence, 
 or where previously used, the " Order " was to remain in force. 
 
 The notice of withdrawal created confusion, and placed some 
 of the clergy in a position of difficulty. 
 
214 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 At S. Sidwell's, according to the advice given in the " Letter," 
 Mr. Courtenay, and the vicars of the other city churches, and 
 the incumbent of S. James's, continued to use the surplice ; but 
 later, this latter gave way. 
 
 On the following Sunday, January 12, on leaving the church, 
 both Mr. Courtenay and Mr. Armstrong, incumbent of S. Paul's, 
 were mobbed and followed to their houses by a hooting and 
 howling crowd, threatening personal violence. Police protection 
 was now provided, and as a rabble of two thousand had collected 
 to follow Mr. Courtenay from the church to his house, situated 
 at some considerable distance, and as it was excited and 
 threatening, the police had to close round him and keep the 
 assailants at bay with their truncheons. In the evening the 
 preacher, the Rev. S. Coleridge, was similarly mobbed. 
 
 On the 21st the Mayor wrote to the Bishop, detailing the 
 riotous proceedings on the preceding Sunday, and stating that 
 on the latter occasion the whole available police force had been 
 required to protect the clergy ; and he added that if the mob 
 increased in numbers and in violence on ensuing Sundays, he 
 could not be answerable for the consequences. 
 
 Accordingly on January 22 the Bishop absolved the clergy 
 from the obligation to wear the surplice when preaching. This 
 was communicated to the vestry meetings, and the disturbance 
 ceased. 
 
 From January 1845 things went on quietly in the parish of 
 S. Sidwell's, when, after four years, the riot broke out again. 
 Certain of the city churches had been lent by their incumbents 
 to a sort of society of volunteers who undertook to supply — 
 what was then a novelty — evening services, in addition to the 
 ordinary parochial services in the afternoon. It was a High- 
 Church Society, and on the evening of Good Friday, and again 
 on August 27, the same clergyman, Rev. J. Ingle, had officiated, 
 and on both occasions preached in his surplice. There had been 
 some slight indications of disapproval on these occasions, but 
 nothing more. But on Sunday evening, October 29, 1848, a 
 demonstration had been organized. The church from end to end, 
 as also the galleries, were packed with a congregation the majority 
 of whom had never been seen in a house of God before. As soon 
 as the preacher mounted the pulpit, the storm burst forth, an 
 uproar of shouts of derision, hooting, catcalls broke out, and 
 was so continuously maintained that not a coherent sentence of 
 the preacher's sermon could be heard. This continued for so 
 
ROUGH WEATHER 
 
 215 
 
 long a period, and those who attempted to appease the uproarious 
 crowd having failed utterly in their endeavour, the Mayor of 
 the city was summoned. He, seeing that it was useless and 
 indecorous to continue the service, appealed to the preacher to 
 leave the pulpit, and this was complied with. 
 
 The mob then assembled in the main street with evident 
 design of there continuing the outrage. The mayor entreated 
 and then directed Mr. Ingle to leave the church by another 
 route ; to this Mr. Ingle objected, but eventually, on the urgency 
 of his friends, he complied with the Mayor's requirements. 
 
 The Mayor now proceeded to where the rabble was in waiting 
 with purpose to duck the clergyman in a horsepond ; but the mob 
 having discovered that he had left the church by another door, 
 tore hooting down the main street, and meeting two other and 
 entirely inoffensive clergymen, made them the butt of their 
 abuse. Fortunately for himself, Mr. Ingle managed to escape. 
 
 After this, the incumbent withdrew the use of the church for 
 the evening services. 
 
 On November 9, however, the Bishop held an inquiry, and 
 requested that they might be resumed, but directed that the 
 surplice should not be used in them. The sermon in the 
 evening service stood on a different footing from that in the 
 morning, and no provision had been made for it in the Prayer 
 Book. 1 
 
 The surplice riots were not confined to Exeter ; they broke 
 out in London and elsewhere, and the press did its utmost 
 to rouse the people against the reformers. The " Puseyites," as 
 the men were called who trod in the steps of the Tractarians, 
 were held up to mockery in picture and in leader. The London 
 Times gravely rated them, and they were ridiculed in Punch. 
 Novelists — such as Mrs. Henry Wood — published absurd carica- 
 tures of them, knowing none personally, setting up scarecrows 
 to batter them with abuse. On November 5, in many places 
 (e.%., in the Cathedral yard at Exeter) figured a Puseyite priest 
 in cassock, surplice and stole as the Guy Fawkes of the day, to be 
 given to the flames. 
 
 Yet the points of dispute, the matters that excited such 
 fury, were but trifles. "Ritualism" was not yet thought of. 
 Perhaps no parson underwent more cruel and persistent per- 
 
 1 I have employed for this account of the Exeter surplice riots the 
 MS. account of them written by Dr. T. Shapter, M.D., of Exeter, who 
 was mayor at the time, kindly lent me by Chancellor Edmunds. 
 
216 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 secution at that period than did the Rev. George Rundle Prynne 
 of Plymouth, and his case was the more grievous because his 
 principal assailants were clergy of the Church of England. 
 
 S. Andrew's was the parish church of Plymouth, and it had 
 been secured by Protestant Trustees. Plymouth, Devonport 
 and Stonehouse, the " Three Towns," had expanded enormously, 
 and the spiritual and moral destitution of the great seaport, 
 military establishment and dockyard had become serious, for the 
 population had hopelessly outgrown all existing provision for 
 supplying its spiritual wants. By the so-called Peel Act of 
 1843, three new parishes had been constituted in Plymouth — 
 S, Peter's, S. James' the Less, and S. John's. The two former 
 were taken out of the parishes of S. Andrew and East Stonehouse ; 
 the latter out of that of Charles. The new district assigned to 
 S. Peter's contained a population of about four thousand, almost 
 all poor, many abjectly so. 
 
 To this Mr. Prynne was appointed in 1848. There was no 
 church, but on a tongue of high ground stood an ugly conventicle, 
 Eldad Chapel, that had been the preaching-house of Dr. Hawker, 
 who had seceded from the Church. On his death it was sold, 
 and bought to serve as the church of S. Peter. It was a typical 
 conventicle, surrounded internally with galleries, furnished with 
 a three-decker to which all the seats converged, and destitute 
 of a chancel of any sort. This last was however now provided 
 from the designs of Mr. George Street, in very respectable Gothic, 
 but small. The three-decker was thrown out and the galleries 
 removed. Directly after the opening of S. Peter's, in November 
 1848, Mr. Prynne let it appear that he was determined on taking 
 a decided line in his teaching ; but his ritual was very moderate. 
 However moderate it might be, it roused opposition, not among 
 the parishioners, but among a host of Evangelical busybodies 
 and clergy of the Low-Church party. The charges brought 
 against him appear to us at the present day absurdly trivial — 
 such as the use of the surplice in the pulpit, and the reading of the 
 " Church Militant prayer " before giving the blessing in ante- 
 Communion, the chanting of the Psalms, the bowing of the head 
 at the sacred name, intoning the prayers, and omitting a prayer 
 before the sermon. The collecting of alms in bags was also 
 pronounced to be inconsistent with Protestantism. A local 
 paper hoped that the " man " who introduced the alms-bags 
 would himself speedily " receive the sack." On a much later 
 occasion, in the diocese of Lincoln an aggrieved parishioner 
 
ROUGH WEATHER 
 
 217 
 
 complained to Bishop Wordsworth that his vicar, the Rev. 
 G. E. Smith, " collected the arms of his congregation in bags! " 
 
 The ringleader of the opposition was the Rev. J. Hatchard, 
 Vicar of S. Andrew's, backed up by a handful of retired naval 
 and military officers. They sat as a quasi-vigilance committee 
 for some years, and carried on warfare against Mr. Prynne. 
 They got up public meetings to protest against his Papistical 
 proceedings, they memorialized the Bishop. They controlled 
 and inspired.the local press, which poured forth the most scurrilous 
 articles against the Vicar of S. Peter's. 
 
 The High-Church practices at Eldad were for a while driven 
 from the thoughts of the Plymouthians by the appearance in 
 their midst of Asiatic cholera during the summer of 1849. It 
 raged in the slums of the Three Towns, and with especial virulence 
 in the densely thronged alleys in S. Peter's parish. People 
 died like flies. It spread to Exeter, to Tavistock, and other 
 towns. A special cholera hospital was erected for the sufferers 
 in Plymouth and the adjoining Devonport and Stonehouse, and 
 this was in S. Peter's district. A sisterhood had been started in 
 Devonport by Miss Sellon two years previous to the licensing of 
 Eldad Chapel as a church. The Sisters at once placed them- 
 selves at the disposal of Mr. Prynne, and to be nearer the scene 
 of their labours moved into his parish. It was then, when men 
 and women were dying about him, that for his own strengthening 
 and that of his fellow workers, Prynne started a daily Eucharist, 
 which has not been intermitted to this present. Then it was 
 offered in the convent chapel, later in the Parish Church. That 
 chapel at the time was a tent. Recently the Guild of S. George 
 in the parish has put up a brass tablet in memory of this historic 
 event in the Hall, as it is almost the exact spot where the chapel- 
 tent formerly stood. 
 
 During the time when this fearful epidemic raged Mr. Prynne, 
 his curate and the Sisters, laboured indefatigably. On one 
 occasion, in one of the small dirty courts, the Vicar was visiting 
 the sick, and receiving no answer when he knocked at one door, 
 he went in and found every inmate dead, and the house reeking 
 with the most horrible stench. He and the curate between them 
 removed the dead into the street. I quote a portion of a narrative 
 by Mr. Prynne given in Mr. A. Clifton Kelway's Memoirs of 
 G. Rundle Prynne. 1 
 
 " I well remember on one occasion having been called to see 
 
 1 London, 1905. The book well deserves to be read and thought over. 
 
218 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 a poor woman lying on a mattress on the floor in the agonies 
 of cholera, and close on her confinement. It was a low, over- 
 crowded room. I had to step over a dead body to get at her. 
 Another dead body had just been put into its thin coffin and 
 was being lowered through the window into the street below. 
 The screams of the people below, many of whom were Irish, in 
 their terror and excitement, were most thrilling. Women would 
 throw themselves on their knees in the street and catch hold of 
 my knees, entreating me to come to the aid of some stricken one. 
 
 " I cannot pass over this subject without speaking of the 
 devoted and heroic labours of the Sisters of Mercy during this 
 visitation, and of the invaluable assistance they rendered us. 
 They were a band of heroines in the army of God ; the thought 
 of personal danger did not seem to enter their minds. They 
 had a tent in the field near the hospital to harbour and feed the 
 orphaned children. 
 
 " One morning my assistant curate, Mr. Hetling, met one of 
 the Sisters carrying something which seemed heavy, folded in 
 her arms. He asked what it was. She had to admit that it was 
 the body of a child that had just died of cholera, and that she 
 was carrying it to the house where the ready-made coffins were 
 kept. Another instance of self-sacrificing devotion of a still 
 more striking character soon after came to my notice. A poor 
 woman struck down with cholera had just lost her infant child 
 that she had been nursing. Her sufferings were aggravated by 
 not having the accustomed relief. A Sister was kneeling by 
 the side of the poor woman and doing the infant's part in 
 relieving her, when the doctor came in and caught her in the act. 
 
 1 Sister A ' said he, ' you must promise me not to do that 
 
 again.' The Lord seemed to have taken away all fear from 
 those who were ministering to His suffering members." 
 
 In March 1852 Mr. Hetling wrote to the Bishop : " It has been 
 my lot for a quarter of a century to have seen and borne an active 
 part in very much of suffering, pain and death. Formerly in 
 medical practice, I have seen the whole course of cholera in 
 London, Paris, and Bristol, and lastly here, in my office as deacon. 
 I have beheld many acts of self-devotion to its sufferers and 
 victims, yet never have I witnessed anything that surpassed, 
 or even equalled, the self-abandonment and self-sacrifice of 
 these humble Sisters. . . . Stretched upon the bed, saturated 
 with the sickness of this dreadful disease, their persons and 
 dresses steeped in its poison, I have seen the sick and dying 
 
ROUGH WEATHER 
 
 219 
 
 encompassed with their arms, the cramped limbs embraced and 
 chafed, their heads reclining on their necks ; now wiping with 
 a gentle hand the fatal dampness from their sunk faces, now 
 with affectionate entreaty pouring medicine into their mouths, 
 and then, in the intervals of repose, with lips close to their 
 half-dull ears, whispering some kind words of love, hope of 
 pardon for past sins, or repeating a short prayer or sentence 
 from the Litany ; taking their hasty meal from the common stock 
 in the centre of the room, or often at the bedside, often leaving 
 it unfinished to perform some menial act. And all this, too, 
 amidst the gloom of that long array of shrivelled, collapsed 
 and leaden forms and faces, behind whose outward shroud Death 
 was riding triumphantly. They were awful times and solemn 
 scenes. There was one redeeming feature — there was a halo of 
 sanctity round the persons of these calm Sisters which inspired 
 hope and even confidence, and which, more than all, checked 
 and repressed the irreverence and untimely merriment and 
 pleasantry too common in the wards of a hospital. That 
 hospital was a sacred place. The medical gentlemen, who 
 indeed right nobly exercised their high profession, often ex- 
 pressed the security in which they left the nurses under their 
 direction." 
 
 The cholera epidemic gradually died away. The Sisterhood 
 having moved into S. Peter's parish, the Bishop laid the founda- 
 tion-stone of a house for the community. The cholera had left 
 so many orphans who were destitute, that the Sisters were almost 
 compelled to make provision for them, and they started an 
 orphanage for girls. 
 
 For a short while the concerted attacks on S. Peter's abated, 
 out of very shame felt by those who were talkers rather than 
 labourers. Yet they had worked, even in the cholera year, by 
 acting secretly and gathering information for another attack, 
 to be delivered when admiration for the self-devotion of the 
 Sisters and the clergy of S. Peter's should have cooled down. 
 
 Mr. Prynne had become chaplain to the Sisterhood. Now 
 the attack was renewed. Accusations were brought against 
 the Sisters for saying " Lauds; " also for — so it was asserted — 
 doing no work upon Wednesdays and Fridays, and compelling 
 the orphans under their charge to go to confession — neither of 
 these latter accusations was true. 
 
 In 1852 a Cambridge parson, James Spurrell, issued a pamphlet 
 against the Sisterhood. He had lighted upon a Miss Campbell, 
 
220 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 who had entered as a novice and had left, and he worked her 
 " for all she was worth." 
 
 Miss Campbell, Scottish as her name shows, was an impression- 
 able, somewhat self-willed young lady. She had been in France, 
 and had been greatly impressed with the dignity of worship 
 and the piety she saw in the Roman Church, and she made up 
 her mind to join that Church and become a nun. But before 
 doing so, her mother urged her to go into Miss Sellon's Community 
 for a twelvemonth, and see how she relished conventual life. 
 She did so, and Miss Sellon at once found that she was extremely 
 ignorant of what the Church of England was and what were her 
 doctrines, which was natural enough in one who presumably had 
 been reared in Presbyterianism. The rules of the Community 
 of which " Mother Lydia " was head were undoubtedly severe, 
 and calculated to deprive the Sisters very much of wills of their 
 own. The Scottish girl soon tired of this, and left. 
 
 The revelations Miss Campbell made to Mr. Spurrell were, 
 however, not very dreadful. What follows refers to the daughter 
 house at Bristol. The Sisters said the Canonical Hours, read 
 Thomas a Kempis' Imitation of Christ, used the Sarum Psalter 
 translated, were not allowed to read novels or indeed any books 
 without the consent of the Superior, nor to receive or send 
 letters that had not been submitted to her. " That the Reader 
 may have a correct idea of the employments of these Sisters 
 devoted to religion, it may be stated that, having all the menial 
 work to do for themselves, it was no uncommon thing for these 
 young ladies, brought up in all the refinements of polite life, 
 to be carrying at half-past five o'clock in the morning a large 
 dust-barrel to the top of the court. A little later in the day 
 the same Sisters were engaged sweeping out the house, cleaning 
 the grates, making the fire, pumping the water, and other of the 
 occupations of domestic servants. One would have occasionally 
 to carry the dinner to the bakehouse, or to fetch beer from the 
 public-house — duties strangely enough intermingled with Prime, 
 Terse (sic), Sext, Nones, etc., visiting the poor, and Common 
 Prayer twice a day at the Cathedral [at Bristol]." 1 
 
 In the summer of 1852, when passions were inflamed by 
 Spurrell's pamphlet, the wrath of the local Protestants was 
 roused by the announcement that the Bishop intended holding a 
 Confirmation in S. Peter's Church in the ensuing autumn. The 
 
 1 Miss Sellon and the Sisters of Mercy: An Exposure (London, 1852), 
 p. 29. 
 
ROUGH WEATHER 
 
 221 
 
 walls of the town were placarded with bills, calling upon parents 
 to refrain from letting their children be confirmed at S. Peter's, 
 and at a meeting of the Plymouth Orphan Asylum Committee 
 a resolution was proposed and was seconded by Mr. Hadow, the 
 minister of S. Andrew's Chapel, and supported by Mr. Hatchard 
 of S. Andrew's Parish Church and two other Plymouth clergy, not 
 to allow any of the orphans of the establishment to be confirmed 
 at S. Peter's. 
 
 And now broke out a savage attack on the Sisters and Mr. 
 Prynne on account of the practice of Confession. 
 
 Meetings were held to denounce the practice of Confession. 
 One called in S. George's Hall at Plymouth was described as a 
 11 monster meeting," and the speakers were three clergymen, 
 Messrs. Hatchard, Greaves and Nantes, two captains of engi- 
 neers, a dissenting preacher, a wine merchant and some laymen, 
 of more or less insignificance. Nearly all were members of the 
 " Plymouth Church Reform Association," the object of which 
 was to obtain a revision of the Prayer Book " with a removal 
 therefrom of all ground and pretext for Romish doctrine and 
 practice, and a wider comprehension of Christians within the 
 pale of the National Church." 
 
 Definite charges were now made against the Sisters and Mr. 
 Prynne. Mr. Hatchard had managed to lure a girl away from 
 the Sisters' orphanage by promising to get her a good place 
 and by preventing her mother from obtaining employment in a 
 factory till the girl was removed. He took her — she was aged 
 fourteen — into his own house, and she was induced to make 
 specific charges against Mr. Prynne and the Sisters: that the 
 orphans were compelled to go to confession, and that Mr. Prynne 
 had asked her indecent questions. The indictment was com- 
 mitted to writing under the instigation of the girl's mother. 
 The Rev. Mr. Childs, of S. Mary's, Devonport, secured another 
 girl's testimony much to the same effect ; she had been in- 
 veigled into this by a spinster lady who was a fanatic in the 
 Protestant cause. A third girl was also got hold of and induced 
 to say much the same thing, but her conscience reproached her, 
 and she went before a magistrate, and in the presence of witnesses 
 declared that she retracted all the accusations that she had been 
 persuaded to make. 
 
 The Bishop hereupon held an investigation at Plymouth. 
 The girl befriended by Mr. Hatchard was interviewed privately 
 by the Bishop, Messrs. Hatchard and Greaves, Mr. Prynne and 
 
222 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 his curate Mr. Darling, as to her private life. She acknowledged 
 during the inquiry that before the age of twelve she had been 
 guilty of sins which perfectly appalled the few persons who were 
 allowed to hear this part of the evidence ; she had, however, 
 been received by Miss Sellcn and maintained for some time, till 
 she was wanted by Mr. Hatchard in 1849, to give evidence against 
 her benefactress. Then her mother was informed by her em- 
 ployer (a Mr. Soper) that she would be turned off unless she took 
 her child home. This was done, and the child was duly produced 
 at the inquiry. The girl admitted that she had been induced to 
 confess ; and that she had revealed to a clergyman, poor girl, 
 the sickening load of guilt which, it may be hoped, lay heavy 
 on her mind ; and questions were put to her of which nothing 
 further appears than that in the opinion of the Bishop they 
 were justified by the shocking acknowledgments out of which 
 they arose. 
 
 Perhaps Mr. Hatchard had not known all that now came out, 
 but he learned it then, and he did not express the slightest shame 
 or regret for his share in the transaction — nor, with the facts fully 
 before him, did it apparently occur to him that he had done 
 anything but what was Christian and praiseworthy, in attempting 
 to damage an obnoxious cause and gratify the Plymouth public 
 at the probable cost of a human soul. 
 
 We come now to Mr. Child's witnesses. The first was a girl 
 who passed under two different names, and is described as 
 giving, with an offensive flippancy of manner, a detailed account 
 of her own confession, with a due proportion of coarseness in 
 the supposed interrogator and levity in herself. She said that 
 she had heard from the girl who had just appeared that Mr. 
 Prynne asked improper questions, and she had gone to confession 
 for no other purpose than to ascertain whether this was the case. 
 She related how that she had received absolution kneeling back 
 to back with Mr. Prynne, at the Confessional Creed (whatever 
 she meant by that), and that the absolution began " Reverend 
 Father in God, I beseech thee give me thy blessing," and was 
 to the effect that she might have " health, success and so on." 
 This girl had not been an orphan, but a servant in the convent, 
 and had been dismissed for bad conduct ; and after she left it 
 was discovered that she had been in the habit of purloining and 
 getting rid of various articles on which she could lay her hand. 
 Mr. Prynne never had received her confession, and once only 
 
ROUGH WEATHER 
 
 223 
 
 had he spoken to her of Confirmation, and had not even mentioned 
 confession. The girl was evidently an unprincipled liar, and 
 carried her falsehoods to those to whom she conceived they 
 would be acceptable. 
 
 The second of Mr. Child's cases, C. D., had written this : " I 
 went to Mr. Prynne Fridays, on which day I told him of the 
 faults I had committed during the past week ; on which day he 
 gave me the following directions : To lie on the hearthstone for 
 ten minutes every night after prayers. . . . Every month he asked 
 me the question — 'if ever any impure thought came into my 
 mind.' He also asked me ' if ever I kept company with any 
 young man, etc.' " 
 
 CD. did not appear, but in her stead the following declaration 
 was read, which she had made alone and voluntarily before a 
 magistrate of Devonport. It appears that her statement to 
 Mr. Child was almost as untrue as that of her predecessor ; but 
 her recantation had this peculiarity, that it showed, little to 
 Mr. Child's credit, the mode by which she was induced to put 
 her statements in writing : 
 
 " Most Reverend Father in God, — I write these few lines to 
 say I am sorry that Mr. Child should have taken things in such 
 a wrong meaning ; the questions that Mr. Prynne asked me was 
 only in my first confession, and then it was something that I con- 
 fessed. . . . Mr. Prynne never told me to lie on the hearthstone, 
 but I wrote, and I was so terrified that I do not remember scarcely 
 anything I put down and am heartily sorry I should have told 
 such falsehoods about Mr. Prynne, who have been so kind to me ; 
 and Mr. Child asked about the questions without asking me if 
 there was any reason for Mr. Prynne asking me those questions. 
 If I had known that Mr. Child was going to make any use of it 
 I should not have written it, but I was not aware of it at the 
 time. I was greatly hurried about writing because Mr. Child 
 wanted it." 
 
 It is needless to say that the charge against Mr. Prynne broke 
 completely down, and so also that of the Sisters compelling 
 the orphans to go to confession. 
 
 There is this to be said of Mr. Child, that he did show some 
 signs of being ashamed of the pitiful part he had played in this 
 affair. 1 
 
 The exculpation of Mr. Prynne disappointed and exasperated 
 the Protestant fanatics; and now Mr. Latimer, the proprietor 
 1 The Guardian, October 6, 1852. 
 
224 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 and publisher of an Exeter paper, in a violent and scurrilous 
 article attacked the Vicar of S. Peter's, making libellous accusa- 
 tions against him. By the advice of the Bishop and his wife's 
 relations, Mr. Prynne, very reluctantly, took legal action against 
 Latimer. The action was heard in Exeter. Prynne thus de- 
 scribed what took place : " The court was crowded, but in that 
 crowd I could only see some half a dozen friendly faces. The 
 large majority seemed to look upon me with dislike and suspicion. 
 The jury, as I afterwards learned, was composed almost entirely 
 of Dissenters. The case did not last long, but my friends seemed 
 satisfied that the evidence had entirely proved the libellous 
 nature of the statements against me, and the judge's summing 
 up confirmed this view. Indeed, when the jury left the room, 
 the judge, much to my astonishment, shook hands with me, and 
 congratulated me on my evidence, and the course the action 
 had taken. When, shortly after, the jury returned with a 
 verdict for the defendant, those present seemed too surprised 
 to utter a sound, but in a few seconds the majority commenced 
 to cheer and clap their hands. The judge seemed very indignant, 
 and at once ordered silence." 
 
 The costs of the action were heavy, and as Prynne was unable 
 to bear them, everything that he had that was of value was 
 sold by auction, down to the cradle of his infant son, who had 
 in lieu to be put to bed in a drawer. 
 
 Years passed. In 1882 the noble new church of S. Peter 
 rose where had stood Eldad Chapel, and in 1884 Mr. Prynne was 
 elected proctor to Convocation. 
 
 On Sunday, January 12, 1913, the Mayor and Corporation of 
 Plymouth in their robes and in procession attended the High 
 Celebration at S. Peter's Church. 
 
 In 1846 John Mason Neale was appointed Warden of Sackville 
 College, an almshouse attached to an old mansion of the Sack- 
 ville family, that gave him apartments for himself and family, 
 and an income of £28 per annum. As there was a chapel, and 
 according to the statutes of the almshouse daily prayer must 
 be said in it, Neale was desirous of obtaining the licence of 
 the Bishop of Chichester, Dr. Gilbert. But the patron, Lord De 
 la Warre, objected that the College was extra-parochial, and 
 that the soliciting for a licence was tantamount to surrender 
 of its liberties. Mr. Neale found the almshouse in a deplorable 
 state of decay, the hall and the chapel ruinous, and he persuaded 
 Lord De la Warre to rebuild the hall, and he himself reseated 
 
SACKVILLE COLLEGE CHAPEL 
 
 AS IT WAS IN 1847 
 
ROUGH WEATHER 
 
 225 
 
 the chapel. On the altar were cross and candles and flower 
 vases. In the College, Mr. Neale had a celebration of the Holy 
 Communion on Sundays early (9.30), and Matins and Evensong 
 daily ; but on Sundays for Morning and Evening Prayer he and 
 the brethren and sisters of the College went to the Parish Church. 
 On the first Sunday of the month, when there was a celebration 
 of the Holy Communion in the Parish Church, there was none 
 in the chapel of Sackville College. 
 
 Complaints were made to Bishop Gilbert of the High-Church 
 proceedings of Mr. Neale, and he proceeded to pay a visit to the 
 chapel after holding a Confirmation at East Grinstead in April 
 1847, in company with the complainant. As the Bishop entered 
 and looked at the East end, he said : "I am not here with 
 visitatorial authority ; if I were I should sweep away all that " — ■ 
 pointing to the altar. 
 
 J.M.N. " The Altar, my Lord ? " 
 
 Bishop. " I know nothing of Altars. The Church of England 
 knows nothing of Altars or Sacrifices. I would retain a decent 
 low table. I would not feed Christ's little ones with the wood 
 of the cross." 
 
 J.M.N. " You would retain the table ? " 
 
 Bishop. " I have said so already. But, to be candid with you — 
 all that our Church does not authorize, she prohibits. But, as 
 I have said, I have no visitatorial authority." 
 
 A few days later the Bishop launched the inhibition. " I feel 
 it to be my duty to inhibit you, and I do hereby inhibit you, from 
 celebrating Divine Worship, and from the exercise of clerical 
 functions in my diocese." To that was added a letter : "I 
 cannot transmit to you the following inhibition without adding 
 a fervent prayer that God may be pleased to open your eyes to 
 the dishonour done to Him by . . . presenting to the eyes and 
 thoughts of worshippers the frippery with which you have trans- 
 formed the simplicity of the chapel at Sackville College into an 
 imitation of the degrading superstitions of an erroneous Church." 
 
 Now, somewhat later, I have myself seen the identical Dr. 
 Gilbert, Bishop of Chichester, at Hurstpierpoint College, worship- 
 ping in the temporary chapel, where every one of the things for 
 which Neale was suspended existed — cross, candles, flowers — 
 and he made no objection. Lord De la Warre claimed that the 
 chapel at Sackville College was not under Episcopal jurisdiction, 
 was in fact a peculiar ; and a suit was tried, but badly defended 
 and lost, so that Neale was inhibited from saying daily prayer 
 15 
 
226 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 in the chapel, from preaching and the celebration of Holy 
 Communion for sixteen years. 
 
 Mr. Neale was not only a man of wide and brilliant scholarship ; 
 he was the most learned ecclesiologist and liturgiologist we had 
 at the time in England ; his History of the Holy Eastern Church 
 is a classical work, and his hymns are to be found in every 
 Anglican Church hymnal, and are used in Dissenting meeting- 
 houses as well. Bishop Wilberforce in vain strove to obtain from 
 Bishop Gilbert a removal of the inhibition, which was a scandal. 
 
 In the early part of 1851, a Mrs. Aulchim died in the College, 
 to which she had been admitted at her own entreaty. For 
 the burial of the old folk of the Almshouse a bier and a pall had 
 been provided. The usual custom was for the coffin to be carried 
 on the shoulders of bearers. Obviously it would be safer in 
 many cases that it should be borne on a bier. The pall was 
 purple, with a small white cross worked in the midst. 
 
 The relations of Mrs. Aulchim, at the head of a rabble, came 
 to the College and demanded to be admitted, so as to carry off 
 the body in their own way, sans bier and pall. As they were 
 threatening, in place of giving them admission, the coffin was 
 taken outside the gates and delivered over to the relations. 
 These at once conveyed it to a public-house and opened it 
 there, to make sure that the body was in it, and then proceeded 
 to the churchyard. 
 
 That night a mob of about a hundred and fifty persons, many 
 of them disguised, paraded the town, bearing shavings, straw 
 and other combustibles, then proceeded to the College, where 
 they made a bonfire on which they burnt crosses, a bier and a 
 pall. Not content with that, they threw stones at the windows 
 and smashed the panes of glass. Then, after returning to the 
 town, where they were regaled with beer, they went back by the 
 College and endeavoured to set fire to the Warden's house, melting 
 the lead of the casement of one window and the flames leaping 
 above the roof. When Mr. and Mrs. Neale went out to speak 
 to the rioters, they were both attacked, and obliged to take 
 refuge behind barricaded doors. 
 
 There was again a riot in 1856, but the most serious one took 
 place in 1857 at Lewes. 
 
 A Miss Scobell, daughter of the Rev. John Scobell, the in- 
 cumbent of All Saints', Lewes, had had her life at home rendered 
 intolerable by her father's dislike, and consequent unkindness. 
 As he became insane later on, and died in this condition, this may 
 
ROUGH WEATHER 
 
 227 
 
 explain the barbarity of his conduct to his child. She took 
 refuge in S. Margaret's Sisterhood, that Mr. Neale had founded, 
 after having spent some years drifting about from one friend's 
 house to another. She entered the Sisterhood in the autumn 
 of 1857, and in nursing a case of scarlet fever caught the infection 
 and died, only nine weeks after putting on her Sister's dress. 1 
 I will quote what followed from Mr. Neale's own account :— 
 " On her deathbed, having appointed the Superior of S. Mar- 
 garet's and myself her executors, she expressed a wish to be 
 buried in the family vault in the churchyard of her father, and 
 that the funeral should be conducted in the way which she 
 considered most proper and most Christian. On mentioning 
 these wishes to her father on his arrival (which did not take place 
 till after her death) he immediately acquiesced in both, expressed 
 his willingness that she should be followed to the grave by the 
 other Sisters, and charged himself with all the arrangements at 
 Lewes. 
 
 " Contrary to what would have been our wish, and much to 
 our inconvenience, he asked that the funeral might take place 
 in the evening ; it was therefore fixed for 5.30 p.m. On our 
 arrival at Lewes the usual procession was formed, the bier pre- 
 ceded, myself and the Sisters followed ; the only thing beyond 
 an ordinary funeral being a wreath of white flowers carried by an 
 orphan child from S. Margaret's — unless I need mention a white 
 pall, but so trimmed with black as to be perfectly inconspicuous 
 in the twilight. 
 
 " The churchyard lies about a hundred yards from the station. 
 Before reaching it, we were joined by Mr. Scobell himself and 
 three members of his family, who proceeded to take their places 
 between ourselves and the bier. The Service in the Church 
 was read by Mr. Hutchinson of West Firle ; the uproar, hooting 
 and yelling in the churchyard, most evidently preconcerted, 
 and with considerable skill, being quite alarming. With some 
 difficulty we made our way to the vault in the bank of the north 
 side of the churchyard. Mr. Hutchinson entered the vault, 
 and the service was there concluded, the mob every moment 
 growing fiercer and more threatening. They made way, however, 
 
 1 Miss Scobell was aged twenty-seven, and had from ^5,000 to ^6,000 
 left her by her mother. She left the bulk of her property to a favourite 
 brother, and only ^400 to the Sisterhood. On one occasion her father 
 had locked the door on her and himself, wrenched the keys of her desk 
 from her, opened it and produced her diary and notes for confession, and 
 read them out before her sisters. 
 
228 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 for Mr. Scobell and family, as well as for Mr. Hutchinson. As 
 the former was passing, I stepped up to him and said, 1 Mr. 
 Scobell, you see how threatening the mob are : will you not 
 protect the Sisters ? ' He bowed and passed on, and that, be 
 it remembered, when his daughter had died in their arms only 
 five days previously. While this was passing the lights were 
 either extinguished, or so flashed in our faces as to make a 
 confusion worse than darkness. There was a cry of ' Do your 
 duty ! Now the performance is to come off ! ' and a rush 
 was immediately made upon us. But the strangest part of all 
 was that men, certainly in the dress of gentlemen, could stand 
 by and see ladies dashed this way and that, their veils dragged 
 off and their dresses torn, and, far from rendering the least 
 assistance, could actually excite the dregs of the rabble to 
 further violence. I was myself knocked down, and, for a 
 moment, while under the feet of the mob, gave myself up for 
 lost. We were borne along into the street — Mr. Scobell having 
 quietly gone home, and taking no further interest in the matter. 
 Some of the Sisters took refuge in the schoolmaster's house, 
 some, with myself, in a little public-house called the King's 
 Head. Round this inn the mob soon gathered, and were with 
 great difficulty prevented from breaking in. At last, by the 
 advice of the police, I made my way across gardens and over 
 walls to the station : a larger force having been now got together, 
 was sent back with a fly to the King's Head, and there, after 
 some hard fighting on their part, we were enabled to return 
 to East Grinstead by the next train, the rabble besetting the 
 station to the very last." 
 
 Sister Amy's father published his own account of the trans- 
 action, representing Mr. Neale in the most odious light, and his 
 daughter as having been trapped and deluded, and finally 
 placed in the way of infection, that her small property might, 
 at her death, fall into the hands of her new friends, who, it was 
 reported, had induced her to make her will in that sense. The 
 Bishop at once withdrew from his post as Visitor of S. Mar- 
 garet's, and published a letter addressed to the Superior in 
 which he stated that he entirely withheld countenance and 
 approval of the Community. 
 
 Mr. Scobell's pamphlet contained a tissue of false representa- 
 tions, which could be categorically disproved by letters and by 
 personal evidence. The Mother Superior, taking with her the 
 necessary documents, at once went to Chichester and requested 
 
ROUGH WEATHER 
 
 229 
 
 an interview with the Bishop. It was peremptorily refused. 
 She offered to wait his Lordship's time, and urged the import- 
 ance of her communication and what she had to lay before 
 him. For all reply she was informed by the butler that till 
 she quitted the apartment into which she had been shown his 
 Lordship would be unable to interview any one else. That 
 any one, be his rank and station what it may, should thus re- 
 pulse a lady whose only object in requesting an interview was 
 to set herself right in his good opinion, is simply astounding. 
 
 Bishop Forbes of Brechin wrote : " Twenty years hence the 
 people of Lewes will kiss the dust off the Sisters' feet." This 
 came almost literally true, at that interval of time, on the 
 occasion of their nursing the poor of Lewes during a serious 
 outbreak of fever in the town, some twenty years after. 
 
 In i860 Bishop Gilbert virtually, in 1863 formally, revoked 
 the inhibition laid on Mr. Neale in 1847. 
 
 The first church in London in which services of a tolerably 
 advanced class were started was S. Barnabas, Pimlico, if we 
 put aside Margaret Street Chapel, where was Mr. Oakeley in 
 1839. This latter, during the French Revolution, had been a 
 kind of temple of Deism. It then passed into the hands of 
 the Irvingites, and finally became an Anglican chapel-of-ease. 
 Galleries skirted the walls, pews blocked up the area. Sanctuary 
 was none ; but immediately in front of the Communion Table 
 was a three-decker. Mr. Oakeley swept these abominations 
 away, and made the chapel — that was really not much more 
 than a long room — to look churchlike. The altar was given a 
 crimson frontal, cross and candlesticks, whose unlighted candles 
 stood memorials of episcopal inflexibility, and emblems of 
 patient hope. They were only lighted when the fog came down 
 thick and rendered necessary some artificial light. But Margaret 
 Street Chapel was a very small affair. There was a later 
 temporary chapel, of much the same character, in which the 
 Rev. Upton Richards officiated. I can recall it in the old 
 days before All Saints' Church was built. 
 
 The parish of S. Paul's, Knightsbridge, comprised a narrow 
 strip of land a mile and a quarter in length, containing in 1840 
 a population of about 12,000 souls. It comprised the extremes 
 of wealth and poverty. At the farther end, " Nell Gwynn's 
 Court " and " New Grosvenor Place " were noted for their 
 squalor. There the Grosvenor Canal was little better than an 
 open sewer. The houses were old and ruinous, and the streets 
 
230 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 unpaved. This district was occupied by the scum of society. 
 The small beershops were rendezvous of the veriest dregs of the 
 people. Here Mr. Bennett, the incumbent of S. Paul's, Knights- 
 bridge, resolved on building a church, schools, and a clergy 
 house, and in these he purposed carrying out the principles of 
 the Oxford Movement. By 1848 the group of buildings was 
 completed at the cost of £30,000. Who can tell now what self- 
 sacrifices had been undergone to raise this sum ! As Mr. Bennett 
 wrote in his farewell letter : " Every window has its tale of some 
 noble heart that, yearning for His glory, has here laid his sub- 
 stance and his love to be set forth. It is the noble and the 
 poor together — faithful women and little children together — 
 here all in one contributed. Each window marks a story known 
 not to you, but only to me and God. Do you see the most holy 
 place, this altar and all that lies upon it — the holy vessels, the 
 vestments, the various preparations for the holy sacrifice ? 
 There is not one, no, not one single holy thing there lying in its 
 sacred use but swells up the bursting heart into a memory of 
 some deed of love of those by me, their pastor, best loved in 
 this wide world of sin : there are some gifts of penitents, gladly 
 by their almsgiving showing forth contrition for a youth of 
 sin, now lately learning what they never knew before ; here 
 gifts of the innocent in Christ — babes who yet have known but 
 little save to love, guarded by their angels standing before God 
 in Heaven. I know each name. This is the font — there is 
 not a chisel-mark there but calls to mind the anxious hoarded 
 alms and treasured sacrifice of her who laid it there for God's 
 eternal use." 
 
 At the Consecration the only thing to which Bishop Blom- 
 field objected was the flowers on the altar. 
 
 On September 24, 1850, the Pope issued a Bull appointing 
 bishops of the Roman Communion with titles from sees in 
 England instead of Vicars Apostolic, who had previously acted 
 in some such capacity. At once, all England was in an uproar 
 over this so-called " Papal Aggression." Lord John Russell 
 issued his " Durham Letter," in which he cast the blame upon 
 the " Puseyites," fanned the excitement of the people, and 
 directed it against the Tractarian Clergy. Punch had a cartoon 
 representing Lord John as a naughty boy chalking up "No 
 Popery " on a wall, and then running away. This was followed 
 by the Guildhall dinner, at which Judges and Ministers de- 
 nounced the High-Church clergy in no measured terms, and 
 
ROUGH WEATHER 
 
 231 
 
 called on the people of England to rise in their might and put 
 them down. 
 
 The people in Pimlico and its neighbourhood took them at 
 their word and sent to the Bishop denunciations of the practices 
 at S. Barnabas. He was frightened, wrote to Mr. Bennett 
 and ordered him to give up the practices that gave offence. 
 This Mr. Bennett refused to do, and unguardedly told the 
 Bishop that if he regarded him as unfaithful to the spirit of 
 the Church of England, he would resign his cure. Then ensued 
 a succession of riots in and about the church, and the chancel 
 would have been invaded and wrecked, but for a cordon of 
 faithful men who stood before the screen gates and defended 
 them. The riots began on November 10 and continued till 
 December 8. On this last day the climax was reached, and 
 there seemed every prospect of the rioters gutting the church, 
 when Mr. Bennett mounted the pulpit and spoke with such fire, 
 such heart-searching words as to overawe the mob, and send 
 most of them out of church with abashed countenances. The 
 Bishop now demanded of Mr. Bennett that he should resign, as 
 he had undertaken. In vain did the poor people of the parish 
 appeal to Bishop Blomfield — he would neither receive their depu- 
 tation nor answer their appeal ; and Mr. Bennett resigned, to be 
 at once appointed Vicar of Frome Selwood by the Marchioness 
 of Bath ; and the Hon. and Rev. R. Liddell was appointed in 
 his room at S. Paul's. The services at S. Barnabas were con- 
 tinued as before, and it was some time before the riots ceased. 
 
 I knew S. Barnabas intimately when Mr. Skinner was vicar 
 and Mr. Lowder and Mr. Lyford were curates, and I was wont 
 to stay in the clergy-house. Little by little the clouds rolled 
 away, and now all there is peace and prosperity. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 STURM UND DRANG 
 
 THE S. George 's-in-the-East riots began in 1859, anc * 
 continued until i860. 1 They took place in the church. 
 They originated with a Mr. Allen, incumbent of S. Jude's, 
 Whitechapel, who had obtained a position in S. George's 
 as lecturer, independent of the rector, the Rev. Bryan King, 
 and they began when the latter was abroad for his health. 
 Allen was a violent Protestant, and, urged by his intemperate 
 language, a few malcontents began to interrupt the services 
 in the church. This speedily grew in intensity and violence. 
 Disorderly interruptions were organized and systematically 
 carried on week after week, whilst the proper authorities were 
 indifferent, and took no active means to suppress them. One 
 Sunday afternoon, overcome by the horror of what was going 
 on, the curate fell down in a fit in the midst of the service, 
 whereupon ensued a hideous row, and fighting. That the dis- 
 turbances were organized admitted of no doubt, for fuglemen 
 were posted about the church in the pews and in the galleries, 
 who gave signals for the hooting and profane shouts. Hand- 
 bills were placarded about the streets, containing much exciting 
 language, the last being in the form of dissuasion: "Do not 
 groan, do not hiss, do not pull the popish rags off his back; " 
 and Mr. Allen was generally held to have written these — at all 
 events he never repudiated them. 
 
 I was wont to visit S. George's-in-the-East, as I was a friend 
 of the brother of Mrs. Bryan King, and I was there when the 
 rector had returned. As far as I could see, there was nothing 
 in the church that might reasonably be objected to. At Evensong 
 a pair of candles lighted, a surpliced choir in the stalls, and the 
 surplice worn in the pulpit. 
 
 Directly the doors were opened, the mob surged into the 
 church, scrambling into the pews, some over their backs, and 
 
 1 See for further particulars : C. F. Lowder, a Biography (London, 1881). 
 
 232 
 
STURM UND DRANG 
 
 233 
 
 into the galleries. Police were stationed down the middle pas- 
 sage, but had been given orders to do nothing unless personal 
 violence were offered. There ensued talking, laughing, and 
 cracking of vulgar jokes before the service began. 
 
 When the choir and clergy entered, there burst forth booing 
 and hooting, and during the service unseemly mimicry of the 
 intoning, and indecent parodies chanted as responses. When the 
 choir turned East at the Creed, the mob turned bodily west. 
 I felt, when I was there, that the Rev. Bryan King made a 
 mistake in proceeding with Evensong, after the disturbance 
 had begun. He should, in my opinion, have stopped at once, 
 and left with the choir. We are forbidden to give that which is 
 holy to dogs, and cast our pearls before swine. A great number 
 of those who invaded the church came with Mr. Allen from 
 Whitechapel, and it was obvious from their faces they were 
 mere hooligans, as we should now term them. 
 
 Before Mr. Bryan King became rector of S. George's, his 
 predecessor had appeared once only in the parish church during 
 the seven preceding years, and had only one curate. After 
 fifteen years of hard and hopeless work by Mr. King, the Rev. 
 Charles Lowder came to his help and started a mission church 
 in Wellclose Square. In 1859 s * x clergymen at least were 
 labouring in the parish, besides a large staff of lay assistants, 
 and six hundred children were under instruction in the schools 
 that had been set on foot. No wonder the cry arose that Mr. 
 King had " alienated " his parishioners. A letter from one, 
 signing himself "an Englishman," was published as a pamphlet 
 at this time, addressed to Lord Brougham. " Alienation indeed ! " 
 he exclaims: " what more convincing evidence of the depth and 
 reality of the work now being carried on at S. George's than the 
 rancorous hostility which it encountered from the advocates 
 and doers of Satan's work in that benighted parish ? The 
 parishioners were quiet enough so long as the one curate with 
 his four services a week feebly essayed to arrest the over- 
 whelming tide of vice and crime ; but, now that the Rector of 
 S. George's has directed a more powerful armament against 
 the stronghold of sin, its defenders cry out like Demetrius of 
 Ephesus, for their ' craft is in danger.' " 
 
 For ten months the riots in the church continued. During 
 a part of that time the police were withdrawn. On August 14, 
 1859, tne cry was raised, " Let us attack the choir boys ! " and 
 a rush was made to assault them. One of the few friends of 
 
234 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 order who was endeavouring to protect them, as they fled to 
 the vestry, knocked off the hat of one of the assailants, for 
 which he was prosecuted by the publican churchwarden, the 
 vestry paying the expenses of the prosecution. In the middle 
 of August both Mr. King and his curate broke down, their 
 health gave way, and they left S. George's for a time, when the 
 whole burden of the services in the parish church fell upon the 
 Mission clergy ; and as these had to come from and return to 
 their house in Calvert Street, they were exposed all the way 
 to the insults and personal violence of the mob in the street. A 
 pathetic incident is connected with this, which Mr. Lowder 
 thus describes : " When the Mission clergy assisted the rector 
 in his time of need, and were themselves in considerable danger 
 from the mob, while returning from the church to the Mission- 
 house, we generally found on our way home a little girl from 
 the school, trotting close by our side, as though to protect us 
 from the violence of the people, who were pressing and shouting 
 around us. She would take up her position near the church, 
 and often wait a long time until we appeared ; and if we did 
 not recognize her before, we soon heard a little voice by our 
 side, addressing us by name to show that she was near. The 
 child, a wild little thing, living in an unfavourable atmosphere 
 at home, was afterwards taken into S. Stephen's Home and 
 sent out to service, and is now married." 
 
 The Bishop of London did nothing to stop the profanity, 
 save, as we shall see, to counsel, nay, command submission to 
 the demands of the rioters. Appeal was made in vain to Sir 
 George Cornewall Lewis, who at that time was the head of the 
 Home Office. Mr. Mackonochie, a curate, had a personal inter- 
 view with Mr. Waddington, the Under Secretary, from whom he 
 got no further satisfaction than that doubtless instructions had 
 already been given to the police. What these instructions 
 were we have already seen. 
 
 The disturbances started by Mr. Allen were organized by 
 publicans and brothel-keepers, 1 who found that the apostolic 
 labours of the clergy menaced their trades. But it is almost 
 certain that there were men of means and position, outsiders, 
 who fomented the riots, for money circulated freely among 
 the disturbers of the service. According to the late Mr. J. M. 
 Ludlow, the riots were " largely stimulated by the Jewish 
 
 1 One of the ringleaders was fined at the Middlesex Sessions for keeping 
 several houses of ill-fame. 
 
STURM UND DRANG 
 
 235 
 
 sweaters, whose proceedings Mr. Bryan King's curates, Messrs. 
 Mackonochie and Lowder, had the unheard-of temerity to 
 denounce and interfere with." There could be no mistaking 
 the Hebrew cast of countenance of many of the young men 
 who created the disturbances and carried them on with most 
 persistence. 
 
 On February 26, i860, and March 4, the mob took possession 
 of the choir stalls, pelted and defaced the altar hangings with 
 orange-peel and bread-and-butter, and overthrew the altar 
 cross. The Bishop sent a manifesto to the churchwardens to 
 remove the choir stalls, the altar hangings and the cross. These 
 men gladly carried out the injunctions, and all the special 
 objects of the rioters' hate were swept away. The clergy, now 
 deprived of their stalls, had retreated to some deal forms, placed 
 within the altar rails, as the only place left free for them ; but 
 the mob invaded the sanctuary and took possession of the 
 seats for the clergy and choristers. On the following Saturday, 
 May 19, an order arrived from the Bishop desiring the church- 
 wardens to remove the forms that had been placed within the 
 rails for the accommodation of the clergy, and to place these 
 latter anywhere about the church wherever the churchwardens 
 listed. 
 
 The question of ritual really did not enter into the considera- 
 tion of the disturbers of divine worship. As Mr. Rowley, who 
 afterwards went with Bishop Mackenzie to South Africa, and 
 was then in charge of a boys' school in Old Gravel Lane, wrote : 
 " The character of some of these men was thus set forth by a 
 young man who attended the night school in the Calvert Street 
 district : 'It's all a question of beer, sir, and what else they 
 can get. We know them. They are blackguards, like our- 
 selves here. Religion ain't anything more to them than it is 
 to us. They gets paid for what they do, and they do it, like 
 they'd do any other job." 
 
 It was in vain that Bishop Tait was entreated to come down 
 and judge for himself, and speak to the people. He preferred 
 to remain comfortably in his palace at Fulham. 
 
 The story of the riots may be concluded in the words of 
 the " Englishman " already mentioned, written in April i860. 
 " Nearly every point assailed has been (unwisely, I think) 
 surrendered for the sake of peace. . . . And what has been the 
 result ? Why, that the state of things is as bad, if not worse, 
 than ever it was. A pretty close attendant at the services at 
 
236 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 S. George's for some months, I will venture to say that the 
 scene of riot and blasphemy on Sunday, the 8th of the present 
 month, has never on more than one or two occasions been 
 equalled, certainly never surpassed. There were the same exe- 
 crations, hisses and laughter, the same bursts of groans and 
 howlings, the same stamping and slamming of doors, the same 
 hustling of the clergy and maltreating of helpless little choir- 
 boys, the same blasphemies, the same profanity, the same 
 cowardliness, the same brutality as ever. I can find no words 
 which more thoroughly express my sense of the horrors I wit- 
 nessed than the language of the reports which appeared in the 
 daily journals (all of them anti-Tractarian) on the following day. 
 ' It was left for last night,' they say, ' to witness a series of the 
 most diabolical outrages ever perpetrated in any church. The 
 conduct of the mob was perfectly fiendish.' The most violent 
 outbreaks generally occur during the reading of the Scripture 
 lessons, the recital of the Creed, the chanting of the ' Gloria ' or 
 the ' Prayer for Bishops and Clergy. . . .' These riots are not a 
 question for argument, for concession, for temporizing; they are 
 a scandal to be put down. . . . No language which I could 
 employ could convey a stronger censure upon each and all of 
 them — the Home Secretary, the Chief Commissioner of Police, 
 and the magistrates — than the single fact that, up to the very 
 day on which I write, these atrocious scandals, far from being 
 suppressed, are reiterated every Sunday under circumstances 
 of increased atrocity. . . . Every act of the Bishop of London, 
 since his first intervention, has resulted in a triumph of the 
 rioters over the Rector of S. George's ; and the magistrates, 
 out of the dozen of cases which have been brought before them, 
 have not punished a single rioter with imprisonment." 
 
 Lord Brougham spoke on the matter in the House of Lords : 
 " I beg to have it distinctly understood that the question of 
 putting down the disgraceful nuisance has nothing whatever to 
 do with the supposed errors out of which these disturbances 
 have arisen. Be the clergyman ever so much in the wrong (and 
 I do not say that he is in the wrong) this does not furnish an 
 atom of excuse, or even of extenuation, for such scandalous 
 exhibitions. I can only repeat the expressions of disgust at 
 these proceedings which I uttered on a former evening, and my 
 conviction that, whatever may be the merits of the question, 
 whether as to dogma or discipline, it is not to be settled by the 
 outrages of a riotous mob." 
 
STURM UND DRANG 
 
 237 
 
 At last some Broad Churchmen, Dean Stanley, Tom Hughes, 
 along with Lord Brougham, intervened ; and finally, shamed 
 by their remonstrances, on September 25 the Bishop (Tait) 
 ordered the church to be closed. 
 
 Nor was it only at S. George 's-in-the-East that these dis- 
 turbances broke out. Amongst other places was Stoke Ne wing- 
 ton, where the stately church of S. Matthias had been reared 
 and a new parish created mainly through the efforts of Mr. 
 Robert Brett. In this case there were undoubtedly men with 
 money behind the rioters, and coin was lavished abundantly 
 among them. They broke into the church and disturbed the 
 service, but there were present to receive them a large body 
 of stalwart Churchmen, and they were ejected from the sacred 
 building. 
 
 During the Hanoverian period controversy had raged over 
 the fundamentals of religion, assailed by Deists and Socinians, 
 and attention had been drawn away from the sacramental teach- 
 ing of the earlier divines of the English Church ; but with the 
 Oxford movement, these doctrines were again brought into 
 prominence. The Real Presence and the Eucharistic Sacrifice 
 were once more proclaimed to be the tenets of the Universal 
 Church in all ages, and to have been maintained by the Fathers 
 of the English Church. These two doctrines involved as well 
 that of the priesthood, and to this both Latitudinarian and Low 
 Churchmen were especially opposed. The former regarded the 
 clergy as the moral police of the State, and the latter would 
 limit them to be mere preachers of the Word. Consequently the 
 Oxford movement aroused bitter hostility from both sides. 
 
 Confession had been attacked, and defended by the Bishop of 
 Exeter ; at S. George's-in-the-East and elsewhere mob violence 
 had been urged against the restoration of the common decencies 
 of divine worship. Now a more serious, persistent assault was 
 to be made against the Eucharistic teaching of the reformers. 
 It opened with an attack made on Archdeacon Denison for 
 doctrine contained in two sermons delivered in Wells Cathedral 
 in 1855, and a condemnation of it was obtained in the Diocesan 
 Court. An appeal was lodged to the Provincial Court ; but 
 eventually, on the plea that some legal irregularity had been 
 committed, the proceedings were set aside. 
 
 In 1871 an attack was made upon the Rev. W. J. E. Bennett, 
 Vicar of Frome, for inculcating the same doctrine; but again 
 the prosecutors met with no success at their chosen court, for 
 
238 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 it pronounced that Mr. Bennett's teaching was not contrary to 
 that of the Church of England. 
 
 It now became clear to the Low-Church party that they 
 were not likely to achieve success in assailing doctrine, and 
 they trusted to obtain better results by an attack on ritual. 
 
 The Tractarians had done no more than teach definitely the 
 verities of the Catholic Faith, and had made little advance in 
 ceremonial. But as congregations had become educated and 
 had their minds saturated with this teaching, they began to 
 require that the truths they had received should be exemplified 
 in worship. Accordingly, in the twenty years that followed 
 Newman's secession, High Churchmen in all parts of the country 
 began to dignify their altars with cross, candlesticks and flowers, 
 and to use the Eucharistic vestments at Celebrations. They had, 
 as they believed, excellent authority in the Ornaments Rubric, 
 which had been opposed by the Presbyterians at the Savoy 
 Conference precisely on the grounds that this rubric did re- 
 quire the ornaments of the altar and the minister to be those 
 that were in use and were ordered by the First Prayer Book of 
 King Edward VI. But lawyers can always prove black to be 
 white and the converse, and on this the Protestants relied. 
 They had formed a Church Association, and had subscribed 
 largely to have the question of the ornaments tried and their 
 use condemned. Now it so happened that in 1832 by Act of 
 Parliament the Court of Final Appeal in matters ecclesiastical 
 had been transferred to the Privy Council, and this had been 
 done without the sanction of Convocation, which then existed 
 only in name. The Court was purely secular, founded by a 
 purely secular authority. Not a single ecclesiastic was neces- 
 sarily included in it. Not a single member of it need neces- 
 sarily belong to the Church of England. It was never intended 
 that questions of doctrine or ritual should come before it. This 
 was clearly stated by Lord Brougham, the author of the Act, 
 in the House of Lords in 1850, when he said : "It (the Judicial 
 Committee of the Privy Council) was created for the considera- 
 tion of a totally different class of cases (from that of Mr. 
 Gorham)." 
 
 This was not at first fully perceived by Churchmen, or they 
 would never have appealed to it against the adverse judgment 
 of the Court of Arches. Although the constitution of the Court 
 of Final Appeal has been somewhat modified by subsequent 
 legislation, it still remains a secular court, incompetent to deal 
 
STURM UND DRANG 
 
 239 
 
 with spiritual cases. As such, Churchmen cannot plead before 
 I it, or recognize its decisions as binding ; the fact that the lower 
 Courts consider themselves bound by its judgments likewise 
 destroys their authority. 
 
 The first prosecutions were those against Liddell, the Vicar 
 of S. Paul's, Knight sbridge, so as to obtain the removal of the 
 stone altar, its cross, candlesticks, coloured frontals and the 
 credence table ; and the same was objected to in the parish 
 church of S. Barnabas, Pimlico. 
 
 The action was brought before the Consistory Court of London. 
 The decision was against Mr. Liddell on all points except the 
 candlesticks, which were to be allowed when necessary for giving 
 light. The decision was confirmed by the Court of Arches on 
 appeal. Liddell then appealed to the Privy Council, which was 
 now for the first time called in to consider ritualistic matters. 
 In this he committed a fatal mistake, but at the time it was 
 considered that these were purely legal questions. Nevertheless 
 it established a precedent that acted badly in the ensuing cases. 
 The Privy Council pronounced the Ornaments Rubric as authori- 
 tative, and therefore allowed cross, credence, altar-lights, the cross 
 on the screen, and confirmed the courts below in other respects. 
 This was in 1857. Now, although Mr. Liddell gained on almost 
 every point, he gained it by recognizing the authority of a 
 secular court in things sacred. 
 
 Next ensued the case Flamank v. Simpson, 1866-8, and 
 this was taken along with Martin v. Mackonochie in the Court 
 of Arches. Sir Robert Phillimore decided that lights on the 
 altar were legal ; that incense, the mixed chalice, and the eleva- 
 tion of paten and chalice after consecration, were not. 
 
 The Privy Council in 1870 suspended Mackonochie for three 
 1 months for disobeying its judgment, thus assuming a power to 
 inflict a spiritual penalty, which pertained alone to the Bishop. 
 I Mr. Mackonochie submitted to this usurpation, and desisted 
 from the ministrations of S. Alban's, whereas, had he been 
 better advised, he would have ignored the sentence, 
 
 The next important case was Elphinstone (afterwards Hebbert) 
 v. Pnrchas, 1869-71. The Dean of Arches decided that the 
 Eucharistic vestments, the Eastward position, wafer-bread, and 
 the mixed chalice were legal. Then ensued an appeal to the 
 Privy Council, which reversed the judgment, as well as its 
 own decision in the case of Beale v. Liddell. Mr. Purchas put 
 in no appearance, and left the case undefended, owing to 
 
240 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 his poverty ; nevertheless the taxed costs amounted to 
 £7,661 18s. yd., which he was quite unable to pay. 
 
 In the first ritual suit, the Knightsbridge case, it may be 
 said that no suspicion was entertained that the appeal to the 
 Court of Privy Council was a recognition of secular interference 
 in ecclesiastical matters, that ought to be resisted. The spiritual 
 flaw was present then, as it was later, but it had escaped detec- 
 tion. When, however, the Privy Council advanced its claims 
 to determine what doctrines might be depraved by a priest 
 without rendering him incapable of holding a benefice in the 
 Church, the eyes of Churchmen were opened, and a determined 
 resistance was organised. In all, some nineteen to twenty 
 prosecutions took place, and the most conflicting judgments 
 were given. 
 
 The two Primates and most of the Bishops put their heads 
 together to contrive how to pitchfork the Catholic clergy if not 
 out of the Church, at least into gaol, and ultimately deprive 
 them of their cures. They hoped by means of a well-framed 
 Bill to obtain means to make a clean sweep of these Churchmen 
 out of the Establishment. Lord Shaftesbury took the Bill out 
 of the hands of the Archbishop of Canterbury, made it more 
 stringent, and divested it of nearly all the safeguards the Bishops 
 had provided. The Act was passed in 1874. Disraeli was at 
 the time looking out for a good Tory war-cry, and found it in 
 "Down with the Ritualists!'' and amid a storm of cheers, in 
 introducing the Bill into the House of Commons, described it 
 as a Bill to put down Ritualism and u mass in masquerade." 
 
 It happened that when Tait had prepared his Bill, Parlia- 
 ment was dissolved, and this necessitated a new Convocation — 
 which, however, did not meet until the Bill was already before 
 the House. When Convocation did meet, the Lower House 
 refused approval of the proposals of the Archbishop and Bishops. 
 
 Tait had attempted in his draft of a Bill to place the decision 
 in the hands of the Bishops and a Board of Assessors. But this 
 was not to Lord Shaftesbury's mind, and he proposed amend- 
 ments that totally altered the character of the Bill, ignoring the 
 Diocesan Courts and creating anew Court of Final Instance, but 
 with appeal allowed to the Privy Council. The Archbishops and 
 Bishops weakly gave way — only stipulating that a bishop might 
 veto a prosecution when it appeared to be captious and un- 
 reasonable. To this Lord Shaftesbury and Lord Cairns grudg- 
 ingly consented. 
 
STURM UND DRANG 
 
 241 
 
 Accordingly the bishop, on the representation of an arch- 
 deacon, a churchwarden, or any three aggrieved parishioners, 
 might transmit the case to be heard by the judge, or else veto 
 it. As an additional insult to the clergy the Archbishops of 
 Canterbury and York appointed Lord Penzance, an ex- judge 
 of the Divorce Court, to act in this new court. He at once and 
 peremptorily refused to qualify himself as an ecclesiastical judge 
 by taking the customary oaths, and insisted that his jurisdic- 
 tion derived not from the Church, but solely from Parliament. 
 
 The first suit under the Public Worship Regulation Act was 
 that of Clifton v. Ridsdale. Lord Penzance pronounced judg- 
 ment according to the ruling of the Privy Council in Hebbert v. 
 Purchas; and Mr. Ridsdale misguidedly appealed against it to 
 the Privy Council. The appeal was dismissed on every point. 
 
 The Church Association now considered that it had got a 
 tool in its hand, unsavoury though it might be, which would 
 do its work thoroughly. Down to 1882 eighteen suits were 
 initiated under the Act, and eight were vetoed by the Bishops. 
 
 Five clergy were sent to prison for contempt of Court, 
 because they refused to recognize the Court of Lord Penzance : 
 A. Tooth, Vicar of S. James's, Hatcham, in 1877 ; T. P. Dale, 
 Rector of S. Vedast and S. Michael le Quern, in the City of 
 London, 1880 ; S. F. Green, Rector of S. John's, Miles Platting, 
 188 1-2 ; R. W. Enraght, Vicar of Holy Trinity, Bordesley, 
 1880, and J. Bell-Cox, perpetual curate of S. Margaret's, Toxteth 
 Park, Liverpool, in 1887. 
 
 I have room for giving an account of but few of these, and 
 I will begin with the first of all, that of Mr. Tooth, who led 
 the way — the true way, that should have been followed in 
 previous cases. 
 
 The first case under the Public Worship Regulation Act of 
 1874 was that of Hudson v. Tooth, and was directed against the 
 Rev. Arthur Tooth, Vicar of St. James's, Hatcham, a hamlet of 
 the ancient parish of Deptford. The church and its services 
 were very little known. It had been Mr. Tooth's settled policy 
 to work his parish quietly and not to attract attention. The 
 ceremonial was what was called " advanced " in those days, 
 and the charges were of the usual kind. That such a church 
 should have been attacked was a little surprising, but the theory 
 held by those who were familiar with the story was that 
 the proceedings were somewhat " accidental " in their origin. 
 Some zealous young men had inserted a glowing account in one 
 16 
 
242 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 of the local papers of the services on S. James's Day in 1874. 
 This advertisement attracted the attention of a newspaper 
 reporter, who sent particulars to the Times. There were some 
 inaccuracies, and one of the officers of the church wrote a letter 
 of corrections. Mr. Tooth was moved to write to the Times, 
 stating in very clear terms what he understood to be the prin- 
 ciples involved in the attack on the Church made by the Public 
 Worship Regulation Bill, then under consideration in Parlia- 
 ment. This caused him to become a marked man, and it is 
 generally supposed that this circumstance led to his selection 
 as the first victim under that Act. Proceedings were begun 
 after the Rules and Orders of the new Court had been settled in 
 the following year. Mr. Tooth saw quite clearly, what many 
 others did not see, that the time had come for a policy of 
 resistance. In that policy he received great support, although 
 there were many who felt that it could not be justified. 1 When 
 it was known that proceedings were imminent, before the 
 Bishop of Rochester (T. L. Claughton) had taken the final step, 
 Mr. Tooth sent a letter to his lordship making an offer that if he 
 (the Bishop) would try the case by his own authority, in accord- 
 ance with the clear law of the Church, independently of the 
 decisions of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, and the 
 Bishop found him guilty, he would not take advantage of his posi- 
 tion as incumbent, but would submit. This offer, in the opinion 
 of all sensible and right-thinking men, acquitted Mr. Tooth 
 of any suggestion of lawlessness or self-will. When the first 
 sentence of the Court was delivered, the Bishop of the Diocese, 
 acting as bishops did, as mere apparitors or instruments of 
 secular courts, sent a clergyman named G. to take charge of 
 the parish. He was met at the door by the Vicar and two 
 churchwardens. The Vicar made a clear statement as to the 
 principles upon which he acted, and forbade the intruding 
 priest to officiate in the parish. Then from the pulpit he read 
 a statement in which he set forth the reasons why he was pre- 
 cluded from taking any notice of Lord Penzance's Court or 
 his Monitions, and the services proceeded in the ordinary way. 
 The services went on as usual through Advent and the Christmas 
 season. There was much controversy in the newspapers, and 
 on a Sunday morning early in the New Year, rioting began. 
 It is doubtful if the riots were premeditated. The church 
 
 1 The Guardian and The Church Quarterly urged submission under 
 protest. 
 
STURM UND DRANG 
 
 243 
 
 was very crowded, and people were allowed to stand about 
 in the aisles. When the Vicar, who was celebrating the Holy 
 Communion, sang the opening words of the Creed, a man at the 
 bottom of the church called out " Liar ! " and immediately there 
 ensued a commotion, but it was quelled by the organist striking 
 up a popular Christmas hymn. The services that day pro- 
 ceeded in peace. But this had opened the floodgates, and every 
 available Protestant and Orangeman who could be collected 
 from every part of London was at Hatcham on the succeeding 
 Sundays. It was found necessary to erect a barricade around 
 the church. Mr. Tooth refused to bow to the mob, and on one 
 of the Sundays barrels of beer were drunk in the road, women 
 were insulted, and ribald songs were sung. An attempt was 
 made to force an entrance into the church by means of an im- 
 provised battering-ram. Mr. Tooth was celebrating, and at the 
 height of this attack he was in the act of communicating. After 
 he had replaced the chalice on the altar, he genuflected, and 
 turned to Mr. H. W. Hill, who was serving and kneeling im- 
 mediately behind him, and quietly asked, " Have they got in ? " 
 It was impossible to leave the church that day until nearly 
 three o'clock. After some time the parish was more or less in 
 a state of siege. There was a certain amount of Protestant 
 opposition in the parish itself, which was partly a residential 
 middle-class place with a considerable working-class popula- 
 tion, but the riotous element was imported from outside. An 
 application to notify Mr. Tooth for contempt of the Court of 
 Lord Penzance was speedily made. Mr. Tooth did not appear, 
 and in due time a writ to take him prisoner was issued from the 
 Petty Bag Office of the Court of Chancery. There was said 
 to be a doubt as to whether the vicarage was in the county of 
 Kent or the county of Surrey, for it stood near the border. 
 It was thought that this difficulty, which need not have arisen, 
 was an expedient on the part of the authorities so that they 
 might issue the writ to the wrong sheriff, and Mr. Tooth might 
 go into the other county and keep out of the way. If there is 
 any truth in this, it can only be observed that the authorities 
 did not know the man. Mr. Tooth went to some business 
 premises belonging to the late Mr. Thomas Layman, in the 
 Borough, where he was arrested and conveyed to Horsemonger 
 Lane Gaol. He was imprisoned on January 22, 1877. An 
 account of these proceedings was sent to the Times. 
 
 The arrangement of prisons in those days varied. Horse- 
 
244 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 monger Lane Gaol, the Surrey prison, was an old establishment. 
 Mr. Tooth was confined in the portion reserved for people under 
 remand, etc. ; the place of exercise was a small yard with iron 
 bars around it and over it. The cartoon in Vanity Fair is an 
 exact reproduction. One could speak to a prisoner through 
 those bars, or a gate would be unlocked and one could be locked 
 in with him, and walk about in the enclosure, or retire to a 
 cold, horrid room, where the accommodation was most wretched. 
 
 Bishop Claughton now revoked the licence of the curate, the 
 Rev. W. H. Browne, afterwards so distinguished in the Arch- 
 bishops' Mission to Syria, and licensed a man to take charge of 
 the parish in the room of vicar and curate ; but as it was found 
 that he was a person of doubtful antecedents, he had to be 
 speedily disposed of. 
 
 Canon Liddon visited Mr. Tooth in gaol, and wrote in his 
 diary : " Mr. Tooth's sick face in that cage in the court of that 
 gaol quite haunts me." For, in fact, prisoners were usually to 
 be seen by visitors through bars like wild beasts. 
 
 The agitation against the imprisonment grew in such volume 
 that the authorities began to be concerned. A great meeting 
 was held at the Cannon Street Hotel, in the City of London, on 
 Friday night, February 16, 1877. It was a meeting for men 
 only, and there were more people in the street than could get 
 into the large hall of the hotel. The prosecutors wrote to the 
 Times about that date, saying that if Mr. Tooth's friends wanted 
 him to be got out of prison they should persuade him to purge 
 his contempt. That, of course, was a foolish suggestion. Mr. 
 Tooth's friends would never have dreamt of following such 
 advice. On the Saturday morning following the meeting in 
 the City, February 17, 1877, the astounding announcement was 
 made that Lord Penzance had held a Court that morning, and 
 ordered Mr. Tooth's release — the reason given being that, as a 
 clergyman named Dale was in charge of the parish, and the 
 services were performed in a proper manner, there was no 
 reason why Mr. Tooth should remain in prison. Everybody 
 was astonished, not the least Mr. Tooth, when at about six 
 o'clock in the evening orders were received by Mr. Keene, the 
 governor of the gaol, to set him at liberty. There is no doubt 
 that the authorities were seriously alarmed, and that this sudden 
 step was taken at the request of the Government. 
 
 The need for rest and change had come, and accordingly Mr. 
 Tooth went abroad for a few months, his friends holding the 
 
STURM ZJND DRANG 
 
 245 
 
 fort as well as they could. In May (1877) Mr. Tooth suddenly 
 returned, and announced his intention of celebrating the Holy 
 Communion in the church on the following Sunday morning. 
 This happened, and a most distressing account of the proceed- 
 ings is to be read in the newspapers of the day. It was found 
 necessary to break into the church, the service was held, and 
 there were a large number of communicants. This was a fresh 
 defiance of Lord Penzance and all his works, but no further 
 action was taken against Mr. Tooth. But other things were 
 done. One afternoon a fearful crash was heard in the church ; 
 without any authority from any Court, some of the Protestants 
 of the parish had thrown ropes over the Rood and pulled it 
 to the ground. In the end serious flaws were found in the 
 proceedings against Mr. Tooth, and they were quashed by the 
 Court of Queen's Bench. When Lord Penzance's Counsel saw 
 what was going to happen, they were anxious that Mr. Tooth 
 should give an undertaking that he would not take action for 
 false imprisonment against that worthy. Mr. Tooth declined to 
 have anything to do with Lord Penzance. Mr. Tooth was per- 
 suaded to resign his benefice for the sake of peace, but, as 
 so frequently happens, peace did not come. There was a fresh 
 series of riots under the new conditions, and it was some years 
 before the parish settled down. On the resignation of Mr. 
 Tooth's successor, the advowson was sold. 
 
 It was one of the hypocrisies of the Middle Ages that the 
 Church protested that she would shed no blood, commit none 
 to the flames. Accordingly, when her Court of Inquisition had 
 pronounced a man a heretic, she passed him over to the tender 
 mercies of the State, and wiped her hands of the consequences. 
 It was not the Church that wielded the sword and applied the 
 torch, but the secular power. Our Bishops were not guiltless 
 of this evasion. They handed over such men as the rabble 
 howled at and the press denounced, to secular judges, to try 
 whether they were heretics or not, and then imprison them. 
 But the moral responsibility lay with them for all that, as it 
 was they who delivered up their clergy, acting the part of 
 catchpoles. The first of the shabby procession of these prelates 
 — their leader in the line — was Claughton of Rochester. His 
 example, as we shall see, was followed by the Bishops of Lon- 
 don, Manchester, Liverpool, Worcester. 
 
 The church of Miles Platting had been built in 1855 by Sir 
 Benjamin Heywood in a district with 4,000 inhabitants, mostly 
 
246 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 poor. The patronage was in his hands, and after his death in 
 those of his son, Sir Percival Hey wood. Miles Platting is a 
 district in Manchester peopled entirely by mill-hands, and some 
 very poor. It is an unsightly spot, where grows no blade of 
 grass ; the only beautiful thing in it is the church, grouped with 
 schools and clergy-house. Bishop Fraser, in his charge of 1876 
 had expressed his concurrence with the Public Worship Regula- 
 tion Act. " Though I have never regretted that statute, I feel 
 that if it were rigorously interpreted or severely applied, a 
 train would be laid to which any foolish or ill-disposed person 
 might place a match ; and if an explosion occurred, it is dim 
 cult to say what mischief might not be done." Yet he it was 
 who applied the match. In 1878 he received a petition pur 
 porting to be signed by 320 parishioners complaining of the 
 proceedings of the Rev. S. F. Green, the Rector of Miles Platting 
 and praying " that your worship will use your great power to 
 irradicate (sic) this abominable idolatry." The petition was 
 forwarded by one George McDonagh — evidently an Irish Orange- 
 man — and was obviously the work of illiterate people. It was 
 scrawled over coarse sheets of paper, and whole groups of 
 signatures were in one handwriting, and whole families, without 
 respect to age, had signed. As no specific charges had been 
 made, the Bishop could not act. Dr. Fraser was clearly very 
 reluctant to take proceedings, but he, like the other bishops, 
 had sold themselves to do evil under the Public Worship Regula- 
 tion Act, and could not well help himself. In January 1879 
 the Church Association succeeded in securing three aggrieved 
 parishioners — persons who never attended the church, two of 
 them unknown by sight to the Rector and the congregation 
 Not a single communicant (and there were 240 on the roll), nor 
 any member of the congregation, had anything to do with the 
 presentment. 
 
 In April some Orange Protestants broke into the church at 
 night, and a cross, a number of vestments, books, and other 
 property were partially destroyed by fire. The Bishop had the 
 good feeling to denounce the outrage. 
 
 Mr. Green had been appointed in 1869, and the charges brought 
 against him were : (1) the mixed chalice ; (2) lighted candles 
 (3) Eucharistic vestments ; (4) elevation of paten and chalice 
 
 (5) placing the alms on the credence table after presentation 
 
 (6) kneeling at the consecration; (7) making the sign of th 
 Cross in benediction; (8) using the Eastward position fo 
 
STURM UND DRANG 
 
 247 
 
 consecration ; (9) raising the cup ; (10) having a brass cross 
 on a ledge above the altar ; (n) and a Baldachino over the 
 Holy Table. 
 
 The charges were not all true. Several of the practices had 
 never been adopted at Miles Platting. But because others 
 employed them, the Church Association lawyers assumed that 
 Mr. Green did so, and the witnesses gave evidence in reply to 
 leading questions, as was desired. 
 
 The Baldachino was actually an architectural ornament in 
 marble and alabaster, and had no connection with the services 
 at all, and had been erected with the full approval of the Bishop 
 some years previously. 
 
 The Rubric orders that " the ornaments of the church, and of 
 the ministers thereof, at all times of their ministration shall be 
 retained, and be in use, as were in this Church of England, by 
 the authority of Parliament, in the second year of the reign of 
 King Edward the Sixth." There exists no manner of doubt 
 as to what these ornaments were, but the Privy Council had 
 decided that " shall be retained " meant " shall not be retained," 
 much as it might judge that " Thou shalt love thy neighbour 
 as thyself " should mean " Thou shalt not love thy neighbour 
 as thyself." 1 
 
 Mr. Green refused to accept the ruling of the Privy Council, 
 and the case was carried before Lord Penzance's Court. Mr. 
 Green declined to attend, and in 1879, for disobedience and 
 contempt of Court, was condemned and was imprisoned in 
 Lancaster Castle on March 19, 1881, condemned also to pay 
 the bill of costs, which amounted to £450 ; and because he 
 could not do this, the sale of his " goods and chattels " took 
 place at the rectory on August 4 and 5 of the same year, and 
 his wife and children were turned out of the house into the 
 street. Indeed, regarding the whole transaction as iniquitous, 
 Mr. Green would not have paid the sum had he been able. 
 
 The position taken up by Mr. Green when summoned before 
 the Bishop had been that he knew nothing of the three com- 
 plainants, and that it was an insult to the congregation to 
 whom he ministered that such persons should presume to inter- 
 
 1 Judge Coleridge said of the Rubric : " The clause in question, by which 
 I mean the Rubric in question, is perfectly unambiguous in language, 
 free from all difficulty as to construction." Sir R. Phillimore said : " After 
 repeated and attentive perusal of the language, it (the Rubric) does quite 
 appear to me as plain as any which is to be found in any statutory 
 enactments." 
 
248 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 fere with the services. When the Bishop ascertained what their 
 real character was, he would have put the charges in the waste- 
 paper basket, had he not given his word to his secretary to put 
 the Act in motion. It was also believed that his action was 
 due to the malign influence of Archbishop Thomson. After 
 Mr. Green's discharge from prison, he and Bishop Fraser never 
 met again. 
 
 In prison Mr. Green suffered somewhat from loss of exercise, 
 and he was, at his own request, set to wheel in the coals for 
 two divisions of the gaol. 
 
 Sir Percival Heywood appealed to the Home Secretary, after 
 Mr. Green had been incarcerated a twelvemonth, for the release 
 of the Rector. The only answer he got was, " Yield, and he shall 
 be released ; refuse to yield, and he shall remain where he is." 
 
 Archbishop Thomson and Archbishop Tait became alarmed 
 at the feeling that was being roused among Churchmen at the 
 prolonged imprisonment of Mr. Green, and they made various 
 suggestions to Bishop Fraser as to how the difficulty might be 
 got over, and Mr. Green be released. But the Bishop of Man- 
 chester did not see his way to falling in with their suggestions. 
 He, however, sent Archdeacon Norris to Lancaster Gaol to de- 
 mand of Mr. Green that he should submit to canonical obedience 
 to his ordinary. Mr. Green replied : " To prevent all possi- 
 bility of misconception, I beg leave to add, that by ' canonical 
 obedience ' I understand obedience to the rules and laws of 
 the Church, and that it is a part of the office of a bishop to see 
 that such rules are observed. That my obligation to obey the 
 rules of the Church is, like the obligation to obey the moral 
 law, entirely independent of whether the bishop thinks it his 
 duty to require obedience to them or no. That, should the 
 bishop order what is inconsistent with a rule of the Church in 
 the name of some other Power, we must obey the Church and 
 take the consequences. As there is a rule of the Church (the 
 Ornaments Rubric) which orders lights, vestments, incense, and 
 the mixed chalice, there is no possibility of canonical obedience 
 except in conformity to that rule." 
 
 The Lower House of the Northern Convocation moved in the 
 matter, but the Archbishops and Bishops declined to do more 
 than appeal to the Church Association to be a little lenient. 
 They appealed to deaf ears. Let it be clearly understood that 
 Dr. Fraser, Bishop of Manchester, by refusing to interpose his 
 veto, had brought matters to this condition. And now three 
 
STURM UND DRANG 
 
 249 
 
 years had elapsed since the Rector of Miles Platting had been 
 inhibited by Lord Penzance. On September 27, 1882, Bishop 
 Fraser wrote to the patron informing him that, under the 
 Public Worship Regulation Act, Mr. Green was deprived, and 
 that the benefice of S. John's, Miles Platting, had become void. 
 Thereupon, from prison, Mr. Green wrote to Sir Percival Hey- 
 wood to say that he would himself voluntarily resign the living. 
 This he did for three reasons. (1) He learned that the Bishop 
 of Manchester was about to apply to Lord Penzance to order 
 his release on the grounds of his deprivation, and he hoped by 
 resignation to spare the Church the humiliation of seeing the 
 Bishop stooping to the ex-divorce judge to obtain a favour. (2) 
 The Bishop was taking steps to sequestrate the revenue of the 
 benefice. This Sir Percival would oppose, and consequently 
 the baronet would be involved in a costly lawsuit. (3) He felt 
 that he could not maintain himself in his position at S. John's 
 in defiance of his diocesan, and with the police empowered to 
 eject him from the church and thus create a scandal. 
 
 On the eve of All Saints' Day two announcements were made 
 from the pulpit of S. John's, one of the Rector's resignation, the 
 other to the effect that the Bishop was sending a clergyman 
 to take charge of S. John's and reduce the ritual to the cathedral 
 standard. Then the congregation adjourned to the school- 
 room, where Mr. Green's letter bidding farewell to his flock was 
 read to them. " Was there any one who remained untouched 
 by its pathetic tone ? " asks the Monthly Record. " Strong men 
 were drying their eyes and stifling their sobs, women in un- 
 disguised grief wailed aloud ; and no one who beheld the scene 
 could do otherwise than confess how close and firm and real a 
 thing was the spiritual relationship which bound this flock to 
 their pastor." The living being vacant, on November 4 the 
 Bishop of Manchester appeared, represented by his Chancellor, 
 in the court of Lord Penzance to sue for the release of Mr. 
 Green, on the ground of his being no longer rector of Miles Plat- 
 ting, and therefore no longer able to disobey Lord Penzance's 
 inhibition. This was granted, and Mr. Green was discharged 
 after a confinement of nearly twenty months. 
 
 Sir Percival now nominated the Rev. H. Cowgill, the curate 
 who had taken charge of the parish during Mr. Green's absence, 
 but Dr. Fraser refused him institution. The patron brought 
 a charge against the Bishop for his refusal, but lost it, and was 
 condemned to pay not only his own costs, but those of the 
 
250 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 Bishop as well, amounting to £650, exclusive of the cost of his 
 own counsel. It was a scandalous abuse of justice, as there was 
 absolutely nothing that could be brought against the character 
 and teaching of Mr. Cowgill. 
 
 Dr. Fraser now, on the ground that the living was vacant, 
 and that the patron had not nominated, himself appointed a 
 rector, the Rev. T. Taylor Evans, who would put an end to 
 the services as conducted hitherto at S. John's. Whereupon the 
 congregation, sidesmen, the organist and choir resigned, and 
 the congregation was dispersed to find homes in the churches 
 in the neighbourhood. 
 
 Bishop Fraser died in 1886, and in May 1890 the new Bishop 
 of Manchester, Dr. Moorhouse, presented Mr. Evans to another 
 living, and Sir Percival Heywood was again free to exercise his 
 rights as patron. The living was offered to and accepted by 
 the Rev. Arthur Anderton, who was received enthusiastically ; 
 the services were restored to their former beauty and devotion ; 
 the ornaments of the altar were replaced, the vestments were 
 again worn, and the ritual observed was practically the same as 
 it had been before the attack on Mr. Green. At the same time 
 the Sisters, who had left the parish when placed under Mr. 
 Evans, returned and took up their work again at Miles Platting. 
 
 The tyranny was overpast. Dr. Fraser, who had been en- 
 couraged to act by Archbishop Thomson, as was believed, and 
 the Church Association had gained nothing. The persecution 
 had served only to deepen in the hearts of the congregation 
 their love of the Church and her sacred services. 
 
 " Once again the patron, the rector and the people were in 
 happy accord. The work was taken up on the old lines, the 
 Guilds were revived, and many of the teachers returned to the 
 Sunday School. The church became once more the pride and 
 joy of the parishioners, who, as of old, brought gifts which, as 
 they were all very poor, were the fruits of self-sacrifice ; but 
 which were willingly given to make their house of God and its 
 services more beautiful." 1 
 
 In this case, as in many another, the promise was observed, 
 " No weapon formed against thee shall prosper." 
 
 S. Margaret's Church, Princes Road, Liverpool, owed its 
 origin to the late Robert Horsfall, a munificent benefactor to 
 the Church in Liverpool. Its first incumbent was the Rev. 
 
 1 Thomas Percival Heywood. Printed for private circulation (Man- 
 chester, 1899), p. 188. 
 
STURM UND DRANG 
 
 251 
 
 Charles Parnell (1869-1876). From the first he was exposed to 
 annoyance and opposition fomented by the so-called Evan- 
 gelical clergy, who did not relish that their monopoly in Liver- 
 pool should be invaded, and that definite Church teaching and 
 ritual should be given in the place of feeble sentimentalism. 
 From the first there was daily Celebration, as well as daily 
 prayer in S. Margaret's, and an earnest, devoted congregation 
 gathered within its walls. 
 
 Immediately opposite S. Margaret's is the Greek Church, 
 and this was consecrated by the Archbishop of Syra and Tenos 
 on Sunday, July 16, 1870. The Archimandrite in charge and 
 the wardens had invited the clergy of S. Margaret's to be pre- 
 sent ; and as the Archbishop had expressed a wish to see the 
 interior of the church, he was invited to attend one of the ser- 
 vices. This he did on a Sunday following, at Evensong, when, 
 at the conclusion of the service, he gave his benediction to the 
 congregation. 
 
 This afforded occasion to the local branch of the Church 
 Association to interfere. They appealed to the Bishop of 
 Chester against the clergy of S. Margaret's for allowing the 
 Oriental prelate to take any part in the service. Much cor- 
 respondence ensued, but finally the Bishop (Jacobson) had the 
 good sense to put a stop to it. 
 
 In 1880 the Rev. J. C. Ryle was appointed first Bishop of 
 Liverpool, on the nomination of Lord Beaconsneld, a strong 
 Evangelical partisan and a platform orator. Mr. Charles 
 Parnell was attacked, a suit being instituted against him under 
 the Church Discipline Act by a certain Mr. W. Roughton, 
 supported by some members of the Church Association. Legal 
 proceedings went on for two years, and then Mr. Parnell 
 resigned, hoping that with his resignation the suit would break 
 down, as being brought against himself personally. To him 
 succeeded the Rev. J . Bell-Cox. He refused to appear before the 
 Court either in person or by representation, as he could not 
 and would not recognize the jurisdiction of Lord Penzance in 
 matters ecclesiastical. 
 
 On this occasion Dean Church of S. Paul's wrote to the Arch- 
 bishop : " This Bell-Cox case has come home to my sense of 
 justice far more strongly than any of the previous imprison- 
 ments. They were in the thick of battle, and of hot blood. 
 This comes after all has cooled down. . . . To me it comes with 
 the sense of almost intolerable wrong, when one sees a quiet 
 
252 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 man, in full agreement with his congregation, made a victim, 
 in the midst of all the varieties of opinion and practice. . . . 
 Think how the arguments for Rome would be pressed, and how 
 bitterness of mind gives them force. The one counterpoise to 
 this would be if men could remember that, though the lawyers 
 had been hard upon them, the Episcopate had made its voice 
 heard clearly and powerfully on the side of patience and forbear- 
 ance and real fairness, against the miserable system of ignoble 
 worrying which ends in things like this Bell-Cox scandal." 
 
 Lord Penzance issued a judgment on June 13, 1886, suspending 
 the Rev. James Bell-Cox " ab officio "for a period of six months, 
 that is, "from preaching the Word of God, administering the 
 Sacraments, and performing all other duties and offices in the 
 said church or chapel of S. Margaret's, Toxteth Park, aforesaid, 
 and elsewhere within the Province of York." The Vicar of 
 S. Margaret's disregarded the judgment, and continued to preach 
 and minister the Sacraments as before throughout the six months 
 of suspension. 
 
 Thereupon a writ was issued and served on May 4, 1867, 
 for the apprehension of Mr. Bell-Cox, and his consignment to 
 prison. He was accordingly removed to Walton Gaol and 
 there lodged in an ordinary felon's cell, to undergo solitary 
 confinement. " Over each cell door there is a receptacle for 
 holding a card, stating the term of the occupier's imprisonment. 
 It was not until after my return from the morning service 
 in the chapel, on Sunday, May 8th, that I found mine had been 
 recorded and placed in situ. It consisted simply of one word, 
 and differed entirely from that of every other prisoner. The 
 word was ' Indefinite.' " 
 
 No sooner had the lock been turned in the prison door than 
 efforts were made to obtain Mr. Cox's release, and it was urged 
 in the Queen's Bench, before Lord Chief Justice Coleridge and 
 others, that the judgment of Lord Penzance had not been 
 pronounced by him in person, but committed to a delegate, 
 which he was not qualified to do. There were other technical 
 errors committed in the judgment, and the Court on this plea 
 ordered that Mr. Bell-Cox should be released from prison on 
 May 20. 
 
 At once the prosecutor, Mr. James Hakes, appealed against 
 the order and obtained its reversal. Whereupon the friends of 
 Mr. Cox appealed to the House of Lords. Then Mr. Hakes, 
 fearing that the House of Lords would give a judgment in favour 
 
STURM UND DRANG 
 
 253 
 
 of Mr. Bell-Cox's liberation, offered to desist from further action 
 against the Vicar, if he would give " his written undertaking 
 that thenceforth the services of S. Margaret's Church should 
 be conducted in strict accordance with the monition of June 
 1886." Mr. Cox promptly refused this. The appeal was heard, 
 and his release was confirmed. 
 
 It must be clearly understood that what was now before 
 the Judicial Committee was nothing ecclesiastical. It was a 
 question whether Lord Penzance had not committed a technical 
 error by pronouncing sentence through a proxy. 
 
 The bill of costs Mr. Bell-Cox was charged with paying 
 amounted to £225 15s. 6d., but when taxed was reduced to 
 £144 os. 10^. Among the items were these payments to spies : 
 
 1884. July 5-8. Sending two clerks to Liverpool to take 
 
 evidence as arranged ; charge for their time, two working £ s. d. 
 days . . . . . . . . . .660 
 
 Paid them for railway fare and expenses and time on Sundays . 711 o 
 July 8. Drawing statement of evidence . . . .0110 
 
 July 19-22. Sending two clerks to Liverpool, to take evidence 
 
 as arranged ; charge for time of two working days . .660 
 Paid for railway fare and expenses and time on Sundays .790 
 
 " Will you walk into my chambers ? " said the Spider to the Spy, 
 " They're really nicely furnished, and not so very high ; 
 You've only got to put your head inside my green-baize door, 
 You'll see so many curious things you never saw before." 
 
 " I'm always up to business," said the Lawyer to the Spy ; 
 " The Company engaged me to catch whate'er goes by. 
 They go in, but have to pay, I've heard of it before." 
 Said the Lawyer, " The Company discharges all the score. 
 
 " Just take this little pencil and this memorandum book, 
 
 Go to S. Martyr-in-the-Lane, and take a casual look. 
 
 Don't kneel or pray, or sing," said the Lawyer to the Spy, 
 
 " But note and mark — you understand — I'll digest them by and by. 
 
 Will you ? will you ? won't you ? " said the Lawyer to the Spy, 
 
 " 'Tis really a superior thing to go to Church to pry ! " 
 
 The wickedness of the whole proceeding does not appear to 
 have struck the Bishop or the prosecutors. But to them might 
 well be addressed the words of S. Peter after the healing of the 
 lame man at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple : " And now, 
 brethren, I wot that through ignorance ye did it, as did also 
 your rulers." It is their sole excuse. 
 
 Whether it was a concerted plan among the Bishops, or 
 
254 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 whether it was due to a policy initiated by Bishop Baring of 
 Durham, I cannot say, but soon appeared the carrying out of 
 a scheme, cowardly and mean to the last degree, of refusing 
 licences to curates nominated by High Churchmen, so as to 
 paralyze their efficiency and work for the saving of souls. 
 
 Upon Bishop Baring's appointment to Durham in 1861, on 
 the death of Bishop Villiers, the Archdeacon at a public meeting 
 thanked God that the diocese was presided over by a man who 
 was " using every opportunity to stamp out Ritualism." 
 
 Dr. Dykes was appointed Vicar of S. Oswald's, Durham, in 
 1862, by the Dean and Chapter. The parish had at first a 
 population of four thousand, but this number was increased by 
 the addition of a pit-village near by. The Ecclesiastical Com- 
 missioners, seeing the urgency of the case, undertook to pay 
 the stipends of two curates, as well as to pay the house-rent of 
 one. But now the Bishop of Durham stepped in, writing from 
 Auckland Castle on July 4, 1873: " I must require of an in- 
 cumbent, on his nomination of a curate, that he give me his 
 written pledge, that he will not require of such curate — 
 
 " I. That he wear coloured stoles. 
 
 " 2. That he take part, or be present at the burning of Incense. 
 
 "3. That he turn his back to the Congregation during the 
 celebration of the Holy Communion, except when ' ordering the 
 Bread.' 
 
 " I must also require of a curate a written promise that he 
 will offend in none of these things. 1 C. Dunelm." 
 
 Dr. Dykes was urged from all sides not to give way. The 
 things requested might be trifles, but a principle was involved 
 that must be maintained. He took opinion of counsel, and the 
 opinion was : 
 
 1. That the Bishop had no right to exact such conditions. 
 
 2. That the proper course to be pursued was for Dr. Dykes 
 and the curate proposed to apply to the Court of Queen's 
 Bench for a rule, calling upon the Bishop to show cause why a 
 writ of mandamus should not issue against him, compelling the 
 Bishop to license the curate. 
 
 This was signed by John Duke Coleridge, A. J. Stephens, and 
 Chas. Bowen. 
 
 The Court, however, hardly condescended to hear the case, 
 and it was dismissed. 
 
 1 Incense never had been used at S. Oswald's, nor did Dr. Dykes pur- 
 pose its introduction. 
 
STURM UND DRANG 
 
 255 
 
 Since then, to the present day, this has been the policy of 
 the Bishops, spiritually to starve a parish, when the services 
 are such as do not meet with their approval, in the hopes of 
 forcing a High-Church incumbent to give way, either on 
 account of the failure of his health or out of despair at being 
 able singlehanded to minister to his flock. In the case of Dr. 
 Dykes, it killed him. He died in 1876. 
 
 The method adopted by the Bishops is a recurrence to one 
 of the most reprehensible acts of the Popes, who, if they could 
 not get their own way with bishops or kings, placed the see or 
 the kingdom under interdict, denying the people the benefit of 
 the Sacraments, as an act of revenge against their superiors. 
 None probably would more severely condemn a Pope for pro- 
 nouncing an interdict than those very bishops who trip so 
 lightly in his footsteps. 
 
 Charles John Ellicott was a Palmerstonian-Shaftesbury bishop 
 (1863-1897). He had as text attributed to him : " Woe be 
 to the shepherds of Israel that do feed themselves : should 
 not the shepherds feed the flocks ? Ye eat the fat and ye 
 clothe you with the wool, ye kill them that are fed : but ye feed 
 not the flock." This applied to him on account of his treatment 
 of the priest and people of S. Raphael's, Bristol. 
 
 The Sailors' College, Bristol, with its church or chapel com- 
 monly known as S. Raphael's, was erected by Canon Miles 
 and opened in 1859, tne church not being consecrated. The 
 College consisted of six almshouses for aged seamen, and the 
 church was seated for 350 persons. A chaplain was charged 
 with the government of the College, and with the conduct of 
 the services in the church. For nineteen years there had not 
 been a single Sunday without a Celebration of the Holy Com- 
 munion. For the greater part of the time there had been two 
 Celebrations every Sunday, and one daily. In the year 1877 
 there were 4,691 Communions. An average of 90 communicants 
 per week existed in the church. With its bright services and 
 ever-open doors the church was a home to the poor of the 
 district. Of the communicants two-thirds at least belonged to 
 the poorest class. 
 
 On December 8, 1877, the church was in as high a state of 
 efficiency as it had ever attained. There was not a murmur of 
 discontent, but founder, priests and people were in perfect 
 harmony, preparing for and looking forward to the great 
 Christmas festival. Then, without a word of warning or remon- 
 
256 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 st ranee of any kind, the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol sent 
 a curt and imperious letter commanding that all the points 
 condemned in the Ridsdale judgment of the Privy Council, 
 together with others, should be given up. The Chaplain, Mr. 
 Ward, agreed to abandon many of the usages to which the 
 Bishop took exception, but not lights, vestments and the mixed 
 chalice. He felt that he could not submit to Privy Council 
 decisions, and to the Bishop acting as official of that Court. 
 
 Whereupon Bishop Ellicott peremptorily withdrew Mr. 
 Ward's licence and ordered the closing of the church and the 
 dispersal of the congregation. 
 
 For fifteen years, to 1892, in the midst of a teeming population, 
 S. Raphael's remained closed, till in 1893 it was consecrated by 
 the Bishop, forced at last to yield. And what forced him to 
 yield was his own conscience. Probably only those behind 
 the scenes knew how complete and how generous was his sur- 
 render. He himself did not hesitate to ascribe the change in 
 his attitude to the grace of God ; for when he was asked why 
 he had so completely altered his point of view, he said : " Ah ! 
 God the Holy Ghost works great changes." He consecrated 
 the church and of his own free will assigned a parish to it, and 
 with a distinct understanding that the services and ceremonial 
 should go on exactly as before the church was closed. He ever 
 after took every opportunity to show kindness to Mr. Ward, 
 and to the community. 
 
 In 1888 the Church Association struck at higher game than 
 poor parish priests. It petitioned the Metropolitan to cite 
 Bishop King of Lincoln for alleged transgressions against judg- 
 ments of the Privy Council, in the Minster and in S. Peter- at- 
 Gowts in December 1887 — viz. the use of the Eastward position, 
 altar- lights, the mixed chalice, Agnus Dei, the sign of the cross 
 at the absolution and blessing, and the ablution of the sacred 
 vessels at the altar. On January 4, 1889, the Archbishop cited 
 the Bishop of Lincoln to appear before his Court, which had 
 been in abeyance for two hundred years. In February, the 
 Bishop appeared before Dr. Benson, the Archbishop, and pro- 
 tested that in the case of a bishop, the rest of the bishops of 
 the province should have been summoned to try him. The 
 Archbishop overruled the objection, and the trial began on 
 February 5, 1890. The judgment — if judgment it can be called, 
 for the Archbishop pronounced that it was an " opinion only " — 
 was generally in favour of the Bishop. Thereupon the prose- 
 
STURM UND DRANG 
 
 257 
 
 cution appealed to the Privy Council ; but that Council had 
 suffered such humiliation, and had been so utterly discredited 
 in matters ritualistic and ecclesiastical, that it did not want 
 to be again involved in such suits, and it dismissed the appeal, 
 August 2, 1892, only attempting to save its face by the 
 absurd contention that the vicar of the parish of S. Peter-at- 
 Gowts was responsible for the lights, and not the Bishop.. 
 
 " Though some doubt was expressed as to the jurisdiction 
 of the Archbishop's Court, its spiritual character and moral 
 authority were unquestionable. Without violation of conscience 
 or principle the clergy could yield to it an obedience which they 
 were obliged to deny to Lord Penzance and the Privy Council, 
 and even to the Bishops, when instead of relying on their spiritual 
 authority they aspired only to enforce the decrees of these 
 tribunals." 1 
 
 At the first blush it would seem that the clergy who had 
 rebelled against the decision of the highest Court of the realm, 
 and in many instances against the wishes of their diocesans, 
 desired to be a law unto themselves. But it was not the case. 
 I have added in the Appendix to this chapter the substance 
 of a paper that circulated at the time, and which places their 
 position on an impregnable basis. 
 
 A vast amount of money was spent by the Church Associa- 
 tion in these ritual suits, and it gained but Pyrrhic victories. 
 On the most barefaced quibbles the Courts condemned Catholic 
 ceremonial. For instance, every one knows that the Act of 
 Uniformity (1662) was passed to constrain the Puritan Con- 
 formers, and compel them to observe the minimum of 
 rubrical observance. The Privy Council turned it into a 
 weapon against those who observed a ritual higher than the 
 minimum. 
 
 To the credit of the Evangelicals it must be said that a large 
 number of their clergy objected to the proceedings of the 
 Church Association, and that the capital of £50,000 with which 
 it started, and which was supposed to suffice to put down 
 Ritualism, was subscribed by fanatical and wealthy laymen, 
 not a few— Dissenters. At the end, the Association found itself 
 impoverished, powerless, and an object of contempt. It had 
 been kept alive only by donations from a few wealthy Protes- 
 tants, and all along had refused to publish a list of subscribers, 
 fearing, maybe, that it would reveal the slight support it re- 
 1 Dictionary of English Church History (1912), p. 519. 
 
 17 
 
258 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 ceives from the bulk of Churchmen, even from men of the same 
 Evangelical party. 
 
 The case of Mr. Mackonochie was one of peculiar sadness. 
 He was Vicar of S. Alban's, a beautiful church that had been 
 erected in a horrible slum off Holborn, which he and his curates 
 worked ; and they gathered about them a large and devoted 
 congregation. The great spiritual results effected in this 
 hitherto neglected district attracted outside attention. Mr. 
 Mackonochie was singled out for attack, and Dr. Tait, then 
 Bishop of London, readily acceded to his prosecution, and the 
 case proceeded against him in various forms and before different 
 Courts. 
 
 I can but give a summary of his persecutions. In 1870 he 
 was charged with disobedience to the mandate of the Privy 
 Council, and was suspended for three months. He at once sub- 
 mitted. Hitherto his course had been marked by submission. 
 Because the lights had been forbidden, he had put them out ; 
 because elevation was forbidden, he had ceased to elevate ; 
 because genuflexion was forbidden, he had ceased to genuflect, 
 and had contented himself with bowing; because the cere- 
 monial mixing of water with the wine had been forbidden, he 
 had abandoned that usage ; and now, when the secular Court, 
 assuming to itself spiritual jurisdiction, suspended him from 
 preaching and celebrating the Sacraments for three months, he 
 submitted. It was a fatal error. 
 
 On December 7, 1874, Mr. Mackonochie was condemned by 
 the Dean of the Court of Arches to six weeks' suspension. This 
 Court, although that of the Archbishop, yet held itself bound to 
 accept the rulings of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, 
 and this radically vitiated its authority as a spiritual court. 
 Nevertheless Mr. Mackonochie deemed it wise to submit. The 
 senior curate, Mr. Stanton, refused to celebrate the Holy Com- 
 munion in the manner ordered by the Court according to the 
 rules laid down by the Privy Council, and the whole congrega- 
 tion migrated for that service to S. Vedast's, Foster Lane. The 
 Church Association now turned on the Rev. T. Pelham Dale, 
 rector of that church, as he also wore Eucharistic vestments and 
 used altar lights. He was condemned by Lord Penzance, 
 before whom he refused to appear, and in October 1880 was 
 committed to prison. A specially disgraceful feature in this 
 case was that the Church Association laid hands on, and 
 used for the prosecution, the charitable trust funds left for 
 
STURM UND DRANG 
 
 259 
 
 the poor of S. Vedast's parish, to help them to meet their law 
 expenses. 
 
 But to return to Mr. Mackonochie. In a letter to the Bishop 
 of London in May 1875, he said : "I have been now more than 
 twenty-six years in Sacred Orders. During the whole of that 
 time I have endeavoured, to the best of my power, to obey 
 the laws of that Church, and minister her offices for the glory 
 of God and for the edification of His people. How I may have 
 served in that capacity for the first of these objects it will be 
 for the Great Day to show ; as to the latter, it would be a 
 foolish assumption of ignorance not to own that God has blessed 
 me. What has been the result ? With the very rarest excep- 
 tions, I have received not one word of encouragement from my 
 superiors in the Church. I have now been four times dragged 
 before Courts ; I have stood in court side by side as a fellow 
 culprit with a clerk charged with adultery ; I have found in 
 the Highest Court of Appeal every door for his escape obsequi- 
 ously held open by his judges, and the one door of justice and 
 equity as vigorously barred by the same hands against me. 
 
 " I do not, your Grace, complain, but venture to state facts." 1 
 
 In 1879 Lord Penzance inhibited Mr. Mackonochie from the 
 exercise of his spiritual functions ; but now he disregarded 
 the sentence. The Church Association and Lord Penzance did 
 not have the courage to commit him to prison. 
 
 The year 1874 was one of great trial and searchings of heart 
 to the faithful in the Church of England. The Public Worship 
 Regulation Act was to come into force in the ensuing year. 
 All those clergy who had been striving for souls, and knew 
 that God had blessed their efforts, knew also that the Bishops, 
 hitched on to the World, were against them. I was walking 
 in his garden with the Archbishop of York (Thomson) , when he 
 said to me : " Can you explain how it is that in France, which 
 you know pretty well, there exists such a deadly hostility to 
 the Church, whereas here in England there is no such ani- 
 mosity ? " " I can explain it," I replied. " In France every 
 priest is at a grapple with the Devil righting for every human 
 soul. Here— the Church plays second fiddle to the World, and 
 is looked on with indifference as a paid musician to scrape what 
 tunes it calls for." 
 
 The one-sided Purchas judgment had filled Churchmen with 
 dismay, condemning as it did, among other practices, the East- 
 1 Quoted in Mr. Russell's S. Alban the Martyr (1913), p. 142. 
 
260 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 ward position. A protest was signed by 4,700 clergy, to the 
 Archbishops and Bishops, but they regarded it not. 
 
 A feeling came over Churchmen that the Bishops were in 
 league fighting against God. I must say it, for we felt it, we 
 knew it was so ; and many doubted whether a house divided 
 against itself could stand — whether an army of which the 
 generals were virtually in the pay of the enemy could maintain 
 its ground ? 
 
 Mr. Russell writes : " It is difficult for those who passed 
 through it to realize the stress of 1874. The Ritualists saw 
 arrayed against them a powerful and unscrupulous Prime 
 Minister (Disraeli) ; the two Archbishops, both able men and 
 bent on destroying ritual ; a bench of pavid bishops ; an abso- 
 lutely united House of Commons, a House of Lords bewildered 
 and divided ; the whole weight of the press, society, and, as far 
 as it could be ascertained, public opinion. No wonder that 
 men's hearts were failing them with fear, and with looking after 
 those things which were coming on the Church." 
 
 In this year, in consequence of the apparently hopeless pros- 
 pect, there ensued many secessions ; earnest young men preparing 
 for Holy Orders, and longing to enter them, were struck back, 
 and, changing their intention, went into business or entered 
 Government offices. 
 
 Dr. Liddon wrote : " There is no reason for despondency. 
 We shall live to see the drowned Egyptians on the shore even 
 yet!" And we have. I have written with some bitterness, 
 but I cannot help it ; only those who passed through the ordeal 
 of that time can tell what were the agonies of soul that were 
 endured, the shame and disgust that was felt at the conduct 
 of the Bishops, and the certainty that there was no justice, no 
 fair hearing to be accorded to Churchmen. Policy to please 
 the ungodly and unbelieving ruled the judgments of the Courts, 
 and besotted prejudice steeped the minds of the people. The 
 Bishops, like frightened sheep, huddled together, and took 
 counsel how they might save their own fleeces. 
 
 It had been much the same in the reign of William Rufus, 
 when the hireling Bishops sided with the Red King to drive 
 Anselm out of the realm, and assisted to subvert the laws of 
 justice and equity. Disraeli — a Prime Minister like the parent 
 in the sledge in a Siberian winter, who threw his children to 
 the pursuing wolves — cast the Churchmen to be mangled and 
 torn, if only he could save his Jewish skin and the tinsel coronet 
 
STURM ZJND DRANG 261 
 
 to which he aspired. It was a time of stress — of darkness ; and 
 it required a strong faith to look up to Him who sitteth above 
 the water-floods and remaineth a King for ever, to come — 
 walking upon the waters to enter into and save His Church. He 
 did it in spite of the Taits, the Thomsons and the Ryles. 
 
 By degrees, the English mind, slow to move, came to realize 
 that there had been gross, partisan miscarriage of justice in the 
 judgments of the Privy Council. Some of those who had sat 
 I in the Court admitted it. In the judgment of 1868, the con- 
 demnation of Catholic usages was only carried by the casting 
 vote of Archbishop Thomson. The imprisonments, of which 
 there were, as already said, five in all, brought the Court of 
 Lord Penzance into such odium that the Bishops at last plucked 
 up courage to veto prosecutions. In 1877, Bishop Merriman 
 of Grahamstown told Archbishop Tait to his face, at the Croydon 
 Church Conference, that " the Bishops of England had placed 
 their croziers in the hands of an ex-Divorce Court judge." 
 
 After the imprisonment of Mr. Bell-Cox, there were no more, 
 and for several years before Lord Penzance's retirement in 
 1899 ms Court had been practically deserted. The discredited 
 Act remains unrepealed, and the Court is only visited at in- 
 tervals by the caretaker, to dust the unused seats. 
 
 In 1898 there broke out a fresh burst of Puritan fanaticism 
 against ritualistic practices. In February 1899, Archbishop 
 Temple announced his willingness, along with Archbishop Mac- 
 lagan of York, to hear cases in dispute, and pronounce opinions 
 on them without any reference to the judgments of the Privy 
 Council, and to be guided solely by evidence brought before 
 him and his brother archbishop. The use of incense and 
 portable lights in processions were the first points considered, 
 and neither he nor the Archbishop of York considered that 
 sufficient proof had been adduced that they were authorized 
 by the Church of England. No judgment was pronounced, 
 only an opinion expressed. 
 
 The Privy Council, the Court of Lord Penzance, mob violence, 
 the mean device of the Bishops to refuse licence to clergy of 
 the advanced party, have all failed to put down ceremonial. 
 
 It would have been well indeed if the Bishops had taken to 
 heart the counsel of Gamaliel : " Now I say unto you, Refrain 
 from these men and let them alone, for if this counsel or this 
 work be of men, it will come to naught, but if it be of God ye 
 cannot overthrow it ; lest haply ye be found even to fight 
 
262 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 against God." The Jewish Council had more sense than the 
 bench of Bishops, for " to him they agreed." The Bishops did 
 not consider whether the work or counsel was of God, but whether 
 it was displeasing to the public with whom they desired to stand 
 well, and above all, to wealthy laymen without whose aid they 
 feared that pet diocesan schemes must collapse. 
 
 About this time appeared a parody on " Who killed Cock 
 Robin ? " by Mr. Chatterton Dix, of which I give several, but 
 not all the verses: 
 
 "Who killed Devotion ? " 
 
 "I," said the Nation, " with new Regulation, 
 
 I killed Devotion." 
 
 ' ' Who saw it die ? ' ' 
 
 The Court made reply, " With my loving eye 
 I saw it die." 
 
 " Who caught the blood ? " 
 
 " I," said the Act, " by Parliament backed, 
 
 I caught its blood." 
 
 " Who'll make its shroud ? " 
 
 " I," said the Devil, with look very evil, 
 
 "I'll make its shroud." 
 
 " Who'll be the clerk ? " 
 
 "We," said the Press, "with Amen to Success, 
 We'll be the clerk." 
 
 " Who'll dig its grave ? " 
 
 "I," said the Law, " 'twas once my cat's-paw, 
 I'll dig the grave." 
 
 " Who'll be chief mourner ? " 
 
 " I," said the World, with scornful lip curl'd, 
 
 " I'll be chief mourner." 
 
 All the lawyers in Court fell a-sighing and a-sobbing 
 When Devotion was killed and an end came to Robbing ! 
 
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER X 
 
 TO make intelligible the position assumed by the High 
 Church party in opposition to the Public Worship Regula- 
 tion Act and the Court of Lord Penzance, I give here the 
 major portion of a paper that circulated widely among 
 them and which formulated their objections : 
 
 I. Church principles imply that — 
 
 1 . The Church of Christ, of which the Anglican Church claims to 
 be a part, is an organized society founded by her Divine Lord, 
 independently of the will of the Civil Power. 
 
 2. The Church was founded to teach mankind the Divine Will 
 in regard to Faith, Worship and Morals ; and for this purpose she 
 received authority from her Lord for the instruction, guidance 
 and government of her members. 
 
 3. The words " All power is given unto Me in heaven and in 
 earth : go ye therefore and teach all nations . . . and lo, I am 
 with you ahvay, etc.," show that the authority possessed by the 
 Church for the teaching, discipline and edification of her members 
 is derived from Christ, and in things spiritual is independent of 
 any Civil Power, and superior to it. 
 
 4. The aforesaid spiritual authority conferred upon the Apostles 
 was, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, transmitted by them to 
 their successors, to be exercised in conformity with the original 
 commission and the law of the Church Universal. 
 
 5. This authority, being the gift of Incarnate God to His Church, 
 and a trust committed by Him to the Priesthood, is inalienable ; 
 and, therefore, comes within the scope of the Divine Rule, " Render 
 unto Caesar the things that be Caesar's, and unto God the things 
 that be God's." 
 
 6. A National Church which surrenders the authority to any 
 Civil Power is unfaithful to the trust committed to her by God. 
 
 7. Spiritual Courts, or " Courts Christian," whether Diocesan or 
 Provincial, if rightly constituted, are, among other means, the 
 canonical instruments of the Church for the regulation and exercise 
 of the aforesaid authority. 
 
 II. Catholic principles are violated by — 
 
 1. The creation of a Court for the trial of Spiritual Causes by 
 the Civil Power alone. 
 
 263 
 
264 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 2. The acquiescence of the Church in the suppression, whether 
 partial or total, of her Courts Christian, by the Civil Power. 
 
 3. Judgments in Spiritual Causes pronounced by the Secular 
 Court. 
 
 4. Sentences in Spiritual Causes inflicted by a Secular Judge. 
 
 5. The appointment, without the consent of each several bishop 
 or archbishop, of one and the same person as Judge in the Spiritual 
 Court of more than one Diocese or Province. 
 
 6. The appointment by the Civil Power of the Judges of Spiritual 
 Courts. 
 
 7. The interference of the Civil Power with the rights of bishops 
 and archbishops to exercise a free and independent choice in the 
 appointment of the Judges of these respective Courts. 
 
 III. Constitutional principles are asserted in — 
 
 1. The Ordinance of William the Conqueror, a.d. 1185 : " I com- 
 mand and enjoin by Royal Authority that no bishop or arch- 
 deacon or any one else . . . bring a cause which pertains to the cure 
 of souls to the judgment of secular men." 
 
 2. The 8th of the Constitutions of Clarendon, a.d. 1164 : "Of 
 Appeals." If they arise, they ought to proceed from the archdeacon 
 to the bishop, from the bishop to the archbishop ; and lastly 
 (if the archbishop fail in doing justice) to the King, that by his 
 precept the controversy be ended in the Archbishop's Court, so that 
 it go no further (i.e. to Rome) without the King's consent. 
 
 3. The Magna Charta, a.d. 12 15 : "First: We have granted 
 to God, and by this our present Charter have confirmed, for us and 
 for our heirs for ever, that the Church of England shall be free, 
 and shall have her whole rights and liberties inviolate." 
 
 4. The Statute of Appeals, a.d. 1537: "The Body Spiritual 
 . . . usually called the English Church, which always hath been 
 reputed . . . and is also to this hour, sufficient and meet of itself, 
 without the intermeddling of any exterior person or persons, to 
 declare and determine all such doubts ... as to their rights 
 spiritual doth pertain." 
 
 5. The Declaration prefixed to the XXXIX Articles, a.d. 1628 : 
 " If any differences arise about the external policy, concerning 
 the Injunctions, Canons, and other Constitutions whatsoever thereto 
 belonging, the clergy in their Convocation is to order and settle 
 them," — recognized and acted upon in the Royal Licence and Letters 
 of Business to Convocation in the years 1661, 1689, 1710, 1713, 
 and 1715. 
 
 6. The Bill of Rights, a.d. 1689: " The Commission for erecting 
 the late Court of Commissions for Ecclesiastical Causes, and all other 
 Commissions and Courts of like nature, are illegal and pernicious." 
 
 7. The Coronation Oath, 1837 : " Will you preserve unto the 
 Bishops and Clergy of this Realm, and to the Churches committed 
 
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER X 
 
 265 
 
 to their charge, all such rights and privileges as by law do or shall 
 appertain unto them, or any of them ? " " All this I promise to do." 
 
 IV. Conclusion : The " Public Worship Regulation Act" of 1874 
 contravenes the foregoing principles : 
 
 1. Because the new Judge was created by the sole authority 
 of Parliament, in order to decide spiritual suits and to inflict spiritual 
 censures. 
 
 2. Because the new Judge was created without the consent and 
 against the will of the Church, so far as it was formally expressed, 
 apart from all authority from Convocation, and in defiance of a 
 Resolution of the Lower House. 
 
 3. Because the constitutional rights of Convocation have thus 
 been violated and denied ; and the clergy have been deprived of 
 their prescriptive rights by the House of Commons, from which they 
 alone, as an Order, are excluded. 
 
 4. Because, for certain causes, the Act virtually suppresses the 
 Diocesan Courts, and, for all causes, actually suppresses the Pro- 
 vincial Courts. 
 
 5. Because by the operation of the Act, the Spiritual Jurisdiction 
 of the Episcopate is in some cases practically suspended, and in 
 others absolutely abolished. 
 
 6. Because, by the office of the new Judge, the spiritual rights 
 of the priesthood are infringed, both by the Courts of first instance, 
 and in those of appeal. 
 
 7. Because the Act — 
 
 (a) Violates the law of Canonical Discipline even to a greater 
 extent than the Bill originally introduced by the Archbishop. 
 
 (b) Creates a new Court for the decision of questions not 
 only ceremonial, but also of doctrine, by enacting that the 
 new Judge shall become ex officio the " Official Principal of the 
 Arches Court of Canterbury," and that " all proceedings there- 
 after taken before the Judge . . . shall be deemed to be taken 
 in the Arches Court of Canterbury " ; and further — 
 
 (c) Furnishes unbelievers with a weapon of offence against 
 Catholic Truth and Worship. 
 
 The decision, therefore, of the new Judge cannot in conscience 
 be recognized as possessing any spiritual character, validity or 
 authority by English Churchmen. 
 
 Published by J. Masters, 78, New Bond Street, London. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 S. SAVIOUR'S, LEEDS 
 
 I PURPOSE narrating the story of a pioneer church of the 
 Oxford Movement that went through more bitter trials and 
 suffered more collapses than have happened to any other 
 parish church in England. And the story is instructive, for 
 it exhibits the difficulties that had to be surmounted by those who 
 first began to bring to bear upon the people the full teaching of 
 the Church and to break up the ice which had formed over the 
 Established Church and seemed to have frozen her to her lowest 
 depths. The story will also show what were the hindrances 
 earnest Churchmen met with from those who should have 
 encouraged the work. 1 
 
 The " Bank " district in Leeds was so called from its lying in 
 close proximity to the N.E. side of the River Aire, and occupying 
 rising ground above the level of the river. The sides of the 
 river, and an island in the midst, were for the most part occupied 
 by factories. The chimney of the " Black Dog " Mill poured 
 forth its volumes of smoke at the very level of the floor of S. 
 Saviour's Church when built. The factories furnished employ- 
 ment to some thousands of hands. At the time when this story 
 begins (1838-40), the population amounted to about 12,000 
 persons, dwelling on an area of about 40 acres. About twenty 
 houses only sent their families to church ; a few of the other 
 inhabitants resorted to various dissenting meeting-houses of the 
 locality. There were somewhat over a thousand Irish Roman 
 Catholics, well looked after by their devoted priests ; the re- 
 mainder, comprising the bulk of the population, lived either in 
 
 1 I owe my information to a Narrative of Five Years at S. Saviour's, 
 Leeds, by J. H. Pollen, Fellow of Merton College, Oxford (1 85 1) ; to a 
 History of the Church of S. Saviour's, down to 1872, by the late Rev. G. R. 
 Grantham, with whom I was well acquainted ; also to my own acquaint- 
 ance with it whilst in Yorkshire. A life of Mr. Pollen has also recently 
 appeared from the pen of his daughter (London, 191 2). Much also may be 
 learned from Dean Stephens's Life of Dr. Hook (London, 1879), and from 
 Canon Liddon's Life of Dr. Pusey (1893). 
 
 266 
 
S. SAVIOUR'S, LEEDS 
 
 267 
 
 gross profligacy, combined perhaps with attendance at Socialistic 
 lectures, or else in apathy and utter indifference to anything 
 connected with the Hereafter. 
 
 Atheism was openly taught : the Rational Pioneer had large 
 audiences of an evening, consisting chiefly of mill-hands. Twenty- 
 five Reasons for being an Atheist was circulated widely, put into 
 the hands of lads and lasses coming from their factories, and 
 thrust in at cottage doors. 
 
 On one Sunday morning, whilst the parish church bells were 
 chiming, a poor, wretched man brought out into the yard near 
 the church a Bible and Prayer Book, and publicly burnt them 
 before a sympathizing crowd. 
 
 In too many factories the owners were indifferent as to the 
 morals of their workpeople, regardless of other responsibilities 
 than the payment of wages and the maintenance of order and 
 decency during the working day. As the Rev. J. Slatter wrote : 
 " The part immediately around S. James's Church was inhabited, 
 with a few exceptions, by the most wretched characters ! I 
 had given me by the police a list of the brothels in my district ; 
 and I was horrified to find that, in a circle of one hundred 
 yards of which my room was the centre, there were no less 
 than thirteen of such dens. The proceedings of the miserable 
 creatures who tenanted them were so openly disgusting that I 
 was obliged to call in the aid of the law to abate the nuisance. 
 Children of from ten to fifteen years old were not only familiar 
 with, but practised, sins which it is not possible even to 
 mention." 
 
 In some back lanes were rooms used for balls, where the 
 young of both sexes would meet after each day's work was over j 
 and up to late hours of the night oaths and blasphemies might 
 be heard in the streets, and revolting sights be witnessed by 
 the passers-by. Even during the daytime, no decent person 
 could, in those days, pass through the chief street of the district, 
 East Street, when the mill operatives were in it, without being 
 liable to personal insult. 
 
 Dr. Hook, Vicar of Leeds, had devised a plan for dividing 
 Leeds into thirty independent parishes, and the " Bank " was 
 to be the site of one of them. The Rev. J. M. Clarke came 
 as Dr. Hook's curate, and took up his quarters in East Street. 
 In January 1838, the Rev. George Elmhirst joined him to work 
 the " Bank," and Mr. Elmhirst, a sincere Catholic, began by 
 his teaching to lay the foundations of the future work. But 
 
268 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 his labours there broke him down, and he died of an exhausted 
 constitution about 1844. 
 
 Before proceeding any further with the subject of S. Saviour's 
 I must give some account of the great work that had been 
 done by Dr. Hook as Vicar of Leeds. He had been Incumbent 
 of Holy Trinity, Coventry, where his strong personality and his 
 stout churchmanship had made their mark. In 1837 ne was 
 appointed Vicar of Leeds. He found all in the Church in a 
 neglected condition, and the services conducted in a slovenly 
 manner. There were seven Churchwardens, and none of thern 
 except the one appointed by the Vicar were Churchmen. When 
 a vestry meeting was held in the church, they put their hats 
 and coats on the Holy Table. Hook found that his predecessor 
 had been wont to communicate the people in their pews, and 
 to read the Ten Commandments and the earlier portion of the 
 Communion Service at the Reading Desk. Hook was a forceful 
 man and knew his own mind, and Yorkshire people appreciate 
 one who has a will of his own. 
 
 In 1838, just after his appointment to Leeds, he was summoned 
 to preach before the Queen in the Chapel Royal, and he took 
 for his text " Hear the Church ; " the object of the sermon was 
 to impress upon the young Queen the spiritual nature and 
 claims of the Church, and to let her understand that the Anglican 
 Church was no new creation of the Reformation, but the old 
 Church based on Apostles and Prophets and Fathers, that had 
 been purified of abuses. Lord Melbourne was Prime Minister, 
 and the sermon gave great offence to the advisers of the Queen. 
 
 It was said that on hearing this sermon the young Queen 
 was so much affected that on returning home she retired to 
 her chamber for about an hour, to think over what had been 
 put so plainly before her. The sermon was published and ran 
 through twenty-eight editions, in which about one hundred 
 thousand copies were sold. Letters of congratulation poured in 
 from all directions. Henry, Bishop of Exeter, said that he had 
 read it with unmixed gratification, and " I heartily thank you," 
 he wrote, " for the fidelity as well as the ability with which you 
 have placed the important subject before the mind of her to 
 whom of all others it is of the highest consequence that the 
 mighty truth should be familiar." The sermon and the bold 
 enunciation of the true position of the Church were soon effaced 
 from the mind of the Queen, and, especially after her marriage 
 with Prince Albert, who had not the smallest conception of the 
 
S. SAVIOUR'S, LEEDS 269 
 
 Church in any other light than a State creation, she accepted 
 the Erastian view of it. In 1841 Dr. Hook had completed the 
 new parish church of Leeds, and he introduced cathedral services 
 into it, perhaps the worst style of music that could have been 
 selected, as totally uncongregational, and of all things Yorkshire 
 
 I people love to hear their own voices. 
 Dr. Hook was a remarkably plain man, broad-built, with 
 uncouth features. Dean Peacock of Ely was wont to say that 
 " he himself and Hook were — if not the ugliest men in England, 
 then certainly they were such in the ministry of the Church." A 
 good deal was made of Dr. Hook and his success. He was be- 
 praised on all sides except by the Evangelicals, and this served 
 to make him dictatorial, and to suppose that all his methods were 
 perfect, and the point of ritual he had reached must not be trans- 
 gressed. He was an excellent man, but he loved to domineer, 
 and he regarded himself very much as if he were the Bishop of 
 Leeds. 
 
 And now came the execution of his notable scheme for the 
 subdivision of Leeds into ecclesiastical districts. 
 
 When Dr. Hook was meditating the building of many churches, 
 an unknown individual, deeply penitent for his sins, desired to 
 erect a house of God as a thankoffering for having been brought 
 to a consciousness of his un worthiness. This was Pusey him- 
 self, 1 and he suggested that the money might well be spent in 
 Leeds. Dr. Hook, to whom he made the suggestion, answered : 
 " We have heard of your sayings, let us hear something of your 
 doings." 
 
 Accordingly it was decided to erect a church on the " Bank," 
 and connected with it was to be a clergy-house where the curates 
 and vicar might live together in community, and form a college ; 
 it was also decided that the patronage should be vested in the 
 college, and a successor elected from among the remaining 
 clergy on the death of a vicar. This plan, however, was never 
 carried out, owing to the opposition of the Bishop, at that 
 time Dr. Longley. The first stone was laid by Dr. Hook, on 
 Holy Cross Day, 1842. Very soon afterwards it was found that 
 this stone lay over the shaft of a disused mine, and £1,000 had 
 to be spent in making the foundation secure. 
 
 At the end of three years the church was ready for conse- 
 cration, but then two or three difficulties cropped up. The 
 
 1 This, though it was known to but two or three until his death, was 
 not till then revealed. 
 
270 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 Bishop objected to the name — the Holy Cross — under which 
 the church was to have been dedicated. Although there are 
 two festival days of the Holy Cross marked in the Anglican 
 Calendar, and, in consideration of the proposed title, the church 
 had been built in the shape of a cross, Dr. Longley would not 
 be induced to allow it to be thus designated, and in deference 
 to his prejudice the title was changed to S. Saviour. 
 
 Next he objected to the college for resident curates and 
 vicar — it savoured too much of a monastic institution, although 
 every college in the two universities is so ordered — and that 
 there was no provision made for a wife, and — hinted, though not 
 expressed — no nurseries. He was ready to license three curates 
 to the vicar, but no more. Accordingly, to humour him, the 
 building was reduced considerably in size. 
 
 Moreover he objected to the patronage, which accordingly 
 was retained in Dr. Pusey's hands till 1870, when he associated 
 with himself Drs. Liddon, Bright, and Talbot. Later the 
 advowson was given to the Council of Keble College. 
 
 His further objection was to the legend over the west door 
 inside, on a scroll of zinc : "Ye who enter this holy place, 
 pray for the sinner who built it." But when satisfied that the 
 founder was alive and insisted that such an inscription should 
 be placed there, he grudgingly gave way, only stipulating that 
 should the donor die whilst he was Bishop of Ripon, he should 
 be informed of the fact so that he might order the erasure. 1 
 
 Another difficulty was connected with the sacramental plate, 
 and a story pertains to one chalice, which must oe told. 
 
 Both the chalices were encrusted on stem, boss, and foot with 
 pearls, diamonds, rubies, and enamel. The plate was the 
 offering of two young ladies and their brother, children of Dr. 
 Pusey, one of the girls, Lucy, being only fifteen at the time of 
 her death. On this topic, the Rev. Isaac Williams wrote : 
 
 " A friend (i.e. Dr. Pusey) said to me, ' My little girl — she was 
 ten years old — was gathering pebbles on the beach with other 
 children ; they were looking for a sort of agate found on that 
 coast, but she had another end in view. She brought me this 
 one, marked with the cross, and to find this had been her 
 object.' 
 
 "As a much younger child her chief pleasure in any object 
 of sight, or in dress, was to see, as so often may be seen, some 
 
 1 This became very dirty and has been removed, and the inscription, 
 deeply incised in stone, is now on the floor as one enters the west doorway. 
 
S. SAVIOUR'S, LEEDS 
 
 271 
 
 form of the cross. Never perhaps, he often said, was there 
 an eye so quick and so glad to discern the cross, and the 
 inward eye saw and owned the cross as well as the outward. 
 As the cross had been gently laid upon her by her heavenly 
 Father during life, and had, as it ever does, borne her, while 
 borne by her, so was it her stay in death. The Church of Holy 
 Cross, as it was then called, is inseparably connected with the 
 memory of this child. Of the plate given for the altar, part was 
 the fruit of her self-denial in life, part her gift in death. At 
 her wish it was enriched with the cross, and the last thought 
 connected with this earth that interested her, the day before 
 her departure, was the crosses she loved, on the design which 
 then arrived, for the jewelled chalice, on which her thin fingers 
 rested." 
 
 The legend at the base was to have been inscribed, " Be merci- 
 ful, O Lord, to Lucy" — the donor, together with her brother 
 and sister. But as Lucy was dead the Bishop forbade the 
 inscription, and at the last moment it had to be altered. 
 
 Then the Bishop demurred to a representation in the west 
 window of the Sacred Face, and this had to be altered to 
 satisfy his scruples. He objected also to the altar linen, because 
 covering only the mensa, and not draping the whole altar. 
 
 Next he objected to consecrate the church on Holy Cross 
 Day, lest he should commit himself to recognition of the genuine- 
 ness of the cross recovered from the Saracens by Heraclius in 
 629. Accordingly the consecration had to be deferred to the 
 Feast of S. Simon and Jude, 1845. The offertory amounted to 
 £985, which, at the founder's desire, was set apart towards the 
 erection of a new church in York Road, the first incumbent 
 of which became the most venomous enemy of S. Saviour's, 
 and the delator of all supposed misdemeanours to Dr. Hook and 
 the Bishop of Ripon. 
 
 Dr. Hook, although he consented to attend the consecration, 
 objected to the preachers appointed for the Octave, as having 
 been associated with Mr. Newman, who had recently seceded. 
 They were Keble, Upton Richards, Charles Marriott, Isaac 
 Williams, Dodsworth, and Pusey himself. Eventually all of 
 these men remained loyally in the English Church with the 
 exception of Dodsworth. And previous to the Consecration, 
 Hook, with two-thirds of the clergy of Leeds, signed a declara- 
 tion against what they supposed was a Romanizing tendency 
 observable in a section of the Church. 
 
272 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 The church, as already stated, was cruciform. Its great 
 blemish is the chancel, which is 42 feet long by 16 feet wide. 
 In consequence of the heaviness of the oak screen, which cut off 
 the sound from the body of the church, the choir had to sit out- 
 side. This choir was not surpliced or put into cassocks till 1848 ; 
 a white stole was not introduced in place of the funereal scarves 
 till the Christmas of 1849 ; coloured altar-cloths did not make 
 their appearance till 1848 (previously there had been one only — 
 violet) ; and it was not till 1859 that an altar-cross was obtained, 
 lighted candles were introduced, and the Eucharistic vestments 
 were procured. Consequently one cannot regard S. Saviour's as 
 having in those early days been a leading Ritualistic church. 
 
 In 1890 a lighter screen was substituted for the former, and 
 now the choir occupies the chancel. An instance of Dr. Pusey's 
 conservative instincts was noticeable with reference to the 
 reredos. He was very persistent in his desire that it should 
 consist of the Tables of the Commandments. He held, and 
 probably with reason, that the introduction of the Command- 
 ments into the Communion Service, and the injunction that 
 they should be set up at the East end of every church, was a 
 protest of the Reformers against the antinomian tendency of 
 the Lutheran doctrine of the Justification. 
 
 The church had been built and consecrated, but the amount 
 of tithe apportioned to it was £36 9s., and the expense of col- 
 lecting that sum would swallow it up. Dr. Pusey put down 
 £1,000 for endowment, the interest of which, £30, came to the 
 vicar. £150 was paid by a well-wisher as a curate's stipend ; 
 so here was the church with no adequate endowment, planted 
 in the midst of a poor population, and supposed to be worked 
 by four priests on next to nothing. 
 
 Even before the consecration, Dr. Hook began to entertain 
 doubts about it. Properly he had no right to interfere with 
 the church and the services, as it was entirely independent of 
 him. But for years he continued to be incessantly meddling, 
 listening to all sorts of gossip concerning the proceedings of the 
 clergy, and reporting them to the Bishop, without any attempt 
 to investigate whether they were true or false. He took excep- 
 tion at once to some of the arrangements of the church. He had 
 expected that the services would be of the cathedral pattern, 
 the very last suited to a Missionary Church among uneducated 
 people. S. Saviour's was at a humble distance to follow the 
 usages of the parish church of S. Peter's. 
 
S. SAVIOUR'S, LEEDS 
 
 273 
 
 It was not the ritual of S. Saviour's that was objected to, for 
 there was practically none ; it was the insistence on Confession 
 that roused the anger of Dr. Hook. Amidst the awful wicked- 
 ness that prevailed in the district, it was necessary to urge it. 
 Nothing could combat it, and conquer it piecemeal, but the 
 Ministry of the Keys, and getting into the confidence of the 
 poor lads and lasses who worked in the mills and were sur- 
 • rounded by evil influences. 
 
 Dr. Hook had done a marvellous work at Coventry, and, above 
 all, had begun one at Leeds, and such as the S. Saviour's clergy 
 would have been incompetent to accomplish. They, on the 
 other hand, by their saintly life of self-sacrifice did a spiritual 
 work for which he was not calculated. There were a lack of 
 wisdom and considerable imprudence in the S. Saviour's clergy, 
 and there was a deficiency of forbearance on the part of Dr. 
 Hook ; but he was alarmed and pained at seeing and feeling the 
 disquiet of his own flock, who blamed him for the proceedings 
 at S. Saviour's, which he could not control. 
 
 The first vicar was Richard Ward in 1846. Mr. Ward had 
 been a curate at the parish church, and had been recommended 
 by Dr. Hook. This fact became an additional source of vexa- 
 tion to him, and a handle to his adversaries, when things began 
 to go badly. Mr. Cazenove, a layman, came to S. Saviour's 
 as a helper. He remained staunch, and finally became Warden 
 of Cumbrae College. Mr. Cazenove was ordained deacon on 
 Trinity Sunday. In September, Mr. G. Case was ordained to 
 S. Saviour's, and soon after came Mr. R. Macmullen, who proved 
 an eloquent preacher. He was Fellow of Corpus Christi College, 
 Oxford, and was sent to S. Saviour's by Dr. Pusey. 
 
 In October, after the first anniversary of the Dedication, a 
 wealthy layman, named Haigh, a Leeds wool merchant, joined 
 the society. He had just come into possession of £30,000, and 
 he proposed to spend the sum of £10,000 to £12,000 on the 
 building of the church in York Road. The foundation was 
 duly laid, and Mr. Macmullen preached at S. Saviour's on the 
 ensuing All Saints' Day on the subject of u intercessory prayer 
 by the Saints below and above." Towards the close of his 
 sermon occurred words to this effect : " What comfort to us 
 who are struggling, to know that the prayers of those who 
 have reached the Eternal Shore are offered on our behalf; for 
 those who covet purity of heart to remember that the Blessed 
 Virgin is interceding for them; for the penitent to think of 
 18 
 
274 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 S. Peter asking pardon for those who have denied their Lord; 
 for the Christian priest, toiling for souls, to know that the 
 Apostle of the Gentiles, once in labours abundant on earth, 
 now pleads in Heaven the cause of those who strive to follow 
 his steps ! " 
 
 To the best of my knowledge, this was the extent to which 
 Mr. Macmullen went ; but Dr. Hook accused him to the Bishop 
 of having preached on the Invocation of Saints. Dr. Hook 
 had not heard the sermon, he judged from what was reported 
 to him. If Mr. Macmullen had said no more than the above 
 passage that has been preserved, Dr. Longley could not well 
 say that this was repugnant to the teaching of the English 
 Church, for Bishop Pearson in one of his sermons had said : 
 " If we cut off all intercession of angels and saints for us living 
 on earth, and striving with the host of evil spirits — if we acknow- 
 ledge no power at all before the throne of God, of the martyrs 
 who poured forth their lives for Christ — what that Church may 
 be with which we can hold communion, I am wholly ignorant." 
 
 Nevertheless, without giving any reason for so doing, the 
 Bishop inhibited Mr. Macmullen from all priestly functions in 
 the diocese. On hearing of this injustice, Mr. Haigh refused to 
 assist any further in the erection of the church, and both seceded 
 to the Roman Communion, and were received on New Year's 
 Day, 1847. 1 
 
 Mr. Ward had printed a tract on the Holy Eucharist in 
 which he had used very incautious and overstrained expressions. 
 Dr. Hook charged the clergy of S. Saviour's with " a systematic 
 depreciation of the Church of England, and a defence of the 
 Church of Rome ; one of the clergy going so far as to say that 
 to speak against the Church of Rome was a mortal sin, and 
 lamenting that his lot had been cast in the Church of England." 
 But the Vicar of Leeds had this only on tittle-tattle report, 
 probably false or grossly exaggerated. Dean Stephens, his 
 biographer, admits : " The Vicar was at times hasty in his 
 judgments, inaccurate in his statements, and over- vehement 
 in his language." 
 
 Distressed at the defection of Macmullen, Mr. Ward incau- 
 
 1 Macmullen said that it was due to Dr. Hook that he went over to Rome ; 
 indeed, those working at S. Saviour's knew as a matter of fact that they 
 were winning souls for Christ, rescuing them from depths of horrible 
 wickedness, and they considered that the Bishop, Dr. Hook, and the 
 whole Episcopate were opposing a great spiritual work. It was this more 
 than anything else that led them to quit the Church of England. 
 
S. SAVIOUR'S, LEEDS 
 
 275 
 
 tiously placed himself unconditionally in the hands of Dr. 
 Longley, offering to make any alterations in the conduct of the 
 services that the Bishop desired. The Bishop seized on the 
 opportunity, and required Mr. Ward to resign the vicarship 
 and Mr. Case the curacy of S. Saviour's. The Vicar remon- 
 strated — he said that he had never contemplated so great a 
 demand being made. The parishioners sent a petition to his 
 Lordship, entreating to have their vicar and friend spared 
 them, but met with a blunt refusal. Mr. Ward had no choice 
 but to submit, and he preached his farewell sermon on the last 
 day of January 1847. Mr. Case, of course, also had to go. 
 Mr. Ward went into Somersetshire and, some years after, he 
 and his friend Case joined the Church of Rome. 
 
 After the short period of fifteen months, the living, which 
 had been offered to several and declined, was accepted in the 
 summer of 1847 by the Rev. A. P. Forbes. He lived alone 
 in the Vicarage, the schoolmaster and his wife keeping house 
 for him. He could get no curates. The church was generally 
 condemned by the authorities, and, as an important dignitary 
 expressed it, a cordon sanitaire was drawn round the place by 
 the neighbouring clergy. Mr. Forbes was not strong, and his 
 health suffered from the quantity of work falling to the lot of 
 a single resident priest. 
 
 In the same year the Irish fever came to Leeds and proved 
 very deadly. Mr. Forbes was constant in visiting the hospitals 
 during the prevalence of the disease. The Rev. Stanley Mark, 
 a young curate to Dr. Hook, caught the fever and died. So did 
 three Roman priests, one after another, from the same disease. 
 
 In September of the same year, the Rev. A. P. Forbes was 
 elected to the see of Brechin, in Scotland, by the clergy of the 
 diocese, so that now a new vicar had to be found. And during 
 the interregnum the Rev. J. H. Pollen, Fellow of Merton, came 
 to take charge. Dr. Hook was of opinion that two clergy would 
 suffice at S. Saviour's. He told Mr. Pollen on his arrival that 
 there were but seven people sick in it. Mr. Pollen, however, 
 found the case very different, as, soon after he came, he num- 
 bered at least forty cases requiring his frequent ministrations. 
 
 The living was now given to the Rev. T. Minster, chaplain to 
 Viscount Campden, an earnest but very delicate man, suffering 
 from an internal ailment. He was inducted in April 1848, 
 and was the third vicar from the Consecration— a time of about 
 two years and a half. 
 
276 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 The difficulty of finding a curate now recurred. The Rev. G. 
 Crawley was proposed and eventually, after some demur, accepted 
 by the Bishop, and then the Rev. F. Beckett, Mr. Minster's 
 former curate, joined him. The little party was enlarged by 
 the adhesion of Mr. Seton Rooke, a layman preparing for Orders. 
 
 The discipline and conduct of the house and of the services 
 were now resumed. Besides the regular clerical staff, there 
 were other clergy, either temporarily residing in the Vicarage 
 or visiting it from neighbouring churches. The parish was 
 thoroughly organized, each clergyman and layman had a district 
 assigned to him, and there seemed to be every prospect of a 
 great future for S. Saviour's. The Vicar, however, owing to 
 his illness, was mostly non-resident, and Mr. Beckett was gener- 
 ally regarded as the superior. And now it was for the first time 
 that the choir was surpliced. Fresh complaints reached the 
 Bishop : often enough Dr. Hook was the intermediary. It 
 appeared that at Baptisms in the afternoon, in that black, 
 soot-laden atmosphere, and with the stained-glass windows 
 admitting little light, it had become customary for two choir- 
 boys to attend the priest at the font with candles, often abso- 
 lutely necessary. The Bishop ordered their discontinuance, and 
 discontinued they were. Then followed complaints that Con- 
 fession was taught and practised. Again the Bishop interfered 
 and forbade Confessions except as preliminary to Communion. 
 
 The dissatisfaction of Dr. Hook continued to increase, and 
 he treated the S. Saviour's clergy with icy coldness. The 
 Bishop had the bad taste to tell Mr. Minster this : " You are a 
 plague-spot in my diocese." 
 
 Dr. Hook was like a good many other men who cannot abide 
 to see things done a little differently from their own way. But 
 he was placed, as already said, in a difficult position. He 
 desired, and rightly, to retain the confidence of his flock, and 
 he feared that he might forfeit this through the eccentricities of 
 the clergy of S. Saviour's. To add to his troubles, one of his 
 own curates resigned and seceded to Rome in 1848. 
 
 His church of S. Peter's was attended by the well-to-do 
 of Leeds, rich manufacturers, merchants, and tradesmen, who 
 wanted a comfortable, not a comforting religion — they had no 
 troubles, spiritual or social, that cried out for consolation. They 
 were given a florid musical service, and as much Church doc- 
 trine as the Vicar deemed expedient, or as much as his people 
 could digest at a time. He warned them that by the malignant 
 
S. SAVIOUR'S, LEEDS 
 
 277 
 
 the events that had taken place at S. Saviour's would be repre- 
 sented as the results of principles inculcated from the pulpit 
 of the parish church. "It is well, therefore, for you to be 
 reminded of what you are well aware, that the principles 
 inculcated here are, and, while life lasts to me, ever shall be, 
 the same — the good old principles of the Church of England, 
 equally removed from Puritanism or Popery. I confidently rely 
 on the generous support of my whole flock." Tormented as he 
 was by the proceedings of the S. Saviour's clergy, " hornets," 
 as he styled them, and by the attacks of the Evangelicals, Dis- 
 senters, and the Radical Leeds press, he was driven to use more 
 violent language than was fair, and to act in a measure bitterly 
 hostile to the clergy of the unfortunate church on the hill. That 
 the services at S. Peter's would not suffice for the mill-folk 
 of the "Bank," he could not understand. Owing to Mr. 
 Minster's health being so bad, another curate was urgently 
 needed, but the Bishop was obstructive, and refused to license 
 every one who offered for S. Saviour's. Mr. Rooke was now 
 ready to receive Orders, but the Bishop would not license him 
 to the church, and he was ordained to Shad well. However, he 
 spent a great part of his time at S. Saviour's. 
 
 In 1846-7 occurred the Irish famine already alluded to, caused 
 by the failure of the potato crop. In four years the population 
 of Ireland decreased by more than a million and a half. Many 
 perished in their own land, many emigrated to the United 
 States ; and a third section invaded the manufacturing towns 
 of England and Scotland. Swarms arrived in Leeds, famished, 
 in rags, and without money. At that period the drainage and 
 water-supply were all in the most primitive condition, and 
 these immigrants crowded under any roof, and down into 
 cellars, or up in attics, wherever they could obtain shelter. 
 Such as could obtain no lodging in a house erected shanties in 
 the courts and alleys of a densely urban quarter, with no 
 thought of the decencies of life. The result was that a terrible 
 outbreak of typhus fever ensued. The Rev. E. Jackson, in 
 his Pastor's Recollections, describes right vividly the condition 
 of affairs. He speaks of : 
 
 " Tall men, with long coats and hats without crowns, and 
 women, wild and haggard, with numbers of unearthly-looking 
 children— strange beings that ran alongside of the men and 
 women, and looked at you out of the corner of their eyes, with 
 a sort of half-frightened, half -savage expression. 
 
278 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 " The usual low lodging-houses for this class of people were 
 soon more than full. Why the Poor Law Authorities did not 
 bestir themselves in time, and open proper places for the recep- 
 tion of these wretched exiles, seems now a strange blunder. 
 Being Irish, I suppose they were not legally chargeable to the 
 township. But it was a great mistake and a woeful economy, 
 for the emigrants brought with them not only hunger but 
 death. In a very short time the frightful Irish fever was epidemic 
 in all the lower parts of the town. It was a dreadful time. 
 We then buried all the pauper dead from the parish church, 
 and I well remember that on one afternoon twenty-three bodies 
 were lying side by side as I entered the church to read that 
 part of the burial service which is there said. The low howls 
 of the women were terrible. They sat by the gravesides, crouch- 
 ing in their peculiar way, and rocking themselves to and fro, 
 as they looked down into the dark cavities where the dead were 
 lowered, five and six deep, one upon another. 
 
 " ' Do go with me and see a part of my district,' Mr. Monk, 
 the new curate, said to me one day. I went with him. It 
 was frightful indeed. Here, in this district, which was one of 
 an especially Irish character, it was simply horrible. Every 
 place above ground, and underground, was crammed with 
 miserable, famished wretches, scarcely looking like human beings. 
 In one cellar we counted thirty-one men, women, and children, 
 all lying on the damp, filthy floor, with only a few handfuls of 
 straw under them ; while the frightened neighbours, who would 
 not venture inside the pestilential depths, were lowering water 
 in buckets to allay the intolerable thirst of the miserable people. 
 Our young curate would himself go down to them in their cellars, 
 or climb up into their close, choking chamber, raise their heads, 
 put fresh straw under them, and give them gruel with his own 
 hands." 
 
 The young curate, the Rev. W. S. Monk, a member of a 
 noble family, fell a victim to his devotion, caught the fever, 
 and died on July ri, 1847. 
 
 This is a graphic picture of what took place in the district 
 of S. James's. It was precisely the same in that of S. Saviour's, 
 and there also the clergy laboured with incessant energy and 
 the utmost devotion. This Irish fever was but a prelude to 
 another epidemic — the cholera. 
 
 Efforts had been made for some time past to obtain from the 
 Board of Works the drainage of the worst portions of the town, 
 
S. SAVIOUR'S, LEEDS 
 
 279 
 
 but the measure was doggedly resisted by one of the wealthiest 
 mill-owners in the S. Saviour's district, on account of the neces- 
 sary outlay. When the cholera did come, this man was stricken 
 and died. The mill was closed for the half -day when he was 
 buried, the work-people were dismissed with half a day's wages. 
 Not till more of the rich had died did the Board of Works move 
 in the matter ; then, when the worst of the mortality from the 
 typhus was over, there fell on England the awful scourge of 
 cholera in 1849. ^ was m ore severe in the parish of S. Saviour 
 than in any other part of Leeds. The disease spread rapidly, 
 and there were deaths in every house. It struck people at all 
 times, and lasted in each case an average of ten hours. The 
 greater number died. Curiously enough, it was mainly those in 
 the prime of life who were struck down. Whole families were 
 swept away. The clergy were soon in the thick of it ; night 
 and day were they at the bedsides of the sick and the dying, 
 ministering both to body and soul. Where no one else would 
 go to render assistance, for fear of infection, there were the 
 clergy. It was through this self-sacrificing devotion that they 
 won the love and respect of the entire parish. 
 
 Mr. Pollen, knowing how hard pressed the clergy were, volun- 
 teered to come to S. Saviour's to help. The people swarmed 
 out of their houses and burnt tar-barrels in the streets. As 
 many as ten persons, on the average, died every day in the parish. 
 The church was open all day, and the Litany said regularly 
 at 12.40 p.m. A daily celebration was also instituted. The 
 Vicarage as well was kept open all day, and all available funds 
 were invested in blankets and medicines. The people naturally 
 leaned on the clergy in their distress, and always obtained the 
 help they needed. The priests went about in their cassocks, 
 carrying in their girdles calomel, cayenne pepper, camphor, etc. 
 The days and nights were passed by them in hastening from one 
 sick-bed to another, speaking words of comfort here, praying 
 with the sufferers there, rubbing the men's cold extremities, 
 laying out that person's dead body. 
 
 Mr. Pollen has recorded in his notes many sad cases — too 
 many in which there was little spiritual consolation and hope, 
 but not all. 
 
 " By twelve o'clock each of us had seen his patients. Some 
 were, perhaps, past motion or speech j these were to be watched, 
 and commended, as they sank into death, to the hands of the 
 Creator. Some hopeful case there might be — but usually after 
 
280 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 twenty-four hours the sick were a fresh set ; that of yesterday 
 needed but the mercy of burial. 
 
 " The priest often stayed to lay out the body and burn 
 disinfectants round the bed ; soon after came the undertakers 
 with a cart and went in ; at the sight of them every one stopped 
 short in the street, and went off by another way. The windows 
 were opened, and the bedding and clothes of the dead were thrown 
 out. Then, from five till after dark, the workhouse single-horse 
 hearses went round to convey the coffins to a distant burial- 
 ground. The worst of the cholera lay close round the Vicarage, 
 not thirty feet from its walls ; eight houses continuously, close 
 at the gate, were shut and tenantless. Above the low wall 
 nodded the black feathers, in a slow, perpetual stream. 
 
 " There was no long interval of rest. By half-past one or 
 two, all were out again upon their various stations, until half- 
 past seven, the hour for evening service. At five o'clock, I know 
 not why, the plot usually thickened. The clergy were stopped 
 in the street — ' A young woman next door ' — ' A young man in 
 the house opposite.' Thus passed the afternoon. After a day 
 of such anxiety, the choral service was refreshing, the seemly 
 white of the choir-boys, the rough Gregorian chant, the spirited 
 hymn, brought home the thoughts and invigorated the spirits 
 for the night work. More than once a quiet step stole up to 
 the bench of clergy, to communicate some message in a whisper ; 
 one of the number would set down his book and step out." 
 
 Among the many cases that occurred, I have room for two 
 only: 
 
 " Sad was the case of a young girl left dying in the hospital. 
 She had run away from her grandfather to another girl, a 
 friend in Leeds, who told her of large wages. ... A night she 
 resisted, then she fell ; a few days after she was taken with the 
 cholera. 
 
 " Between three and four one night came a summons. The 
 priest found on her deathbed a beautiful girl of fourteen, suffer- 
 ing much, but perfectly conscious. Her father, a very tall and 
 fine man, in his dyer's dress stained with indigo, had just been 
 summoned from his work. He had left her perfectly well the 
 preceding afternoon. She was his eldest daughter, he said, 
 and kept house for him ; her mother was dead. He put strong 
 restraint upon himself, and spoke at times cheerfully ; but every 
 now and then he gave way to passionate bursts of tears, and 
 kissed his poor child again and again. The bystanders tried to 
 
S. SAVIOUR'S, LEEDS 
 
 281 
 
 prevent him, fearing lest he should take the infection ; but in 
 vain. She was very devout ; she asked her father to be good 
 to her brothers and sisters ; in the evening she was dead." 1 
 
 Mr. Minster was seized with the epidemic. " If I am taken," 
 said he to one of his brother clergy, " treat me in our approved 
 way." An hour later, a young man came to the cottage where 
 his friend was, and said : " Mr. Minster is very ill." The two 
 hastened to him, and loaded blankets upon him to keep in the 
 vital heat ; calomel was administered, and the Office for the 
 Visitation of the Sick said over him. Before midnight all 
 danger was happily over. 
 
 There was not an hour of the night at which a summons did 
 not come. The clergy that were in went in turn. The Vicar 
 lay on the ground floor, but sleep left his eyes, and night after 
 night he would lie hearing the knocks and cries at the door, 
 but himself unable to rise. Two small hospitals in the town 
 were devoted to the cholera patients, and one of the S. Saviour's 
 clergy visited them daily. 
 
 Dr. Hook had not been in Leeds during the greater part of 
 the time of the visitation, but he returned when it was abating. 
 As he strode one day through the hospital wards, he encountered 
 Mr. Pollen, who had been ministering to a dying man, and 
 roughly asked him how he came there, and whether he had the 
 Bishop's licence. He had not the licence, he had come in haste 
 to help in an emergency. Dr. Hook at once delated him to 
 Dr. Longley. 
 
 When Alexandria was swept by plague, the patriarch S. 
 Dionysius was in the midst, exhorting and encouraging priests 
 and people. Who does not remember the graphic account by 
 Manzoni of Frederick Borromeo, Cardinal Archbishop of Milan, 
 and his heroic devotion to the sick and dying when the city was 
 smitten with plague in 1576 ? During the Plague of London, 1666, 
 Archbishop Sheldon remained at Lambeth and used his vast 
 influence to provide aid for the sufferers, and preserved numbers 
 who but for him would have perished. So also Tillotson, Bishop 
 of London, stuck to his post, and was indefatigable in his 
 labours on behalf of the stricken. When, in 1720, the plague 
 raged in Marseilles, Bishop Belzunce was there, seated by the 
 dying, bowed over them, hearing their confessions, and stimu- 
 lating the clergy by his example to self-sacrifice. And so, at the 
 present day, I have not the smallest doubt that most of our 
 1 John Hungerford Pollen (London, 1912), p. 155. 
 
282 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 English bishops would be foremost in encouraging their clergy 
 and ministering to the plague-stricken. But such was not the 
 conception of his office entertained by Dr. Longley. His func- 
 tion was, from his well-padded arm-chair in the palace by 
 Ripon, to criticize and chide. He wrote to Mr. Minster : "1 
 am exceedingly concerned to hear the report, confirmed by 
 yourself, that you had invited Mr. Pollen to become an in- 
 mate of S. Saviour's during the autumn. It is a matter of 
 the deepest regret that you should have identified yourself 
 with him." 
 
 Mr. Minster replied: "I am sorry Mr. Pollen's assistance 
 during the time of cholera should have met with your Lordship's 
 disapprobation. He volunteered to assist me. At the time, I 
 myself was nearly disabled, and soon after completely so, by an 
 attack of cholera ; when, too, Mr. Rooke was confined to his bed 
 by an attack of low fever, and Mr. Beckett, from overwork and 
 exhaustion, was scarcely able to keep on his legs. At this 
 time my people were being literally decimated. I could not 
 see my people die in numbers daily, and no one to assist them 
 and comfort them." 
 
 The Bishop coldly replied : " I can only hope that Mr. 
 Pollen will not again offer his services at S. Saviour's, and 
 that you will not be tempted to accept them." 
 
 Mr. Minster's health was never restored, and he had to ask 
 of the Bishop a year's non-residence, which was granted, with 
 leave to seek a temporary substitute, but none could or would 
 now come to help. Mr. Rooke was ordained priest, with a 
 decided order from the Bishop that he was not to teach or hear 
 private confessions. 
 
 The Bishop himself had called on Mr. Minster, and during 
 a long conversation on Confession, told him how strongly he 
 objected to the practice. Mr. Minster asked what could he 
 do but receive such as had been invited in the exhortation in 
 the Communion service to come — and who came in response. 
 He inquired what his Lordship would do in like cases. " I 
 should ask them to sit down and beg them to begin their story," 
 replied Dr. Longley. 
 
 " And how, my Lord, if they desired Absolution ? " 
 
 " I think I should read out to them the Comfortable Words." 
 
 When the cholera had raged for three months and ceased, 
 then some of the poor people who had lost their dear ones 
 put up stones to their memory, inscribed " Jesu, mercy ! " 
 
S. SAVIOUR'S, LEEDS 
 
 283 
 
 " Lord, remember me ! " " Of your charity pray for the soul 
 of," etc., and the Bishop uttered his indignant protest. 
 Troubles began anew in 1850. 
 
 In the January of that year, the schoolmistress and her 
 assistant joined the Church of Rome, their reason being the 
 want of fixity of teaching in the English Church and the per- 
 sistent and systematic persecution exercised on all those who 
 taught the Faith. 
 
 The Bishop was very angry, and wrote cruel letters on the 
 subject to Mr. Minster. He also ordered the taking down of 
 a plain wooden cross that was on the screen, and the discon- 
 tinuance of the recitation of the Morning and Evening Prayers 
 from a returned stall in the chancel. 
 
 The Vicar answered Dr. Longley on the matter of the seces- 
 sion of the schoolmistress : "I am sorry that your Lordship 
 should still attribute to S. Saviour's, and to the system carried 
 on there, those effects which have arisen from another cause, 
 even on the confession of the persons themselves implicated. 
 On the contrary, they themselves assured me that had they not 
 been at S. Saviour's, they should, years since, have left the 
 Church of England, and that I alone had held them back so 
 long." 
 
 In the spring of 1850 came the Gorham Judgment, shaking 
 men's convictions as to the orthodoxy of the English Church. 
 And directly after appeared a published letter from Dr. Hook, 
 containing severe allusions to S. Saviour's. Not a Sunday nor 
 a Festival passed without spies being sent to take notes of 
 what was done and preached in the Church, and these were 
 sent to Dr. Hook, and through him to the Bishop, without any 
 opportunity being offered to the clergy to explain and state 
 that what had been reported was a garbled version of what had 
 been done or said. Not a complaint came from any parishioner. 
 Those who were religious were heart and soul with the clergy. 
 
 At the Dedication this year, 1850, Mr. Ward, the first vicar 
 of S. Saviour's, preached to his old parishioners. The sermon 
 was published, whereupon Bagot, Bishop of Bath and Wells, 
 his diocesan, suspended him from work in his diocese, and the 
 Bishop of Ripon inhibited him from preaching in the diocese 
 as well. 
 
 Mr. Pollen preached on " The unity of the Faith," whereupon 
 Bishop Longley thought proper to complain to the Bishop of 
 Oxford. The passage complained of was : " This island was 
 
284 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 called the Island of the Saints (in reference to the Ancient 
 British Church) ; then bishops and priests, monks and hermits 
 went forth from our shores and carried the Faith," etc. It 
 was a statement of fact that the great missions throughout 
 Germany, Switzerland, and Gaul had been the work of Irish and 
 British missionaries. But as far as I can j udge because of the 
 reference to monks and hermits, as casting a slight on the 
 Reformation, he also was inhibited by the Bishop of Oxford 
 from further duty in the diocese. 
 
 And now the clouds grew darker. The storm arose and 
 burst over S. Saviour's, to leave her little better than a stranded 
 wreck. 
 
 On December 2, 1850, the clergy of S. Saviour's were sum- 
 moned to appear at Ripon before the Bishop at twenty-four 
 hours' notice, to answer charges with respect to the doctrines 
 and practices prevalent at S. Saviour's, not knowing what was 
 coming, what the charges were. In their simple souls, they 
 went as to a Father in God and expected paternal treatment. 
 They found the Bishop in his palace, provided with both legal 
 adviser and secretary to take down depositions. They were 
 introduced into the library, and there the proceedings seem to 
 have been most unfairly conducted. The officials were allowed, 
 and encouraged by the Bishop, to interpose with repeated 
 remarks, and to put leading questions ; and the office of judge 
 was merged in that of the prosecutor. 
 
 This Commission was made up, beside the lawyers, of certain 
 Low Church clergy of Leeds who had stirred up mob agitation 
 against S. Saviour's, with Dr. Hook at their head, and the 
 Bishop in the chair. The accusers had got together six or 
 seven witnesses, among them two pupil-teachers who had 
 been dismissed for their immoral conduct, and two women of 
 infamous character whom Mr. Beckett had laboured to reclaim. 
 The object of the accusers was to make out a charge of gross 
 questionings in the Confessional. As the trial proceeded, cross- 
 examination by Mr. Minster revealed plainly the true character 
 of the accusing " witnesses," and convicted them of false- 
 hood. Some withdrew in confusion, others were withdrawn for 
 their own sakes. The Bishop's lawyer expressed himself as 
 feeling that there was no evidence to justify the accusations 
 brought against the clergy. Nevertheless the Low Church 
 clergyman who had produced these scandalous and unsub- 
 stantiated charges was allowed to leave the court without a 
 
S. SAVIOUR'S, LEEDS 
 
 285 
 
 word of reprimand from his diocesan. The inquiry was again 
 pursued by the Bishop on December 14 and 15, in the vestry 
 of the parish church of Leeds. The facts elicited were that 
 the clergy inculcated the duty of Confession before the reception 
 of the Holy Communion ; that they taught that in Absolution 
 was given pardon for mortal sins ; and that sin after baptism 
 must end in spiritual death, unless resort was had to Sacramental 
 Confession as the remedy appointed by the Church for the 
 restoration of the transgressor ; that after Consecration the 
 elements in Holy Communion were no more mere bread and 
 wine. 
 
 It is well to bear in mind that the S. Saviour's people were 
 thoroughly satisfied with their clergy. They clung to them 
 with love, they placed implicit confidence in them, and not a 
 word of complaint came from them. The complainers were 
 outsiders. There were especially three or four Leeds clergy, 
 men conspicuous for their idleness and inefficiency in their 
 parishes, who were the fuglemen in the assault against S. 
 Saviour's. 
 
 The main inquiry before the Bishop had been into the prac- 
 tice of Confession ; and although the charges of improper 
 questioning had been entirely disproved, the Bishop inhibited 
 Messrs. Beckett and Rooke, and Crawley, another curate, in 
 January 1851. Mr. Beckett's inhibition, however, on a tech- 
 nical objection, was afterwards quashed. Just two years before, 
 the Bishop had sanctioned Confession provided it preceded 
 Communion ; and, forgetting this, he punished the curates for 
 doing what he himself had authorized, for they were, at the 
 time, as a matter of fact, preparing people for their first 
 Communion. 
 
 Mr. Minster was ill, and could do little single-handed. The 
 people drew up an address of condolence to the Vicar. They 
 had been so coldly, so unsympathizingly met by the Bishop 
 before, that they did not venture to address his Lordship. 
 
 It was a touching letter, sad yet calm, and breathing nothing 
 but affection for their clergy, and absolute confidence in them. 
 A feeling of deep sorrow seemed to pervade it, despair at the 
 thought of losing one whom they had so loved and revered, 
 combined with a fear of having taken from them those privileges 
 which they valued. 
 
 The address was signed by 660 of the congregation, of whom 
 250 were communicants. It was forwarded to the Bishop, but 
 
286 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 as it was addressed to their Vicar, he loftily put it aside and 
 took no notice of it. 
 
 The Vicar being ill of his incurable internal malady, and 
 deprived of his curates, was forced to notify his resignation to 
 his Lordship, and thus S. Saviour's was again without clergy 
 to serve at her altar. The Bishop had paralyzed the whole 
 spiritual life of the parish. 
 
 And now comes the saddest episode in the story. In the 
 following April, Mr. Ward, the first vicar, inhibited by his 
 Bishop and shaken in his confidence in the English Church 
 through the Gorham Judgment, was, together with Mr. Crawley, 
 received into the Roman Communion at Oscott, near Birmingham. 
 
 It was not the S. Saviour's system that sent them over to 
 Rome. They had been absolutely loyal in heart to the English 
 Church, but the cruel, unfatherly conduct of their Bishop, and 
 the vagaries of the Privy Council, had demolished their confidence 
 in the Church of England. 
 
 The week following they came to Leeds, with Dr. Newman, 
 and at S. Anne's Roman Catholic Church was witnessed the 
 reception of several persons connected with S. Saviour's. 
 
 These were the Rev. M. Lewthwaite of Clifford, the Rev. 
 Mr. Combes, curate of S. Saviour's, the almoner, a chorister, the 
 matron, assistant matron, some children of the Orphanage, 
 and half a dozen of the congregation, male and female. The 
 Vicar and the Rev. S. Rooke were received privately. When 
 in 1 851 the Rev. J. H. Pollen wrote his Recollections of Five 
 Years at S. Saviour's, Leeds, he had no thought of joining the 
 Roman Communion, but episcopal bullying at length drove 
 him also over the border. It was not given to all to say and 
 act with Dr. Pusey: " If the labours of years will not persuade 
 men that we are faithful to the Church of England, words will 
 not. . . . But death in her bosom will." 
 
 Thus, within the short space of six years from the opening of 
 the church, it had collapsed as a manifestation of the Church 
 movement. Bishop Longley was rewarded for the wreckage 
 he had wrought. Shortly afterwards he was promoted to the 
 Bishopric of Durham (1856), thence to the Archbishopric of 
 York, and further to that of Canterbury. 
 
 He bore thenceforth the character of an urbane and suave 
 prelate, and I am not aware of any further mischief done by 
 him, but the steps to his promotion were on the hearts of earnest 
 men who would have spent their lives for the Church of Eng- 
 
S. SAVIOUR S, LEEDS 
 
 287 
 
 land, but out of which he had trodden faith, zeal, and confidence 
 in her. 
 
 u How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost Thou not judge 
 and avenge our blood on them that dwell in the earth ? " might 
 the suffering, the spurned, the maligned Churchmen cry out, 
 in supplication against the prelates, State-appointed, for their 
 blindness to the needs of the Church. If these had acted 
 with greater gentleness and forbearance much might have been 
 effected. The incessant " badgering " to which the clergy 
 were subjected drove them into extremes, and they did un- 
 warrantable things and taught much that was indefensible. 
 They felt themselves isolated, regarded as spiritual lepers, to 
 be avoided ; no helping hand was held out to them, no sym- 
 pathy was shown to them by those of their own cloth. Like a 
 horse that for a slight trip is thrashed and thrashed, not with 
 the lash only but with the butt end of the scourge, they were 
 taken with madness, and flung ahead, regardless whither they 
 went, if only they could escape the blows that stung them. 
 
 No thought of disloyalty for long entered the heads of these 
 clergy : the very fulness with which they taught the power of 
 the Keys, and the Real Presence, showed that they believed 
 thoroughly in their Orders and the validity of the sacraments 
 they administered. 
 
 Out of the fifteen clergy who had been connected with 
 S. Saviour's since its consecration in 1845, nine had seceded. 
 
 Immediately after this terrible collapse, Dr. Pusey arrived, 
 in company with the Rev. C. Marriott, to see what could be 
 done. All the clergy had deserted their posts except Mr. 
 Beckett, the senior curate ; among the faithless, faithful only 
 he, to fight for the Church of which he was put in charge. He 
 went calmly on his way, working for his people with grave 
 resolution. I met him, and felt awe and reverence for him 
 almost unsurpassed. All the reward he had for his steadfast- 
 ness was a prompt suspension from the Bishop. He went out to 
 South Africa, where he founded a small brotherhood under Bishop 
 Twells. He lived mostly in a cave, and there he died. 
 
 Some of the seceding clergy and laymen took up their residence 
 at a house five minutes' walk from the church. A Roman priest 
 came to live with them, and they tried by argument, cajolery, 
 and in some cases by bribery, to make as many converts as 
 possible. But, perhaps to their surprise, certainly to their 
 disappointment, their efforts were unavailing. Mr. Beckett's 
 
288 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 influence kept back the greater number of those who were 
 tempted to follow their late teachers. Only two entire families 
 seceded, and a few stragglers. 
 
 On Palm Sunday of this memorable year, April 13, Dr. Pusey 
 was announced to preach on the great collapse that had taken 
 place ; but just before the sermon he was so overcome by 
 emotion that he fainted in the church, and had to be carried 
 into the sacristy, whereupon Mr. Marriott ascended the pulpit 
 and preached. 
 
 It was a memorable occasion, and every one was looking 
 forward, and wondering what was to be the future of that un- 
 happy church, so relentlessly and so ruthlessly persecuted from 
 without, and so enfeebled within. The Vicarage was offered to : 
 the Rev. J. W. Knott, Fellow of Brasenose, and tutor of Shore- 
 ham College. He was a man of a peculiar temperament, earnest, 
 devout, but one who had never assimilated Catholic doctrine, 
 and when at S. Saviour's he was restless and ever wanting to 
 get away, for at heart he was imbued with the Wesleyan doc- 
 trine of Instantaneous Conversion. In laying hold of this he 
 was largely influenced by the Rev. R. Aitken, of Cornwall, who 
 jumbled up in a remarkable manner a certain amount of High 
 Churchism with Wesleyanism. Prayer-meetings and revivals 
 were now in vogue under Mr. Knott, till he found that his posi- 
 tion was untenable, and he left, to become eventually a mission- 
 ary under the C.M.S., and died in India. I met him when I 
 was in Yorkshire, and he struck me as an unhappy man, ill-at- 
 ease with himself and with those with whom he was brought 
 into contact, one into whose soul the sunshine had never entered, 
 and whose brain was somewhat unbalanced. 
 
 He left in 1859, an d was succeeded by the Rev. Richard 
 Collins, when the Eucharistic vestments were introduced. Collins 
 was an inert individual, casual and somewhat slovenly, and 
 during his tenure of S. Saviour's everything went dead. But 
 perhaps it was as well for the parish, after the excitement it had 
 gone through, that a period of repose should succeed. 
 
 Collins was not in good health, and he died suddenly at the 
 Church Institute in 1877, of heart disease. He was succeeded 
 by the Rev. J. Wylde, who is still vicar, and now S. Saviour's is 
 the centre of vigorous and flourishing church life. There have 
 been no more debacles. 
 
 Some lines were circulated by Mr. Chatterton Dix, a parody 
 on Little Bo-Peep, applicable here : 
 
S. SAVIOUR'S, LEEDS 
 
 289 
 
 Bishops, asleep, once lost their sheep 
 
 And could not tell where to find them ; 
 Some few went to Rome, the rest stopped at home, 
 
 With the P.W.R. 1 behind them. 
 
 Bishops, asleep, dreamt of their sheep 
 
 And thought they heard them bleating ; 
 When they awoke, the silly sheep spoke, 
 
 And the shepherds gave them a beating. 
 
 Looking back upon the tragic history of S. Saviour's, one 
 can feel the appropriateness of the words of Newman as ad- 
 dressed to the English Church : " 0 my mother, whence is this 
 unto thee, to be strange to thine own flesh, and thine eye cruel 
 towards thy little ones ? Thine own offspring, the fruit of thy 
 womb, who love thee and would toil for thee, thou dost gaze 
 upon with fear, as though a portent, or thou dost loathe as an 
 offence — at best, thou dost but endure, as if they had no claims, 
 but on thy patience, self-possession, and vigilance, to be rid 
 of them as easily as thou mayest. Thou makest them ' stand 
 all the day idle ' as the very condition of thy bearing with 
 them, or thou biddest them begone where they will be more 
 welcome, or thou sellest them for naught to the stranger that 
 passes by." 
 
 1 Public Worship Regulation Act. 
 
 19 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 S. JUDE'S, BRADFORD 
 
 IN sharp contrast to the tragic story of S. Saviour's, Leeds, 
 I will give that of S. Jude's, Bradford, which encoun- 
 tered none of those disasters that befell the other churcl 
 Harassed and interfered with it was, but it never broke do^ 
 through the desertion of its pastors for another communion. The 
 story is instructive, for it is that of a thousand other churches 
 throughout the land. I give it as a sample of what has been 
 going on elsewhere ; moreover it shows what S. Saviour's did 
 not show — a solidity and caution in advance, and patience, 
 which were lacking in the clergy of the Leeds church. If all 
 God's waves and storms went over this latter, S. Jude's rode 
 quieter waters, and though buffeted never had her decks swept 
 nor sprung a leak. 
 
 The town of Bradford in the early half of the last centu) 
 presented a dreary aspect both materially and spiritually, 
 dense cloud of smoke, issuing from its numerous and constantly 
 increasing factories, hid the sun from the eye ; a toiling multitude 
 ever growing, taxed the energies of the Church to prevent i1 
 falling into heathenism. In i860, although several districts hi 
 been cut off and provided with churches and schools, the Parisl 
 Church of S. Peter was left with a population of something lil 
 30,000 souls who were under the nominal care of the Vicar anc 
 four curates. The living was held by the Rev. Dr. Burnet, 
 able preacher, kind-hearted and genial in manner, but lackii 
 in moral firmness. He had risen considerably above the the( 
 logical standard of the patrons, the Simeonite Trustees, incurring 
 thereby their marked displeasure. He posed as a moderat 
 High Churchman who would gladly have followed in the ste] 
 of his neighbour, Dr. Hook, the Vicar of Leeds, could he ha^ 
 done so without provoking opposition. 
 
 About i860, a number of devoted, earnest laymen, wor- 
 shippers at the parish church, struck with the inadequacy of the 
 existing parochial machinery, formed themselves into a society, 
 the members of which were pledged to undertake some definite 
 
 290 
 
S. JUDE'S, BRADFORD 
 
 291 
 
 religious work, and to unite in prayer, intercession, and Holy 
 Communion. It adopted the harmless title of the S. Peter's 
 Union for Church Work. The vicar became its president, 
 approved its rules, and appointed one of his curates to be its 
 chaplain. The works to which the Union devoted itself were 
 teaching in the Sunday and night schools, visiting the whole and 
 sick in their homes, and distributing Church literature, collect- 
 ing funds in support of home and foreign missions, and arrang- 
 ing periodical meetings in their aid, managing Savings Banks 
 and provident societies ; in fact, all the ordinary machinery of 
 a we 11- worked parish. In addition to the members (who were 
 communicants) there were associates, who were mostly young 
 men and women too old for the usual Sunday school class. 
 For their benefit a monthly meeting was held, when instruction 
 on Church doctrine was given by one of the curates. 
 
 After four years this organization was arbitrarily dissolved 
 by the Vicar on the ground that its members had indulged in 
 " practices, tendencies, and an appetite for ritualism." He 
 steadfastly refused, although respectfully requested to do so, 
 to specify what these practices were, or to name the persons 
 who yielded to this appetite (an appetite, by the by, which could 
 never be gratified without the concurrence of the clergy). He 
 was asked to investigate the proceedings of the Union, the 
 members pledging themselves to abide by his decision and to 
 modify all that he objected to. But to no purpose. The fact 
 was that the prejudices of Orangemen and rabid Protestants 
 were stirred up by the distinctness and thoroughness of the 
 work, and so the Vicar, in a moment of weakness, thought to 
 conciliate them by casting his loyal fellow workers out of the 
 boat. Some fifty or sixty Churchmen and Churchwomen were 
 by this piece of folly dismissed from their posts as teachers and 
 visitors, the weekly early celebration was for a time abandoned, 
 and the chaplain's services as one of the staff of curates dis- 
 pensed with. An appeal of this last to the Bishop (Bickersteth) 
 produced no result beyond the expression of opinion that the 
 charges brought against him and his fellow workers were 
 frivolous in the extreme, but that for the sake of peace it would 
 be better for him to resign. A licence to another curacy in the 
 diocese was granted, coupled, however, with the intimation that 
 he must never expect preferment at the Bishop's hands. " Soli- 
 tudinem faciunt, pacem appellant," but in this case the victory 
 proved a barren one. For the district church of S. Jude was at 
 
292 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 this time in sore need of help. It had been built about twenty 
 years before, to serve a large and mixed population consisting 
 of dwellers on the outskirts of the town, and also of factory 
 hands and other operatives living in the adjoining narrow 
 streets and courts. For a time the excellence of the music 
 attracted congregations, but after a while these fell off, and the 
 reign of deadness seemed to have set in. The first incumbent 
 exchanged with the Rev. John Eddowes, who set himself to the 
 task of reviving the work. The first need, in his opinion, was 
 to make all sittings perfectly free. There were at the time no 
 less than seventeen different rates paid for pews, according to 
 their position and eligibility. After a considerable amount of 
 opposition he carried his point, and also substituted the weekly 
 offertory for pew rents. Daily prayers and weekly celebrations 
 were started at the same time. 
 
 Then it was that the members of the S. Peter's Union, ex- 
 pelled from their own parish, felt themselves free to offer their 
 services to the Vicar of S. Jude's. Needless to say, the offer 
 was gratefully accepted. New life was infused. A second 
 Evensong at eight on Sundays was provided, at which the 
 Church's Plain Song was used. After a time, when appropria- 
 tion of seats was finally abolished, this was dropped as no longer 
 necessary. A Guild was established ; attendance at the day 
 and Sunday schools was increased ; above all, the number of 
 communicants grew year by year. Various structural alterations 
 were made in the church : a new vestry was built ; a new altar 
 was raised, with the proper ornaments ; a massive brass cross, the 
 gift of the Guild of S. Alban, took the place of the plain wooden 
 one formerly in use. These were material improvements, but 
 there were also signs of more important progress — that of a 
 spiritual character. Missions were held which had the effect 
 of stirring up spiritual life. The first was conducted by Canon 
 Body in 1872 ; in 1876, S. Jude's took part in the general 
 Bradford Mission, when Canon Body again conducted. 
 
 With regard to the former of these, the following words, written 
 by one who was an active worker at S. Jude's, will prove interest- 
 ing : " Some who read these lines will recall with thankfulness 
 silent moments of earnest prayer in church, and perhaps also 
 a few minutes spent in faithful converse with the missioner, 
 leaving an impress on all their after-life. The crowd, too, of 
 men standing wherever they could find standing-room at the 
 special services for men on the Sunday afternoon (such services 
 
S. JUDE'S, BRADFORD 
 
 293 
 
 being far less common than they are now) was a sight too im- 
 pressive to be easily forgotten. But the most marked effect 
 of that mission, and that not the least blessed, was probably 
 the clearing away of much prejudice. A mountain of suspicion 
 — suspicion of lurking Popery — was rolled away, and thus one 
 hindrance to God's work in the parish was greatly lessened. 
 As an expression of the gratitude of the people to the missioner, 
 a service of altar plate, in silver gilt, for the church at Kirkby 
 Misperton, was presented to Mr. Body. The oaken box en- 
 closing it bore the following inscription : " For the service of 
 the altar in the parish of Kirkby Misperton, a thankoffering from 
 the worshippers at S. Jude's, Bradford, for much blessing received, 
 through the ministry of the Rev. George Body, Easter 1872." 1 
 The Rev. A. H. Mackonochie had preached and held services 
 with a view to a mission as early as 1869, but his intention to 
 hold one was frustrated by the Bishop of Ripon inhibiting 
 him from officiating in the diocese. This, by the way, proved a 
 blunder on the part of the an ti- Ritualists, for it aroused popular 
 sympathy with the persecuted Vicar of S. Alban's, Holborn ; the 
 congregation of S. Jude's showing theirs in a practical way by 
 collecting £24 towards the Mackonochie Defence Fund J on the 
 Sunday after the inhibition had been served. Other missions were 
 from time to time held, the results of which were increased atten- 
 dance at the altar, and resort to Confession, as well as deepened 
 spiritual life of very many. The following statistics supplied 
 by the work already mentioned, and for which, as well as for 
 other information, we are greatly indebted to the author, show 
 how marked was the material growth of the parish at this time : 
 
 Numbers of Communicants at the Greater Festivals 
 
 Year. 
 
 Easter Day. 
 
 Whit-Sunday. 
 
 Christmas Day. 
 
 18582 
 
 27 
 
 17 
 
 13 
 
 1863 
 
 75 
 
 47 
 
 26 
 
 1868 
 
 288 
 
 176 
 
 131 
 
 1872 3 
 
 306 
 
 155 
 
 173 
 
 1876 4 
 
 436 
 
 228 
 
 261 
 
 1883 
 
 475 
 
 297 
 
 335 
 
 1888 
 
 441 
 
 189 
 
 290 
 
 1893 
 
 488 
 
 183 
 
 
 1 Fifty Years at St. Jude's, Bradford, pp. 29, 30. 
 
 2 The first year of Rev. J. Eddowes's incumbency. 
 
 3 The first mission by Canon Body held this year. 
 
 4 The General Bradford Mission held this year. 
 
294 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 WEEKLY OFFERTORIES 
 
 Year 
 1862 
 1867 
 1872 
 1877 
 
 I s. d. Year 
 
 257 o 8 1884 
 
 517 2 9 1889 
 
 819 4 9 1892 
 
 968 3 6 
 
 I s. d 
 
 95i 3 7 
 
 653 18 9 
 
 790 14 1 
 
 In 1875 and 1876, when special appeals were made for the build- 
 ing of new vestries, the amounts were £1,155 1 7 s - ndL and 
 £1,136 195. 3d. 
 
 The introduction of a branch of the All Saints' Sisterhood in 
 1873 was attended with the happiest results. The work of the 
 Sisters lay chiefly among the poorer classes, but those above 
 them were not neglected. The sick were visited and their 
 wants relieved, the children taught, and adults instructed. 
 Ragged schools were carried on, the Guilds multiplied so as to 
 include all classes and ages, and a middle-class school, for the 
 daughters of professional men, supplied a great need. One 
 house was sufficient at first to hold the Sisters and provide 
 room for such good works as could be managed indoors. It 
 soon became necessary, however, to look out for larger quarters, 
 and three adjoining houses were taken and thrown into one, 
 into which the Sisters removed. The daily Celebration now 
 became possible, for the clerical staff was increased. A retreat 
 for ladies was held annually by Canon Body ; in 1877 a parochial 
 retreat was conducted by Father Simeon. 
 
 In the course of years the work developed in another direc- 
 tion. The spiritual needs of the poorer part of the parish had 
 long been a source of anxiety to the Vicar ; their relief formed 
 a problem which for some years he was unable to solve. But in 
 1871 some cottages were acquired by him, and, by being thrown 
 into one, made a mission room capable of holding 100 persons. 
 The Rev. G. E. Redhead was put in charge of this mission, 
 which was ultimately cut off from the Mother Church and 
 became the parish of S. Mary Magdalene. The permanent 
 church was consecrated in 1878, after endless difficulties had been 
 surmounted. It was a memorial to a devout layman, Mr. 
 W. W. Harris, one of a well-known Bradford family, who entered 
 into rest in 1875. Some months elapsed before the priest in 
 charge was instituted to the incumbency, the delay being 
 caused by the Archdeacon (Bishop Ryan) 1 objecting to the 
 
 1 Ryan was a " returned empty." He had been consecrated to Mauritius 
 in 1855 and gave it up in 1867. During the time he held the see, he was 
 
S. JUDE'S, BRADFORD 
 
 295 
 
 reredos, an objection which was overruled on appeal by the 
 Chancellor of the diocese. Mr. Redhead continued his work 
 at S. Mary Magdalene's for more than twenty-five years, refus- 
 ing all offers of preferment and only resigning when obliged to 
 do so by ill-health in 1905. The Vicar of S. Jude's, Mr. Eddowes, 
 was obliged by the same cause to accept a less arduous post 
 in 1886. He was succeeded by the Rev. Edward Brice. His 
 health, too, broke down in 1893. His death, after seven years' 
 ministry, took place in the autumn of 1893. He was succeeded, 
 to the great joy of the parishioners, by the old vicar, Canon 
 Eddowes, who returned to the scene of his early labours and 
 retained the living until his death in 1905, after having held 
 it first and last for all but fifty years. It will have been noticed 
 that such a long and faithful ministry received towards its 
 close a slight recognition on the part of the diocesan, for he 
 was made an honorary canon of the Cathedral, a tardy tribute 
 to Mr. Eddowes's worth and self-denying labours. 
 
 It is not to be supposed that all this work was carried on 
 without opposition. There was the dead weight of the respect- 
 able Churchmanship of the town to be contended with ; a 
 vast mass of unreasoning prejudice to be encountered, as well 
 as the virulent attacks of the Orangemen. No one at the 
 present day can have any idea of the bitterness of feeling which 
 the simple ceremonial of S. Jude's stirred up. Things which are 
 now accepted as a matter of course everywhere were then 
 regarded as badges of Popery ; those who taught the doctrine 
 of the Prayer Book were looked upon as Jesuits in disguise. 
 " Popery was suspected in everything. It was found to lurk 
 even amidst the flowers in the Easter decorations ; although, 
 by a curious inconsistency, Christmas decorations were deemed 
 quite innocent, and were indeed approved of. The sign or figure 
 of the Cross, in any place or position, gave great offence. The 
 reverent bowing of the head at the Holy Name was not to be 
 tolerated." 1 Not a single incumbent in the town ventured to 
 stand by the clergy of S. Jude's. More than once Mr. Eddowes 
 was delated to the Bishop, and only by making a firm stand 
 was he able to ward off episcopal interference. Sympathizers 
 with popular Protestantism were elected churchwardens ; these 
 
 twice back in England, and made an expedition to Madagascar, He was 
 made Vicar of Bradford in 1870, and Archdeacon of Craven in 1873. A 
 very ultra Evangelical. 
 1 Fifty Years at S. Jude's, p. 18. 
 
296 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 either did nothing during their year of office, or else, instead of 
 hindering the work, became its most active supporters. They 
 took the independent line of judging for themselves. But in 
 spite of an unsympathizing bishop, lukewarm, if not hostile 
 clergy, ignorant Puritan opposition, and general indifference on 
 the part of the public, the work prospered. Why ? Because, 
 as Mr. Eddowes said in his sermon on the fiftieth anniversary 
 of the Consecration, God was with them. " If God be for us, 
 who can be against us ? " And, secondly, because priest and 
 people worked together. The priest was always conscious that 
 he had at his back earnest Churchmen who fully trusted him 
 and supported him through thick and thin. And this is the 
 main reason why S. Jude's has had a chapter devoted to it in 
 this work ; the movement there was so essentially one of 
 laymen. It shows what can be done if only the laity are taught 
 and then trusted ; and we may be sure, if we read the signs of 
 the times aright, this must be the policy of the Church in the 
 future — to throw itself on the mass of the people for support, 
 not so much pecuniary, although this will not be withheld, as 
 personal. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 AGITATION AGAINST CONFESSION 
 
 IN 1858 occurred what at the time was known as the 
 "Boyne Hill Case." The Rector of Boyne Hill was the 
 Rev. W. Gresley, and he had a curate named Temple 
 West. In the neighbourhood resided an Evangelical clergy- 
 man, the Rev. John Shaw, who was one of those men who 
 listen to any tittle-tattle, especially if malicious, and believe it 
 without investigation as to its truth. He heard a great many 
 stories against Mr. West, and took them so entirely for Gospel 
 that he sent an account of them as facts to Bishop Wilberforce, 
 who, as was his invariable custom, passed them on to the rector 
 of the parish for explanation. Mr. Gresley was able easily to 
 satisfy Bishop Wilberforce that the complaints made against 
 Mr. West were untrue. Mr. Shaw's next proceeding was to 
 send the correspondence between himself and the Bishop to 
 the Times. That journal, as credulous as Mr. Shaw had shown 
 himself to be, led off an attack on the Bishop upon the state- 
 ment of one woman, and she a person of notoriously bad life, 
 ignoring the absolute contradiction of her statements made by 
 the Rector and his curate, and passing over in silence the fact 
 that the Bishop of the diocese had promised to issue a Com- 
 mission to inquire into the case. Bishop Wilberforce wrote in 
 a letter : " The Times took the matter up as if I had stifled 
 all inquiry, and represented me as shuffling because I main- 
 tained the true Church of England doctrine against the popular 
 cry. Upon this Punch and all the infidel and Low Church papers 
 have set upon me with full venom." 
 
 The Bishop issued his Commission, consisting of the Chancellor 
 of the diocese, two clergymen, and two laymen, and on Sep- 
 tember 28 they delivered their judgment, entirely exculpating 
 Mr. West from all the charges which had been made against him. 
 
 Shortly after this, and whilst the ferment throughout Eng- 
 land was in full boil, the Bishop went to Bradford to speak at 
 
 297 
 
298 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 a meeting on behalf of the S.P.G. Placards were posted about 
 the streets : " Men and women of Bradford ! Come in your 
 thousands to S. George's Hall, and in a voice of thunder resist 
 the Tractarian Confessionals." Long before the time fixed for 
 the meeting the hall was crowded to overflow ; at least 4,000 
 persons were present. The Bishop, on rising to speak, was 
 greeted with hisses and hootings and some cheers. He stood 
 calm in his dignity and began : " Brother Yorkshire men ! 
 There was a lull — and then he spoke, and with the wondrous 
 charm of his manner, his absolute sincerity, and his eloquence, 
 he dominated the whole concourse. When he sat down the 
 hisses that had greeted him on rising were replaced by thunderous 
 cheers. My friend, Canon Fowler, was present at this meeting. 
 
 Even the Times was obliged to admit : " There is no human 
 quality that English people honour more than pluck, whether 
 in a soldier, statesman, fox-hunter, or bishop, and it was acting 
 on this that the Bishop of Oxford went straight from the 
 Boyne Hill inquiry to meet a Yorkshire mob." 
 
 The reference to Punch in the letter of the Bishop referred 
 to a cartoon, entitled Dangerous Flirtation, that appeared on 
 August 28, 1858, and to some lines, too long to be quoted. 
 
 In the year i860 there occurred at Road, in Somerset, a horrible 
 murder of a little boy aged five, on the night of June 29-30. 
 He had been taken from his crib and from the house, and the 
 body was found in the garden. Efforts were made to discover 
 the murderer, but in vain. It was obvious that the guilty per- 
 son was an inmate of the house, and general suspicion attached 
 to the father, who was supposed, without a shadow of reason, 
 to have had an intrigue with the nurse, and it was thought 
 that the child was made away with lest it should betray awkward 
 secrets. The little fellow was buried, and on the tombstone was 
 cut " God will bring to light the hidden things of darkness." 
 
 Time passed, and the incident was falling out of recollection, 
 when the truth was brought to light in an unexpected manner. 
 In 1865 the public was startled by the appearance of Constance 
 Kent, the half-sister of the murdered child, before the magistrate 
 at Bow Street. She had surrendered herself as having killed her 
 step-brother out of jealousy and spite. She said that she had 
 been to Confession to Mr. Wagner of S. Paul's, Brighton, and 
 that he had told her that she was morally bound to surrender 
 herself to justice, and so clear the dark cloud of suspicion that 
 hung over her father's head. She was tried the same year at 
 
AGITATION AGAINST CONFESSION 299 
 
 the summer assizes at Salisbury. Mr. Wagner was summoned, 
 and a vain attempt was made to induce him to divulge what 
 had been confessed to him. He resolutely refused to say a 
 word. Constance Kent had capital sentence passed on her, 
 but this was commuted to penal servitude for life. She was 
 released on ticket of leave, July 18, 1885. The fact that the 
 mystery had been solved through the Confessional raised a 
 storm of indignation. Mr. Wagner was attacked for not telling 
 what had been said to him in the confidence of the Confessional. 
 He was abused for requiring his penitent to give herself up to 
 justice. It was said that if persons did that sort of thing no 
 one would trust to them any secrets. In general a great agita- 
 tion was provoked against the practice of Confession. 
 
 We have seen that this was not the first outbreak of the 
 agitation, which began at Plymouth in 1852, but it had simmered 
 on, with occasional explosions of anger. 
 
 In the latter part of the year 1873 ensued one of the periodical 
 outbursts of English prejudice against the practice of Confes- 
 sion. On this occasion it was unusually prolonged. 
 
 It opened with a memorial on the subject addressed to the 
 Bishop of London by the vestry of S. George's, Hanover Square. 
 To this his Lordship replied, deprecating the practice, and 
 advising laymen not to send their children to schools, however 
 good the education, where Confession was practised. 
 
 The Bishop and the majority of the clergy in the Victorian 
 period were like old-fashioned country doctors, who diagnosed 
 every disorder by a look at the tongue and a finger on the 
 pulse, who never used a stethoscope and had never heard of the 
 X-ray, whose only remedies consisted in James's Powder and 
 Friar's Balsam. 
 
 I have known surgeons who could not detect a disloca- 
 tion, and when this was discovered by a hospital nurse, or a 
 bone-setter, the doctors have been lashed to fury. 
 
 It was so with regard to broken and wounded souls. The old 
 spiritual practitioners meddled and muddled and did nothing. 
 And when priests did appear on the scene, experienced in the 
 care of souls, knowing what remedies to apply, they foamed 
 with rage against them. 
 
 A project for revising the Prayer Book being then in hand, a 
 number of clergy, 403 in all, petitioned Convocation to limit 
 the number of Confessors by issuing licences to approved and 
 wise priests, who alone would be justified to direct souls. It was 
 
300 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 thought that much prejudice would be overcome if penitents 
 were allowed only to go to men of experience and age. But the 
 proposal worked Lord Shaftesbury to fury, and he spoke in such 
 outrageous terms that even the admiring Times was shocked 
 at the paroxysms of rage into which the proposal threw him. 
 " What," asked his Lordship in a meeting at Exeter Hall, " have 
 members of the Church of England to do with rubrics ? " He 
 might as well have asked, " What has a cricketer to do with the 
 rules of the game ? " 
 
 At S. Alban's, Holborn, were narrow curtains hung against 
 the side wall to screen off the penitent from the inquisitive 
 gaze of persons in the church. It was a distraction to the 
 penitent to see people watching and commenting on the pro- 
 ceedings, but the Bishop of London ordered their removal, and 
 his order was obeyed. It was obviously advisable that Con- 
 fession should not be made in the vestry, but in the church, 
 and yet that there should be some protection to the penitent 
 from impertinent gazers. 
 
 In the mediaeval English Church, Confessions were heard in 
 the body of the church, without any curtains ; in Lent a chancel 
 veil hung from the roof, and in the sight of everyone, all through 
 Shrove-time and Lent, confessions — of women especially — were 
 heard through this veil. Dr. Rock 1 gives an illustration, from a 
 MS. Flemish Book of Hours, of a priest with his furred amice 
 on, sitting against the wall, hearing a man's Confession, in 
 open view of everybody, not enclosed in anything like a modern 
 confessional, which is of very recent introduction. 
 
 On December 12, in the same year, an important declaration, 
 signed by Dr. Pusey and twenty-eight other priests of good 
 standing, set forth the doctrine and practice of Confession and 
 Absolution as authorized in the Church of England. 
 
 On the following Ash Wednesday, Dean Goulburn of Norwich 
 is reported to have preached a sermon in the cathedral weakly 
 submitting to the popular clamour, and at the same time he 
 withdrew from publication his previous writings on the subject, 
 in which he had admitted the value of the practice where souls 
 were burdened with sin. 
 
 The public were again stirred up, in June 1877, by a book 
 issued, only privately, to Confessors, by the Society of the 
 Holy Cross, entitled The Priest in Absolution, intended as a guide 
 to Confessors how to deal with their penitents. A surgical 
 1 Church of our Fathers, 1853, iii. p. 224. 
 
"A WOLF IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING." 
 
 Mb. Erii, [to Bhitaknia). " WHENEVER YOU SEE ANY OF THESE SNEAKING SCOUNDRELS ABOUT, MA'AM', 
 JUST SEND FOR ME. I'LL DEAL WITH 'EM, NEVER FEAR ! ! " 
 
AGITATION AGAINST CONFESSION 301 
 
 treatise is not intended for public reading, and treatises there 
 are on special diseases that are only for the eye of medical 
 practitioners j and the priest in the Confessional has to deal 
 with sins of a terrible degree of criminality, and without direc- 
 tion, if inexperienced, he can hardly know how to treat those 
 who have perpetrated them. By some means a copy got into 
 the hands of Lord Redesdale, who read extracts in the House 
 of Lords. It would have been more judicious had not the 
 book been printed. But, without it, Confessors would have 
 been driven to employ Roman books to the same effect : these, 
 being printed in Latin, were not meant for general perusal. The 
 Confessor sounds the depths of human depravity, but does so only 
 when the sinner is conscious of his sin, and is turning earnestly 
 to the source of healing. Those who condemned the practice 
 had never let down their plummet ten inches below the surface. 
 
 The saddest fact connected with this attack by Lord Redes- 
 dale was that the Archbishop thanked him in the House for 
 the exposure, and for bringing the matter before the notice of 
 his fellow peers. 
 
 The commotion produced a bad effect generally. The English 
 Church Union suffered, as there ensued some resignations of 
 membership, but the agitation drew attention to the fact that 
 the English Church did open a fountain for all uncleanness, 
 and the result was, in the experience of the Catholic clergy, 
 that the number of Confessions greatly increased, especially 
 among those who had been grievous sinners, and were, and had 
 been for some time, " wearied with the burden of their sins." 
 What is not sufficiently understood is that Direction and Con- 
 fession do not necessarily go together. A man goes to Confes- 
 sion to obtain release from the burden of his transgression, 
 as Christ has committed to His priesthood the power of the 
 Keys. But for Direction he goes for counsel to a prudent 
 adviser. In the Eastern Church, every parish priest can hear 
 Confessions and pronounce Absolution, but the penitent does 
 not dream of applying to him for Direction unless he be experi- 
 enced to give advice. And in the Roman Church it is much 
 the same. The penitent chooses his own Director, and does not 
 by any means always lay his perplexities before his Confessor. 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette could find no way of suppressing the 
 Catholic Movement but " to run a short Act through Parlia- 
 ment prohibiting the laying on of hands and so bringing the 
 Anglican Succession to an end." 
 
302 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 It was discouraging that whenever there was a fresh out- 
 flare of hostility, the Bishops were found on the wrong side. This 
 had not been the case at Plymouth with the disturbance there 
 about Confession in 1852 ; then Bishop Phillpotts stood firmly 
 by Mr. Prynne. But the prelates of 1870-80 (saving Bishops 
 Wilberforce and Hamilton) were of other stuff. Of all men 
 they ought to have taken the side of those against whom the 
 press and politicians were clamouring ; they were bound by 
 every consideration to uphold those whose one object was to 
 win souls for Christ, and against whom not a single definite 
 charge of abuse of their office had been brought. A man in 
 difficulties connected with his estate consults his lawyer. A 
 man who is sick consults his physician. And those in trouble 
 and doubt, and in anguish over past sins, have a right to seek 
 advice from the spiritual guides set over them as physicians of 
 the soul. 
 
 Instead of supporting the clergy, the Bishops preserved a dis- 
 creet silence, or deprecated (this was the correct episcopal word) 
 — aye, deprecated the use of this means of grace. Occasionally, 
 when the Confessor was a licensed curate, the episcopal dis- 
 pleasure vented itself in the withdrawal of his licence, with- 
 drawing from him therewith the means of livelihood. 
 
 McNeile, preaching at St. Paul's, Liverpool, on December 8, 
 1880, used the following words with regard to the use of private 
 Confession and Absolution, which the Prayer Book, that he had 
 sworn to accept and use, enjoined. He said : "I would make 
 it a capital offence to administer Confession in this country. 
 Transportation would not satisfy me, for that would merely 
 transfer the evil from our part of the world to another. Capital 
 punishment alone would satisfy me. Death alone would prevent 
 the evil." 
 
 What gave special cogency to the attack on the Confessional 
 was that it was secret, or, to use the favourite term, auricular. 
 Is not the intimate disclosure of his difficulties to a solicitor 
 auricular ? Is not that of a patient to a surgeon private ? 
 And what would be thought of either of these confidants, to whom 
 difficulties or pains are confided, if lawyer or physician were to 
 blurt out what had been told him ? A priest knows that to 
 divulge what is told him in Confession is a sacrilege and a mortal 
 sin. Dr. Sanday reminds us that " it does not follow that 
 everything which is innocent in itself will bear to be proclaimed 
 from the house-tops, or that all that cannot be proclaimed must 
 
AGITATION AGAINST CONFESSION 303 
 
 therefore in itself be mischievous." An end to all confidence 
 in the ordinary transactions of life, whether legal, medical, com- 
 mercial, or religious, would follow, unless it were understood 
 that a certain amount of secrecy, varying of course according 
 to circumstances, were observed. " Nearly a dozen years ago," 
 says Dr. Littledale in his lecture on Secessions to Rome, " I 
 was travelling in Switzerland, and I fell in with an English 
 family, consisting of a mother, two daughters, and a son. The 
 elder lady was, I believe, a chieftainness in Puritan circles, and 
 she had brought up her children in the strictest Calvinistic 
 views. I fell, to talk with the young man, and somehow we 
 began speaking about mental distress and anxiety, especially 
 in religious matters. He put a case to me, and said : 1 What 
 would you do under such circumstances ? ' 1 Well,' I replied, 
 1 1 would go to some clergyman in whom I had confidence, tell 
 him of it, and ask his advice ; or, plainly speaking, I would 
 go to Confession.' ' But,' urged he, ' how would you guard 
 against a breach of confidence ? 1 I answered that clergymen 
 of my way of thinking regarded the disclosure of anything 
 entrusted to them as a grave offence. 1 Well,' said he, ' I was 
 just in that distress some time back, and I spoke to A and B, 
 who are frequently at mother's house ' — and here he named two 
 well-known Evangelical clergymen, both of whom were subse- 
 quently raised to high rank. 1 A would not listen to me, and 
 treated the matter lightly, though I was in real trouble ; and 
 B, who did listen, brought out the whole story as a good joke 
 at dinner that day before the assembled company.' The young 
 man's whole feeling of trust was shaken, and his religious feelings 
 rudely checked, just when they needed gentle and wise en- 
 couragement ; and if a clever Roman Catholic or a clever infidel 
 had taken him in hand just then, I think either would have 
 found an easy convert." 
 
 Observe, in the above story, A and B were of the stuff of 
 which bishops were made. Such men, of course, deprecated 
 Confession, because incapable of diagnosing the distresses of 
 the soul. It was just the longing to unburden the conscience 
 in the ears of one capable of advising, and pledged to inviolable 
 secrecy, that drove men to private Confession — Confession to 
 Catholic-minded priests, and not to Evangelicals whose tongues 
 are not always under control. 
 
 How it was that Jackson, who could preach and publish 
 about " the sinfulness of little sins," should put any obstacle 
 
304 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 in the way of those who were moved, not only to confess little 
 sins, but to pour out a shameful tale of gross immoralities, by 
 ordering, as already said, the curtains to be removed at S. 
 Alban's, which would screen them from the eyes of curious 
 busybodies, is a marvel. 
 
 In town churches, no doubt, the proper place for hearing 
 Confessions is the body of the church, for there no one knows 
 his next-door neighbour ; but every eye is open to all that 
 is going on, and every action liable to comment, in country 
 places. There the vestry is the only place available for the 
 purpose. 
 
 Bishop Festing of S. Alban's, who belonged to a higher and 
 wiser type of prelate than those generally of the Victorian age, 
 made a point of recommending the newly ordained priests to 
 make the vestry, supposing the body of the church could not 
 be used, the place for all spiritual intercourse with members 
 of their flocks. Very often now the penitent kneels at the 
 Communion rails, and the priest sits on the chair within. But 
 in this case there arises the difficulty of the penitent being 
 exposed to the impertinent observation of any one entering 
 the church. 
 
 That which led many right-minded men to speak against 
 Confession was the dread lest it should be made compulsory. 
 A little inquiry would have shown them that this fear was 
 groundless. Any one who has lived abroad in Roman Catholic 
 countries will have learned how mischievous, how perilous to 
 souls is the Roman insistence on private Confession before 
 Communion, and the Anglican rule is so clearly defined that 
 no doubt can exist as to what the mind of the Church is — that 
 Confession is to be made in private only when the conscience 
 is stirred with remorse, but that otherwise public Confession 
 and Absolution suffice. Doubters might have learned from 
 common sense that Confession can only be a voluntary act, 
 and, in fact, it is only as such that it is ever urged. 
 
 In our towns or in country parishes, the vast number 
 of clergy who do not hear Confessions know nothing of what 
 is going on below the surface. They skim about their parishes 
 like water-spiders, dashing here and there, making great show 
 of activity, but effecting nothing, because they know nothing 
 of what is in the deeps beneath their skipping feet. 
 
 The doctrine of the Church relative to Confession of sin is 
 this. As the Church is One Body, the sin of any one member is 
 
AGITATION AGAINST CONFESSION 305 
 
 a lesion that affects the whole. The faculty of pardoning trans- 
 gression resides in the Church, having been given to her by 
 Christ in express words. No man is justified in absolving 
 himself, the sentence of pardon must be delivered by those 
 authorized by the whole Church, and therefore by Christ. 
 
 It is the same in a State. No criminal may acquit himself ; 
 he must be sentenced or acquitted by an authorized judge 
 or magistrate receiving power to do so from the King or the 
 State. 
 
 In the Early Church, Confession was in public and Absolution 
 was granted in public to the penitent. But not infrequently 
 the sins publicly confessed were of so horrible a nature that 
 it was deemed advisable to allow the Confession to be made 
 privately, but Absolution was accorded in full congregation, and 
 at last the concession was made that both were to be private. 
 
 At the Reformation, the English reformers desired to recur 
 as far as might be to the primitive rule, and accordingly 
 introduced the Confession and Absolution into Morning and 
 Evening Prayer and the Holy Communion, to be public, but 
 without specification of individual sins. Such Confessions are 
 sufficient, and such Absolutions complete. But where the 
 conscience is burdened and distressed, there private Confession 
 and Absolution are recommended. Nothing can be more reason- 
 able and effective. The Romanist practice of compulsory Con- 
 fession before the Holy Communion can be given is notoriously 
 mischievous. I was at Sackingen, a manufacturing town of 
 4,000 inhabitants, on the Rhine, in 1880. The immense Abbey 
 Church had been handed over to the Old Catholics, and the 
 Romanists had built a " Noth-Kirche," a barrack-like structure 
 of wood, for their service. In the Abbey Church on the Sunday 
 morning the congregation numbered four beside myself, and of 
 these four one was the sacristan ; whereas the Roman Catholic 
 church was packed throughout, galleries as well as nave, and 
 men stood outside under umbrellas in the rain, forming part 
 of the congregation. 
 
 I spoke to the sacristan in the Abbey Church, and asked him 
 how it was that there was no congregation. " Oh, we have 
 none. The people will not come to us. But " — brightening 
 up — " you should see us at Easter. They come not only from 
 the town but from the villages round to make their Easter 
 Communion — to escape having to confess to their parish priests." 
 
 The Church exacts of a penitent, as token of sincere repent- 
 20 
 
306 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 ance, that there shall be Contrition, Confession, and Purpose of 
 Amendment, and Restitution where that is possible. No Abso- 
 lution is of any value unless there be sorrow for sin committed 
 and determinate resolve to avoid commission in the future. 
 
 That private Confession and Absolution are open to abuse is 
 quite certain. It is this which rouses the anti-clericalism of 
 France, as it is felt that the priest may, and too often does, 
 intermeddle unwarrantably in affairs of the family, as also that 
 he endeavours to obtain a control over the penitent that he 
 has no right to exercise. It further enfeebles the moral fibre, 
 and makes weak natures become weaker, because releasing 
 them from bracing up their force for contest against besetting 
 sins. I have often enough heard young Romanists talk of 
 being " whitewashed," and I do not think that in the Roman 
 Confessional sufficient insistence is made on the duty of Amend- 
 ment. 
 
 Feeble and feminine characters are particularly fond of 
 resort to Confession when no serious burden of sin rests on them. 
 John Mason Neale was one day in Amiens Cathedral, when he 
 observed a woman in a Confessional box, but the priest was 
 not in his compartment, but at a little distance, behind a pillar, 
 reciting his office from the Breviary. Neale went up to him, 
 and told him of the woman making her Confiteor. " Oh, I 
 know all about her," said the priest. " She comes every week, 
 and it is always the same sort of story. She overslept herself 
 on Monday, she let the soup boil over three times, neglected to 
 cross herself at table twice, omitted the Angelus four times, 
 and so on — I know how long she will take, and by that time I 
 shall be back and give her Absolution." 
 
 But till private Confession of serious, deadly sin is more 
 practised, we shall never thoroughly understand the trials and 
 needs of our people. 
 
 I was at a conference of Leeds clergy many years ago — and 
 the late Rev. N. Green we 11, of S. Barnabas, spoke of the import- 
 ance of the practice among factory lads and lasses ; and how 
 it was in his opinion the one means of keeping some straight 
 and saving those who had made a single lapse. An Evangelical 
 parson was present ; the tears came into his eyes, and he put 
 his hand across the table to Mr. Greenwell and said with a 
 choke in his voice, " You are dealing with your factory folk 
 in a way I never knew, and doing what I never have been able 
 to do." 
 
AGITATION AGAINST CONFESSION 307 
 
 The Church Times of June 22, 1877, had an article on the 
 anti-Confessional agitation of the day. "As to the Seventh 
 Commandment, one would suppose that Lord Redesdale classes 
 it with obsolete or expired Acts of Parliament. If he thinks 
 there is no need for the clergy to concern themselves with it, 
 he knows as little as his own black moldiwarps 1 about what is 
 going on in the world about him." 
 
 We live now in a different world from that of 1877. The 
 old suspicions have disappeared, the old bugbears have been 
 revealed as scarecrows. But I am not confident that there is 
 now, especially among the cultured classes, the same sense of 
 shortcoming, of neglect of duties, of tampering with evil, that 
 existed from thirty to forty years ago. It is often as dangerous 
 for a human soul to treat itself as it is for a sick body to 
 have recourse to advertised nostrums, or neglect symptoms. It 
 is not they that are whole that need the physician, but they 
 that are sick. But the first and essential condition before 
 recovery is — that they should know that they are sick. 
 
 The parochial missions which have become so general amongst 
 us have done much towards breaking down the dread of private 
 Confession. The intimate connection which the parish priest 
 has with his flock in this country, together with the fact that 
 he is usually a married man, deters many from making use 
 of this means of grace. Although the English clergyman who 
 would receive a penitent is too honourable a man to dream of 
 divulging what has been told him in confidence, yet there is 
 always the haunting fear that the wife of his bosom may 
 glean from him some hints as to what are the failings of her 
 female friends. This has no doubt proved a hindrance in the 
 way of many who would have been glad to have unburdened 
 their consciences to their parish priests. But the mission has 
 removed this obstacle, at all events as far as a first Confession 
 is concerned. It begins by rousing the conscience to a sense 
 of sin or un worthiness, it gives instruction as to how forgiveness 
 may be obtained, and then it provides, in the person of the 
 missioner, one well qualified to deal with souls. For the training 
 of the clergy is lamentably deficient in many respects, and in 
 none more so than in moral theology, and a penitent is justified 
 in availing himself of the permission accorded in the Prayer 
 Book to resort, if need be, to some other " discreet and 
 learned " priest. Only it should be remembered that " discreet 
 1 The arms of the Mitfords are three black moles. 
 
808 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 and learned " are technical terms, denoting trained men, 
 authorized by the bishop to undertake this duty. Such are 
 the priests whom the Cowley Community and that of the Resur- 
 rection at Mirfield send round, and by those who wish to avail 
 themselves of the ministry of Absolution full confidence in 
 their fitness for their office may be entertained. 
 
 That Confession may be abused, both by Confessor and peni- 
 tent, cannot be denied. But this is no argument against the 
 proper use of the institution, and anything which will help to 
 remove prejudice and dispel ignorance as to its character is to 
 be valued. One feels sure that many of those terrible disclosures 
 made public in the Divorce Court would never have occurred 
 had the parties been accustomed from their earliest years to 
 open their griefs to God's minister, and thus obtain not only 
 " the benefit of Absolution," but also " ghostly counsel and 
 advice." No one can read Fifty Years at S. Alban's, or Father 
 Dolling's Life, without seeing how greatly this means of grace 
 has been blessed in reclaiming the fallen and strengthening 
 the weak. But after all, the main thing is to arouse the sinner 
 to a sense and conviction of sin. Then, as Dr. Liddon says, 
 " people will ask to come, just as they will for medicine when 
 they are sick or in pain. And this is better than the Roman 
 system, which, by enforcing Confession mechanically, often 
 makes it sacrilegious." 1 
 
 1 Life, p. 191. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 SECESSIONS 
 
 MUCH allowance must be made for those who in the 
 early period of the Tractarian movement seceded to 
 Rome. The condition of the English Church seemed 
 hopeless, beyond the power of man to recover her 
 out of the depth to which she had fallen. 
 
 Earl Grey had warned the Bishops to set their house in order, 
 or it would be plucked down over their heads; but he, Sir 
 Robert Peel, Lord Palmerston, and Lord John Russell did much 
 to prevent the Church from setting her house in order, by 
 appointing to the vacant thrones prelates incapable of doing 
 what was needed, men, with a very few exceptions, without 
 initiative, energy, practical experience. If the house was to 
 be set in order, this was to be done not by those who were 
 its masters and were responsible, but by the underlings. It was 
 much as though a domestic mansion possessed master and mistress 
 who cared nothing for the habitation, its disorder, its dirt, its 
 ruin ; and only the scullery maid, the housemaid, and the 
 stable-boy entertained any solicitude for the decencies, to keep 
 it clean, dust the furniture, polish the windows, rub the rust 
 from the fire-irons, and put sweet hay in the horse-racks. But 
 that similitude would be incomplete, unless we added that 
 the owners of the house were disposed to chide the faithful 
 domestics, " deprecate " their energy, and protest that they 
 liked to see the rust, they savoured the smell of mildew, they 
 admired the curtains riddled with holes, they preferred to scrawl 
 their initials with fingers in the dust upon the sideboards, and 
 they wished the horses in the stables to be kept half -starved. 
 In such a case would it be wonderful if the faithful domestics 
 should throw up their charge in despair ? 
 
 This was the state of affairs in the Anglican Church. Every 
 attempt to produce decency in worship and to elevate the 
 religious tone was discouraged. Those who were true were 
 
 309 
 
310 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 browbeaten and inhibited from doing any more. Is it, then, 
 any wonder that, sick at heart and in despair, they quitted the 
 Church ? The Roman communion was by no means attractive, 
 but there was in her vigorous life, and they fled from what 
 they thought was moribund to a body in which at least there 
 was vitality. 
 
 The Early Tractarians lost heart too soon. They should 
 have remembered those Roman citizens who, when the Gauls 
 surrounded the walls, bought the farms that had been devastated 
 by the barbarians — not despairing of the Republic. 1 
 
 They should have looked across the North Sea to Germany 
 and taken a lesson thence. The parallel is so instructive that 
 I venture here to draw it out, as briefly as I may. The lethargy 
 that hung over the Catholic Church in Germany after the 
 Thirty Years' War, for nearly a century, was not broken by 
 any signs of awaking. The Bishops were princes of the Empire, 
 and left the discharge of their episcopal functions to their 
 vicars and choir-bishops. Several bishoprics were held by the 
 same man, and his duties in none were personally discharged. 
 But that was not all. They encouraged the most advanced 
 Rationalism. 
 
 The ecclesiastical electorates had been amongst the most 
 slavish followers and imitators of the luxury, licentiousness, 
 and extravagance of the French Court. Naturally, therefore, 
 Voltaire and his school, being in fashion in France, were also 
 in fashion in these ecclesiastical principalities, and paved the 
 way to an easy admission of the unbelieving tendencies of 
 the day. 
 
 The Electorate of Treves was the first affected. In 1778 
 Clemens Wenceslaus succeeded to the see, and was possessed 
 of about as much knowledge as might be expected from a 
 cavalry officer, which had been his previous position. In the 
 University of Treves, one of the canons and professors taught 
 that the doctrine of the Trinity was an invention of the school- 
 men — he received no censure. 
 
 The archiepiscopal throne of Cologne was held in the latter 
 part of the eighteenth century by Maximilian Frederick, and 
 after him by Maximilian Francis. Both of them introduced 
 rationalism into the diocese. The University of Bonn was the 
 
 1 miserum est opus, 
 Igitur demum fodere puteum, ubi sitio fauces tenet. 
 
 Plaut., Mostellaria, ii. 1. 
 
SECESSIONS 
 
 311 
 
 focus of such teaching. It taught that the expressions, Word, 
 Light, Life, used of our Lord in S. John's Gospel, were borrowed 
 from the Gnostics. 
 
 At Mainz, the Archbishop Emmerich Joseph was gained 
 over to the same school, but his successor, the last Elector of 
 Mainz, did most towards fostering rationalism in the diocese. 
 In his university efforts were made to obtain the annexation 
 of the Protestants, by the suppression of doctrines and rites 
 obnoxious to them and the abolition of the Religious Orders. 
 
 To be brief — in these prince-bishoprics every encouragement 
 was held out to laxity in the Faith. The Bishops were temporal 
 princes, and could stop the promulgation of false doctrines 
 if they chose, but instead of doing so they encouraged them. 
 Thus it was that disbelief was spreading throughout Catholic 
 Germany, favoured by the Bishops, till the Revolution came 
 and these ecclesiastical States were swept away. 
 
 And now — go into all these dioceses and you will find the 
 churches crowded, the Faith kept, hymn and psalm go up in 
 thunder to God — and the retention of all religion there is due, 
 not to the Bishops, but to humble parish priests, whose names 
 are forgotten here below, who did their duty and taught the 
 Faith, but whose names are written in the Book of Life, 
 from which those of the prince-bishops set over them have 
 been scored out with a pen dipped in the blackest ink. 1 
 
 I have dwelt on this phase of Church history in Germany 
 because the parallel is instructive to us. As in Germany the 
 true faith was maintained, so that it lives and flourishes to the 
 present day, through the earnestness and loyalty of the parish 
 priests, and not through the prelates, so was it with the 
 English Church. The Faith and the Worship of the Sanctuary 
 were saved by them in defiance of the Bishops and the State. 
 
 The mistake made by the Early Tractarians consisted in 
 this, that they looked upon the Bishops as the conservators of 
 the Faith ; they invested them with an ideal halo, as if they 
 had borne any resemblance to the prelates of ancient days. 
 They regarded them as divinely constituted guides and rulers, 
 whereas they were incompetent to be either. If they attempted 
 to rule, they ruled crooked lines ; if they essayed to act as 
 guides, they were Jacks-o '-lantern leading into miry places. 
 
 The Bishops had accorded to them the faculty of keeping 
 up the breed, and that was about all that they did. They were 
 1 See an article in the Union Review for 1869. 
 
312 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 qualified to ordain priests, and give mission j to continue the 
 succession by consecrating bishops. That was the limit of 
 their capabilities. 
 
 The Early Tract arians looked for what was not to be found, 
 and were staggered not to find it. They supposed that bishops 
 would be as war-horses rushing into the battle, and when, 
 instead, they found them halter-led along the high road by a 
 Prime Minister, they reeled back, bit their thumbs, and jumped 
 over the hedge. 
 
 In the Ancient Welsh and Irish Churches, the Bishops were 
 without jurisdiction. They were kept in every abbey and 
 convent to consecrate bishops and ordain priests. Bridget of 
 Kildare had her tame prelate whom she ordered about as she 
 might her bootboy. But the Tractarians did not realize that 
 in the nineteenth century there might be a reversion to the 
 condition of affairs that existed in the Celtic Church. Bishops 
 have accorded to them by God three faculties, powers, and duties 
 to perform: to maintain the Apostolic Succession and give 
 mission, to rule the Church in their dioceses, and to be guardians 
 of the Faith. Now the prelates appointed by Whig Prime 
 Ministers, and by others nearly as bad, were not guardians of the 
 Faith by any means. As rulers they did all in their power to 
 prevent the spiritual work that was stirring in the Church, 
 and they were good for nothing save to ordain and keep up 
 the succession. 
 
 It was not merely the failure of the Bishops to take the lead 
 in the movement that discouraged the Tractarians. It was their 
 combined, prolonged, and persistent opposition that discouraged 
 and sent so many over. At the rebuilding of the wall of Jeru- 
 salem we are told that " the rulers were behind all the house of 
 Judah." But it was not that the Bishops lagged behind that 
 was so disheartening, but that they were in league with San- 
 ballat and Tobiah in obstructing the work of the Lord. 
 
 There occurred several events which served to shake the 
 confidence of the Tractarians in the Catholicity of the English 
 Church. The first of these was a blow that led eventually to 
 the secession of John Henry Newman. This was the institution 
 of the Jerusalem Bishopric in 1841. The project began with 
 Frederick William IV of Prussia, who was desirous of intro- 
 ducing episcopacy by a side-door into the " Evangelical Church " 
 that had been created by Frederick William III, who had 
 swept Lutheranism and Calvinism aside and instituted a new 
 
SECESSIONS 
 
 313 
 
 sect as an Established Church in his own dominions. It 
 reposed, solidly on no Confession of Faith, but rested on the 
 Bible as any man chose to interpret it. 
 
 Baron Bunsen was sent to England to negotiate a union 
 between Prussia and the English Church in the establishment 
 of a Jerusalem Bishopric, the appointment to the bishopric to 
 be alternately in the hands of the Archbishop of Canterbury 
 and the King of Prussia, but the nominee of the latter was to 
 receive episcopal consecration in England. The English Govern- 
 ment favoured the scheme, as did also Howley, Archbishop of 
 Canterbury, and Blomfield, Bishop of London. These two 
 prelates acted in good faith ; they thought that by this means 
 the Evangelical " Church " of Prussia might be enabled to obtain 
 that wherein it was deficient, episcopal mission and the Apos- 
 tolic Succession. But neither of them knew or understood what 
 an emasculated and worthless creature of the State the Evan- 
 gelische Kirche actually was. Bunsen gained the help of Lord 
 Palmerston and Lord Ashley (afterwards Shaftesbury), and the 
 treaty between the Governments was signed July 15, 1841. A 
 Bill to constitute this bishopric was introduced into the House 
 of Lords and became law on October 5, 1841. 
 
 By this Act the Bishop was to be given jurisdiction over all 
 Protestant congregations in the East, beside such Anglicans as 
 were there. The Bishop was to ordain German pastors on their 
 signing the Confession of Augsburg. In public worship, the 
 English would use the Prayer Book, foreign Protestants their 
 own formularies. The Evangelicals applauded the scheme with 
 both hands, the Liberal Churchmen as well, as a first step 
 towards broadening the basis of Church membership. 
 
 But voices were raised in protest. The Bishop of Exeter 
 spoke out in remonstrance, and John Henry Newman issued his 
 protest as well. It was felt, and felt extensively, that this was 
 a compromise of Church principles, an unequal yoking together 
 of dogmatic and undogmatic Christianity j the linking in unholy 
 union of a Church with traditions going back to Augustine and 
 Gregory, with one dating from 1817 alone j of a Church founded 
 on Apostles and Prophets, with Jesus Christ as chief corner- 
 stone, and one reposing on no surer basis than a Prussian king. 
 
 If there had been purpose to obtain an Episcopate with 
 Apostolic mission for the Lutheran Communion, that would 
 have been another matter, for the Lutherans had definite beliefs, 
 and the old heresy of Luther was practically discarded ; they 
 
314 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 were, on the whole, orthodox, and they had retained the ex- 
 ternals of Catholic worship. But it was quite another matter 
 with the " Evangelical Church," which had hardly any definite 
 beliefs, no service book in the smallest degree filiating from the 
 ancient liturgies. 
 
 The first bishop appointed was a Polish converted Jew, named 
 Alexander, who was consecrated by Archbishop Howley and 
 sent to Jaffa in an English man-of-war with great flourish of 
 trumpets, attended by his suite. He drew his stipend for some 
 years, did little else, and died in 1845. To him succeeded a 
 Swiss, Gobat, and again Bishop Phillpotts issued his protest. 
 Gobat was consecrated by Archbishop Howley in 1846. Gobat 
 made himself extremely objectionable in his attempts to prosely- 
 tize among the native Christians. This roused great indigna- 
 tion among English Churchmen, and a protest couched in Greek 
 was drawn up and signed by over a thousand English priests 
 and sent to the eastern Patriarchs. Gobat, who was involved 
 in quarrels with both the English residents at Jerusalem and 
 with the authorities, died in 1879, an d was succeeded by Joseph 
 Barclay, the first native of Great Britain to occupy the see. 
 The King of Prussia made no attempt to exercise his right to 
 nominate a successor, and the treaty of 1841 was torn up in 
 1886. " I never heard of any good or harm the Jerusalem 
 Bishopric has ever done," wrote Newman in 1865, " except 
 what it has done to me. . . . It brought me on to the beginning 
 of the end." 
 
 The bishopric was reconstructed on totally different lines by 
 Archbishop Benson in 1887 ; on this occasion it was the Evan- 
 gelicals who objected, because it was distinctly understood that 
 no attempts were to be made to proselytize, but that friendly 
 intercourse was to be maintained with the Greek and Syrian 
 Churches. 
 
 A much severer blow was dealt to Churchmen by the Gorham 
 Judgment in 1850. Although in the Baptismal Service, after 
 the child has been christened, the priests declare, " Seeing now 
 that this child is regenerate," the Privy Council decided that 
 denial of Baptismal Regeneration did not disqualify a priest 
 from ministering in the Church and holding a benefice in the 
 same. 
 
 These points came then to be considered by every priest in 
 the English Church : 
 
 (1) The Judgment of the Judicial Committee of the Privy 
 
SECESSIONS 
 
 315 
 
 Council asserts that the Church of England allows formal heresy 
 to be taught by her priests. 
 
 (2) If the decision of the Judicial Committee be the voice of 
 the English Church, she is actively committed to heresy. 
 
 (3) If the decision of the Judicial Committee, which claims 
 to be the voice of the Church, be not protested against by that 
 Church, she is passively committed to heresy. 
 
 (4) On either of these two latter suppositions, it is the 
 bounden duty of all the members of the English Church, as 
 they value the salvation of their souls, to go out of her. 
 
 But against this it was urged that the Privy Council did not 
 profess to define doctrine and be the voice of the Church at all, 
 but merely to point out within what limits, in the eye of the 
 law, teaching might be allowed which would enable the teacher 
 to enjoy the pounds, shillings, and pence of a benefice in the 
 Church. The Judgment could not and did not compromise the 
 Church, any more than the Catholic Church was compromised 
 when Constantius forced Arian prelates into the sees of 
 orthodoxy. 
 
 Eventually Archdeacon Manning and a good many more did 
 secede to Rome on account of the Gorham Judgment ; but 
 such men as Pusey, Keble, Samuel Wilberforce, and Gladstone 
 realized that this was purely a State decision. 
 
 The Judgment was not without effecting some good : it cleared 
 men's minds as to the nature of the Privy Council and the 
 value of its decisions, and further, it led to the revival of 
 Convocation. 
 
 Subsequent decisions in cases of ecclesiastical appeals were 
 regarded without trepidation. In Ritual cases they produced 
 inconvenience and were disregarded. It had become clear that 
 they carried with them no moral obligation. 
 
 But the inconvenience — the prohibition of vestments, lights, 
 and the Eastward position — irritated, and men went over to 
 Rome rather than be engaged in incessant conflict with the law 
 and bear the taunts of Broad Churchmen and Evangelicals, who 
 called them law-breakers because they would not submit to the 
 rulings of courts which encroached on the rights and liberties of 
 the Church. 
 
 That which, more than anything else, drove hard-working 
 clergy over, was the attitude taken up by the Bishops against 
 Confession. These men knew by experience that they were 
 rescuing souls from the clutches of the devil, rousing them to 
 
316 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 newness of life; and they were denounced for so doing. The 
 Bishops and the press called them by evil names — what could 
 they think, but that the Church of England was so committed 
 to the world and the devil that it was hopeless for them, poor 
 isolated and contemned priests, to strive any longer in such a 
 Communion for the saving of perishing souls ? In a thousand 
 cases, there was no question as to their Orders, none as to the 
 validity of the Sacraments ; there was no great attraction 
 exercised by the Papacy : it was simply the hunger after the 
 salvation of souls that led them to desert the Anglican Com- 
 munion, in which every possible impediment was put in the 
 way of doing this work, a work in which frankly and cheerfully 
 it was recognized lay the highest duty of a priest of God. 
 
 In the early days of the Oxford Movement, the beautiful 
 chapel on Wakefield Bridge that had been erected by Edward IV 
 had long been used as a lumber room, containing empty casks. 
 It was restored under the care of the incumbent of the parish, 
 and reopened for Divine worship. He had furnished the chapel 
 with an altar, and had placed on it a cross of carved oak, with 
 a sunk panel at the intersection of the arms, containing a 
 representation of the Sacred Lamb. Popular Protestantism 
 took alarm ; a fanatical mob invaded the chapel and threw the 
 cross from the altar, and in so doing split the pedestal. Dis- 
 couraged by the outbreak, and despairing of the English Church, 
 the vicar seceded to Rome, and sent back the cross to the 
 wood-carver in Cambridge from whom he had purchased it. 
 From this man I bought it in 1853 ; and, singularly enough, it 
 returned in 1864 to the neighbourhood of Wakefield, where, in 
 1865, it found a place in amission started in an outlying factory 
 district of Horbury. There the cross stood on the mantelshelf 
 of the upper chamber in a two-roomed cottage. Before the 
 fireplace was a narrow footpace for the missioner. The con- 
 gregation not only occupied the chapel-chamber, but also the 
 stairs and the kitchen below. When a favourite hymn was being 
 sung, the strain rippled down the staircase, and came up lag- 
 gingly from the nether chamber, through the chinks in the floor, 
 like the voice of " Old Mole," Hamlet's father's ghost. 
 
 In course of a few years a commodious school-chapel was 
 erected, and the cross was transferred thither. But a certain 
 young and wealthy layman, recently awakened to the things 
 of God, presented to the mission-chapel a brass altar-cross, and 
 that of wood was displaced. The donor, however, did not 
 
SECESSIONS 
 
 317 
 
 remain in the Anglican Communion. He also seceded. The 
 Wakefield Bridge cross eventually found a home on the altar 
 of a parish church in Devonshire, where it remained for twenty 
 years, till the parishioners — not thinking it grand enough — sub- 
 scribed their sixpences and pennies for one of brass. Now the 
 old cross has taken a back place in a window. What experiences 
 it has gone through ! If it could talk, what a tale it would un- 
 fold of buoyant hopes and cruel disappointments, what a story 
 of the progress of the Catholic Revival in the English Church ! 
 
 The movement has been like the flow of a stream of molten 
 iron from a furnace, at first throwing off a shower of scintillations, 
 that flashed out as stars, and fell down slag — a flow surmount- 
 ing all obstacles, burning up all obstructions. As these sparks 
 arrested and dazzled the eye when they flashed into sight, so 
 did the secessions attract much notice and create alarm. There 
 were many at first, then they became progressively fewer, with 
 only spasmodic outbursts. 
 
 It is well to consider what were the motives inducing men 
 to "go over " to Rome, in addition to those already mentioned, 
 and which occurred at the outset, before Churchmen had found 
 their feet : motives, rather than convictions — for, at least to 
 my mind, it seems hard to suppose that any persons could be 
 convinced of the claims of the Papacy who knew the history of 
 the Latin Church, unless blindly predisposed thereto. In fact, 
 the history of the Papacy is the most complete refutation of its 
 claims to be a Divine institution. 
 
 I do not for a moment pretend to give all the motives for 
 " Verting." I give only such as have been most common, and 
 have come under my own notice. There have been others, 
 certainly, and there have been sincere convictions, but the 
 desire to be convinced almost invariably precedes conviction. 
 When a man wants to believe that the moon is a cheese, he easily 
 assures himself that it is so. He sees in it the bubbles of 
 Gruyere with the naked eye. 
 
 One motive for " 'verting " was discouragement at the slow- 
 ness of the progress of the revival. Men were disappointed 
 that they did not obtain at once the success they had anticipated. 
 They lost patience because their efforts did not meet with im- 
 mediate response. Grass does not spring up in a night after a 
 shower. It is Jonah's gourd that leaps to fullness in a night, 
 and in a night withers away. It is the toadstool only that 
 attains completeness in a few hours. 
 
318 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 In fact, these men were influenced by the Wesleyan doctrine 
 of sudden conversion — that a man who is a child of Satan at 
 twenty minutes to six, by a sudden internal commotion of the 
 ganglions becomes an elect saint at six o'clock. They con- 
 ceived that those who, in their past life, had been steeped in 
 Protestant negations, should make a volte-face at their words, 
 and become in a day convinced Anglo-Catholics. Why, even a 
 snake, to get rid of its old skin, has to wedge itself between 
 two stones and writhe till it can shed the enamelled hide that 
 has become too strait for its expanding life. 
 
 In the early days of the Oxford Movement, the secessions 
 caused by the Gobat and Gorham troubles, and the antagonism 
 of the Bishops, produced widespread mistrust and alarm, and 
 checked the movement, paralysed it almost. At the present 
 day they produce almost no effect. Men curl their lips and 
 shrug their shoulders, and put the change down to some mental 
 or moral taint in the individual. The judgment passed is 
 usually partial, but all agree that the loss is of no serious conse- 
 quence. The newspapers teem with accounts of suicides, and 
 the general verdict is that it is sad for those who have put an 
 end to their own existence, but that the world rubs along very 
 well without them. And so, in religious matters, the Church 
 of England need not concern herself greatly over a dozen or a 
 couple of dozen seceders ; she is sorry for them, but their defect 
 is hardly felt. We get rid of our cranks when we install electric 
 bell- wires. 
 
 I myself very greatly doubt whether the balance is not made 
 up by those who migrate from the Roman Communion to the 
 English Church, and these are far more than is generally sup- 
 posed. One of these said to me not long ago : " Wait a bit. 
 When you have further shaken off your Protestantism, there 
 will be a landslide, and masses of the old Romans, who abominate 
 Vaticanism, will come over to the English Church." 
 
 Meanwhile the Roman Catholic papers publish reports of 
 conversions that I doubt have been really made. Here is one 
 of these (1911) : 
 
 " The Irish papers publish, on the basis of an episcopal state- 
 ment, an interesting collection of statistics with regard to con- 
 versions to the Catholic Church in England during the last 
 five years. These collected statistics contain the names of 572 
 members of the clergy of the Anglican Church, 22 of the Scottish 
 Episcopal Church, and 12 clergymen of the Nonconformist 
 
SECESSIONS 
 
 319 
 
 Dissenters. During the same period 29 male and 53 female 
 members of noble families, and 63 members of the highest 
 orders of the State (in all 577), came over to the Catholic Church. 
 Of officers in the Army 306, and of the Navy 63 are given as 
 converts, and more than 1,000 persons with academical degrees, 
 of whom 586 were of the University of Oxford. Of the converts 
 612 became clergymen, and 100 members of the Order of Jesuits/' 
 
 " The wish, Harry, is father to the thought." The whole 
 paragraph is absurd. In the last thirty years I have known 
 personally only four secede rs, and two of these were women. 
 One was a priest, who set up a chapel near where he had been 
 curate, hoping to draw after him a number of the faithful, 
 and secured none. A second lapsed into — I cannot say what. 
 
 Now we have the columns of the principal Roman organ, the 
 Tablet, that chronicles all secessions. The Rev. Percy Dearmer 
 has carefully examined the files of the Tablet for the five years 
 under consideration, with the following results : 
 
 " The Tablet gives 19 clergy of the Church of England instead 
 of 572 ; 2 of the Episcopal Church of Scotland, instead of 22 ; 
 none of Ireland ; only about 6 persons who can be brought 
 under the head of noble families or higher orders in the State, 
 instead of 577 ; two officers of the Army and Navy instead of 
 369 ; 11 graduates from the Universities instead of 1,000. 
 This makes in all 40 persons instead of a minimum of 2,352." 
 
 Then, again, no record is kept of those who leave the Roman 
 Communion, and either join the English Church or, what is 
 more common, lapse into indifference to all religion. I have 
 known not a few of these latter, and some of the former. Let 
 any of my readers muster those whom he has known who have 
 seceded in the last quarter of a century, and he will recognize 
 how scant are the numbers. As the Catholic faith is taught 
 and the Sacraments are more frequently and more reverently 
 celebrated, those raised in the Anglican Church feel no dis- 
 position to leave her. They obtain in her all that their souls 
 desire, and they are not cumbered with the superstitions, frauds, 
 and falsehoods which are the curse of Latin Christianity, that 
 shock and repel the healthy mind. The Papacy cannot get 
 rid of its past, its false Decretals, its Inquisition and autos-da-fe, 
 the massacres in the Albigensian Crusade, its indulgenced dolls 
 and privileged altars. 
 
 The Bishop of Bristol, for his Visitation Charge of 19 12, took 
 steps to explode the statements which from time to time appear 
 
320 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 in Roman Catholic journals as to the number of English clergy 
 who join the Roman Church. He made inquiries in the several 
 dioceses, and found that during the last five years the " number 
 of Roman clergy who have approached our diocesan bishops 
 with a view to admission to minister in the National Church 
 is larger, absolutely, not merely relatively, than the number 
 of our clergy who have joined the Church of Rome, and the 
 number actually admitted is relatively considerable." He 
 added that " during his own experience as a bishop several 
 Roman priests have come to him, chiefly when he was Bishop 
 of Stepney, and he had not been able to recommend one of 
 them to the Archbishop for admission." The Bishop continued : 
 " The result of our conversations was that I quite saw the 
 force of their desire to leave their ministry, but I could not 
 see why they should come to us." 
 
 w I think," said Mrs. Gossett, " that this Brussels carpet is 
 becoming threadbare near the table and by the door. I will 
 have it turned, and it will be as good as new." A very potent 
 motive, especially among the clergy, for secession, was that 
 they, like Mrs. Gossett 's carpet, would be better for being turned. 
 They were becoming threadbare. In their first enthusiasm 
 they had set themselves a higher standard of life than they 
 felt themselves capable of permanently maintaining. The first 
 ardour of zeal had cooled. The nap was gone, and the threads 
 had become exposed. Their self-inflicted obligations and morti- 
 fications were more onerous than they could endure in the 
 long run. The severe fasts, the incessant prayer, the ecstatic 
 spiritual exaltation were what flesh and blood could not con- 
 tinuously support. Aeroplanes cannot always remain above 
 the clouds, they must come down to earth at some time. These 
 men, when they began to realize that they could not maintain 
 themselves at the high spiritual elevation to which they had 
 mounted, looked out for a convenient place to which to descend, 
 and found it in Rome. They caught at an easy method of 
 starting afresh on a lower plane in another Communion. 
 
 Now conceive the temptation to a man who has lived on 
 badly cooked meat, tough beefsteak, much cheese and swipes, 
 to abandon all this, and by a change of religion to be able to 
 dine at Frascati's and go to a music-hall. 
 
 That the desire for emancipation from burdensome obliga- 
 tions and high spiritual tension was a cause of some secessions 
 could not be doubted when one observed the much lower 
 
SECESSIONS 
 
 321 
 
 spiritual tone acquired by those who had " 'verted." I recall 
 a case some while ago when a clergyman who had been a zealous 
 worker for God was seen, a few weeks after his reception into the 
 Roman Church, sauntering on the esplanade in a shooting-coat, 
 check pants, a coloured tie, and a cigar in his mouth, ostenta- 
 tiously flaunting his freedom in the face of his former congre- 
 gation as they were leaving church. This was an extreme and 
 exceptional instance of bad taste, but " 'verts " were rather 
 proud of extolling the easy time they had since their seces- 
 sion. It was by no means rare that such as " went over " 
 were not improved morally or spiritually by their change. 
 
 Converts have very generally an ostentatious way about them 
 of obtruding their change upon our notice, much as little boys 
 straddle and display their legs when first breeched. 
 
 The Rev. E. S. Ffoulkes, himself a " 'vert," wrote in 1868 : 
 " What people say of those generally who have become Roman 
 Catholics in England of late years, is that they have deteriorated 
 as a body rather than advanced. The foremost of them have 
 not progressed in any perceptible degree — perceptible, that is, 
 to others — beyond the high standard which they had attained 
 before. . . . Others, every allowance being made for the peculiar 
 trials to which they have been subjected, have notoriously 
 descended to a lower level of Christianity since they became 
 Roman Catholics, from that in which they had been working 
 previously ; and some have been driven from their moorings — 
 in appearance at least — altogether." 1 
 
 From a distance the Roman Church exercises a great fascina- 
 tion over some. It is like the loadstone mountain in the voyage 
 of Sindbad, that attracts to it ships that have in them iron nails, 
 only, alas ! to draw out the rivets and wreck the vessel. And 
 these nails are the vigorous principles, the strong sense of honour 
 and value for truth that were in them when in the English Com- 
 munion — all too often extracted, and the moral nature left to 
 go to pieces. 
 
 Those who have seceded often find speedy disillusioning. 
 Many then remain, sadly looking back, afraid of the gibes they 
 would encounter if they were to retrace their steps. 
 
 It was precisely those who, from their early training, never 
 had realized the Church as a living reality, that lost their balance 
 and began the Roman secession. These early converts went, 
 thinking that it was all up with the Anglican Communion. With 
 
 1 The Church's Creed and the Crown's Creed (1868). 
 
 21 
 
322 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 what amazement must such have watched the advance made 
 all along the line by the Church of England since they abandoned 
 her ! In not a few cases there has ensued an aching of heart, 
 and a longing to be back in the lap of their mother. I knew 
 the case of a vicar in London who had seceded. Years after, 
 when he thought he would be unobserved, he stole back to 
 his abandoned parish church, and there, kneeling, burst into 
 uncontrollable sobs and tears. 
 
 Out of the number who at one time left the Anglican priest- 
 hood for that of Rome, what a small percentage has made a 
 mark in the Church of their adoption ! Newman and Manning 
 indeed became Cardinals, Faber and " Ideal " Ward obtained 
 some eminence, and perhaps there may have been a few more. 
 But, pace Mrs. Gossett, a turned carpet is never as good as one 
 that is new. 
 
 On the other hand, consider those Dissenting ministers who 
 have been received into the Church and have been ordained — 
 how, almost invariably, they have been not only themselves 
 spiritually raised, but have become a power in the Anglican 
 Communion. 
 
 One thing that is felt by many and leads them to Rome is 
 the lack of an authoritative voice in the Church of England, and 
 this is what they can obtain in that of Rome. It is supposed 
 that our Communion lacks a feature of capital importance, 
 which is emphasized strongly in the other. The doubtful cry 
 out for guidance in the problems of life, for a hand to help them 
 among the complexities of the twentieth century. They say, 
 " Old moorings are broken. Sanctions which had been un- 
 questioned for centuries are being set aside. There are alarm and 
 confusion, and many are crying out for a living Ecclesia docens. 
 The wilderness seems getting darker and more perilous, and the 
 sheep look for guidance. They must have a living voice. It is 
 of little use referring them to the Apostolic age, or to the Church 
 of the first six centuries, or to the united voice of East and West 
 before the schism, or even to the voice of the Western Church 
 before the catastrophes of the sixteenth century. All these 
 affected other times, other circumstances ; we want a voice 
 that will speak to us now, and will help us in the difficulties of 
 the twentieth century. Can the Church of England do this ? 
 
 But before adopting the Papacy as a guide to be trusted, 
 before accepting the voice of the Pope as authoritative, there 
 are certain points to be considered: 
 
SECESSIONS 
 
 323 
 
 (1) Whether Christ gave to S. Peter the prerogative of infalli- 
 bility as authorized exponent of the truth, and supremacy as well. 
 
 (2) Whether S. Peter founded the Church of Rome, and if so 
 whether he was authorized to transmit his supremacy and 
 infallibility to his successors. 
 
 (3) Whether, when the voice has been used authoritatively, 
 it has always proved reliable. 
 
 I. The Papacy relies practically for its religious sanction 
 on one special passage : " Thou art Peter, and upon this rock 
 I will build My Church . . . and I will give unto thee the keys 
 of the kingdom of heaven : and whatsoever thou shalt bind 
 on earth shall be bound in heaven : and whatsoever thou shalt 
 loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven " (Matt. xvi. 18, 19). 
 This was not a grant, but the promise of a future grant. The 
 same promise was made to all the Apostles (xviii. 18), and the 
 promise was fulfilled after the Resurrection, when the same 
 power was granted to all the Apostles equally (John xx. 22, 23). 
 The other Gospels beside S. Matthew's record the fall of Peter, 
 but only that of S. Matthew the saying about the Rock. Had 
 this involved a doctrine of first importance, it would surely 
 have been recorded in the other three. If this saying were 
 the giving to Peter and his successors a primatial authority, 
 with infallibility and supremacy, then we may conclude that 
 what follows soon after — " Get thee behind Me, Satan : thou 
 art an offence unto Me : for thou savourest not the things that 
 be of God, but those that be of men " — applied not to him only, 
 but to the successors of Peter as well. 
 
 The words of Christ as to Peter and the Rock would never 
 have conveyed to the believing Hebrews the idea that it con- 
 stituted Peter supreme over the Church. 1 Wherever in the Old 
 Testament the work Rock is spiritually used to denote the 
 basis and strength of the Hebrew Church, or the refuge of 
 believers, it invariably means none save God Himself, and it has 
 the same signification in the New Testament in other passages 
 where used. 2 
 
 The Creed of Pope Pius IV, binding on all Romanists, requires 
 this : " Neither will I take and interpret them (the Scriptures) 
 otherwise than according to the unanimous consent of the 
 
 1 All ancient authorities on the subject are agreed that the original 
 Matthew's Gospel was written in Aramaic, and only later — perhaps about 
 a.d. 100 — translated into Greek. 
 
 2 See "Legal Evidence of Scripture on the Petrine Claims" {Church 
 Quarterly, vol. xi. 38). 
 
324 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 Fathers." This cuts away the received Roman interpretation 
 of Tu es Petrus, etc., for the Fathers were by no means unani- 
 mous in so interpreting the passage. Twenty-four of them 
 make the Rock to be the Faith Peter professed. Sixteen make 
 Christ Himself the Rock, eight make the Church to be founded 
 equally on all the Apostles ; and although seventeen do under- 
 stand the text as applying to Peter, it is as starting the 
 gathering into the Church of Jew and Gentile by his preaching 
 (Acts ii. and x.). Consequently Romanists are precluded from 
 relying on this text. 
 
 Had the Church looked to S. Peter and his successors as the 
 authorized exponents of the Truth, there would have been no 
 need for (Ecumenical Councils. Whenever doubt arose, prelates 
 would have appealed direct to the Apostolic See and not have 
 met to debate. 
 
 II. Again, we have sufficient evidence that S. Peter as well 
 as S. Paul died a martyr's death at Rome ; but evidence that he 
 founded the Church there, as he did that at Antioch,is far from 
 certain. It is possible that he may have preached to the Jewish 
 converts and organized them into a community — if so, it was 
 a Church that dwindled and finally disappeared. 1 That he did 
 found the Church at Antioch we know from tradition, 2 and 
 might have expected, had Peter possessed the prerogative of 
 infallibility and the power of transmitting it to his successors, 
 that the Patriarchs of Antioch would have spoken with authori- 
 tative voice. Supposing that S. Peter did found the Church 
 of Rome, why should his successor there arrogate to himself a 
 privilege to which the successors of the Apostle at Antioch had 
 as just a claim ? 
 
 One would have supposed that the Church of Antioch, instead 
 of becoming notorious for its lapses into heresy, would have 
 maintained its orthodoxy unshaken, as founded on the Rock 
 of Peter. As it did not, we have no guarantee that the Church 
 of Rome, supposing it to have been based on Peter, should be 
 the infallible exponent of the truth. 
 
 1 S. Epiphanius tells us that there was this double origin of the Roman 
 Church, and so only can be solved the confusion that exists as to the suc- 
 cession of the Bishops of Rome in the early period : some authorities make 
 Linus the first after the Apostle, and others make Clement first. Irenaeus 
 puts Clement in the third place, with Anencletus or Anacletus as his 
 predecessor. 
 
 2 S. John Chrysostom speaks in glowing terms of S. Peter, but as the 
 founder of the Church of Antioch. Rome, he says, may have his body, 
 but we Antiochenes possess his faith. 
 
SECESSIONS 
 
 325 
 
 As a matter of fact all we learn from the Epistles is that 
 the Roman Church was founded by S. Paul among the Gentiles, 
 and that Church grew and lived, whereas we find that the Judaeo- 
 Christian community died. It was to the Church in Rome that 
 S. Paul addressed his apostolic Epistle, and from the Epistles 
 of S. Paul we learn nothing about Peter, save the interesting 
 fact that he always travelled about with his wife, and that, 
 whilst Paul arrogated to himself " the care of all the Churches," 
 he limits Peter's province to the " Apostleship of the Circum- 
 cision " (Gal. ii. 8). " So ordain I in all the Churches," said 
 S. Paul. How could he have said that, had Peter been supreme ? 
 How could S. James have presided at the first Council of Jeru- 
 salem instead of S. Peter ? How could S. Paul have rebuked 
 S. Peter for harking back at Antioch to Jewish tradition, had 
 Peter been supreme ? The testimony of Scripture is dead against 
 the claims of the Papacy. Irenseus (d. c. 202) and Clement 
 of Alexandria (d. c. 217) state that Peter and Paul preached 
 together at Rome, and founded the Church there. Caius the 
 Priest (c. 200) refers to the trophies of the Apostles, meaning 
 their tombs, near the city, and adds that these two established 
 the Roman Church. Such are the only early testimonies. Had 
 it been a matter of faith that the Roman See was founded by 
 S. Peter, and was to be supreme, assuredly we should have 
 been furnished with proper evidence to that effect, as by the 
 M Acts of the Apostles " carrying on the story to the appearance 
 of Peter in Rome, and to his apostleship there. 
 
 As to evidence that S. Peter was commissioned and empowered 
 to transmit to his successors the authority to proclaim what was 
 de fide and what was not — there is none whatever. 
 
 Repeated statement does not make a statement true. We 
 desire evidence — and we are given none. Persistent assevera- 
 tion convinces only such as have not the minds or the leisure 
 for examining whether the assertion be warranted or the con- 
 trary. " The lady (the Roman Catholic Church) doth protest 
 too much, methinks." 
 
 With the Church through the Middle Ages, the Pope has played 
 the part of Petruccio with Katherine, breaking the spirit till 
 she repeats all that he says, and has no will of her own : 
 
 Forward, I pray, since we be come so far, 
 And be it moon or sun or what you please ; 
 And if you please to call it a rush candle, 
 Henceforth I vow it shall be so for me. 
 
326 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 " They have no support in the Fathers, sir : in the first 
 three centuries, not one word." Thus spoke Dr. Routh, by far 
 the most learned divine of the early Tractarian period, con- 
 cerning the Ultramontane claims. 
 
 The doctrine of S. Peter's apostleship in Rome and the 
 foundation there of the Church by him rests on the Clementine 
 fabrication. The Recognitions and the Homilies were an early 
 Ebionite-Christian romance, having no foundation in fact. 
 Clement is represented as a young Gentile heathen, who hears 
 and follows S. Peter. The Apostle is disputing with Simon 
 Magus, who, when overcome in argument, flies from place to 
 place, and is pursued by S. Peter, till at last the Apostle con- 
 founds him in Rome. When Simon was attempting to fly, 
 Peter prayed ; he fell and was killed. Along with this is 
 woven the story that is found in the Menoechmi of Plautus, 
 which has been rendered for the English stage in the Comedy 
 of Errors. The Clementines, as we have them, are not in their 
 primitive form, they are based on an earlier romance, The Circuits 
 of Peter. To one or more of the Clementines is prefixed a 
 spurious epistle purporting to have been addressed by Clement 
 to S. James, Bishop of Jerusalem, after the death of S. Peter, 
 describing how Peter had consecrated him (Clement) to be his 
 successor as Bishop of Rome ; the Apostle is said therein to 
 have laid his hands on Clement, and compelled him " to sit 
 in his (Peter's) chair." The original of the Clementines appeared 
 probably in the second century, and on it is based mainly, and 
 out of it grew, the fable of the Petrine origin of the See of Rome. 1 
 
 We might have supposed that the Roman catacombs would 
 have yielded some evidence referable to S. Peter as founder of 
 the Church there. Among the remains in those of the first two 
 centuries there is nothing. It is not till we reach the fourth, 
 when the Clementine romance had become known and popular, 
 and was generally believed as true history, that traces of Peter 
 appear. 
 
 In 419 Papal legates to the Church of Carthage claimed for 
 Zosimus, Pope of Rome, appellate jurisdiction, on the ground 
 that it had been accorded to the successors of S. Peter by the 
 Council of Nicsea. The Carthaginian Bishops were surprised. 
 They could find no trace of such a canon in the copies they 
 possessed of the decrees of that (Ecumenical Council, and when 
 
 1 Pullen (F. M.), The Primitive Saints and the See of Rome (1900), pp. 
 41-9 ; Bright (W.), The Roman See and the Early Church (1896), pp. 12, 13. 
 
SECESSIONS 
 
 327 
 
 they applied to the Churches of Alexandria and Constantinople, 
 they ascertained that neither in their collections was such a canon 
 to be found. It then appeared that the canon in question was 
 supposed to have been passed in the Council of Sardica, 343, 
 which was never reckoned as (Ecumenical, and which, even 
 if genuine, made Julius of Rome personally the referee. Sus- 
 picion exists that the canon is not genuine. Yet it was quoted 
 as a canon of Nicaea by other Popes — Boniface I and Ccelestine I, 
 and by Innocent I ; and Leo I in 449 again alleged that 
 the Council of Nicaea had passed this canon. Now there is 
 preserved, in a copy of the canons at Rome, the very one from 
 which Innocent quoted, and in this particular canon the name 
 of Silvester, who was contemporary with the Nicaean Council, is 
 fraudulently given in place of Julius. Zonaras in his Annals, 
 1 1 18, speaks of this trick of quoting the canon of Sardica as of 
 Nicaea as a common practice of Rome: " The Bishops of Rome 
 falsely say that this is the canon of the first General Council 
 of Nicaea." 1 The appellate jurisdiction of the Papacy actually 
 rests on a decree of Valentinian III, in a rescript addressed to 
 jEtius, commander-in-chief in Gaul, dictated, there can exist no 
 reasonable doubt, by Pope Leo I, in 446. It simply swarms 
 with falsehoods. " It is impossible to lay too much stress on 
 this nefarious transaction, which was the true beginning of 
 the Papal usurpation over the Church, which fitly appears as the 
 result of no divine grant, but of the reckless edict of a dissolute 
 secular tyrant, who closed his infamous career with murder, by 
 his own hand and sword, of the illustrious general ^Etius (the 
 very person to whom the above rescript was addressed), and 
 with the violation of a noble Roman matron, decoyed to his 
 palace by a fraud, whose husband avenged his wrong by shedding 
 the ravisher's blood. This edict of Valentinian III, not the speech 
 of Christ to Peter uttered at Caesarea Philippi, is the charter 
 of the modern Papacy." 2 
 
 But, as may well be supposed, the Papacy little relished having 
 to allow that its authority reposed on so scandalous a basis. 
 Accordingly the questionable Canon of Sardica was followed 
 by a whole series of fabrications. Epistles, decrees, attributed 
 to many Popes, from the days of S. Peter downwards, were 
 
 1 Hussey (R.)» The Rise of the Papal Power (1851), pp. 47-52. 
 
 2 "The Dawn of the Papal Monarchy" (Church Quarterly Review, 
 xxiii. 199) ; see also Pullen, The Primitive Saints and the See of Rome 
 (1900), pp. 200-2. 
 
328 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 systematically forged and passed off as genuine on the unsus- 
 picious Western Church. 
 
 Beginning with the fictions in the Liber Pontificalis down to 
 530, " a calculated forgery," there ensued the False Decretals, 
 by the Pseudo- Isidore, compiled at the beginning of the ninth 
 century (about 868 or 869). Pope Nicolas I met the doubts 
 of the Frank Bishops as to their genuineness with the assur- 
 ance that the Roman Church had long preserved all these 
 documents in her archives with honour j and this was a 
 deliberate lie, for the compilation had but recently been made 
 and put into his hands. 1 It would be difficult to find, in all 
 history, a second instance of so successful and yet so clumsy a 
 forgery. It revolutionized the constitution of the Western Church. 
 Then came Gregory VII, surrounded by a gang of forgers, or 
 collectors of spurious writings, Anselm of Lucca, Gregory of 
 Pa via, Deusdedit, and others who set themselves to build up 
 and amplify the work of the false Isidore. When in the sixteenth 
 century the fact of the Decretals being a fabrication was estab- 
 lished by critics, their books were put on the Index, and a 
 Cardinal's hat was conferred on the Spaniard Aguirre in reward 
 for his attempt — the last ever made — to rehabilitate the pseudo- 
 Isidore in 1682. A century later, in 1789, Pius VI was compelled 
 to admit that the collection was a fabrication. Based on the 
 forged Decretals, falsified canons of genuine councils, and in- 
 vented canons of councils that never existed, Gratian, in the 
 middle of the twelfth century, compiled his Decretum. 2 No book 
 ever came near it in its influence in the Church ; it served to 
 stereotype the revolution that had been effected in the con- 
 stitution of the Catholic Church in the West. Like the succes- 
 sive courses in a building, one laid on and covering another, so 
 layer after layer of forgeries and falsifications formed the sub- 
 
 1 The letter of Pope Nicolas I, under date 869, may be read in Baronius, 
 Ann. Eccl. xii.-xv. He had previously affirmed the authenticity of these 
 forgeries in a letter to the Patriarch Photius {ibid. xv.). Forgery was, 
 in fact, practised as a fine art by Churchmen in the Middle Ages. Few 
 abbeys were without sophisticated charters. See Howorth (Sir H.), 
 Augustine the Missionary (191 3, pp. xxxvi et seq.), for numerous instances 
 in England. See the example set by Rome : 
 
 In order to obtain from King Pepin territorial sovereignty in Italy, 
 a Donation from Constantine to Pope Silvester was forged, on the 
 strength of which the sovereignty was claimed, not as a grant, but as a 
 restitution. The success of this piece of iniquity encouraged to later 
 falsifications. 
 
 2 The Decretum of Gratian quotes 324 times epistles of the early Popes. 
 Of these 3 1 3 are from spurious letters, and of the remaining 11 it is 
 not certain that they are genuine. 
 
SECESSIONS 
 
 329 
 
 stance of the Papal claims and gave them their worthless 
 authority. 
 
 Then followed the issue of a catena of spurious quotations 
 from Greek Fathers and councils, fabricated in the thirteenth 
 century by a Latin theologian, a Dominican, it is supposed, 
 who had long lived in the East. This catena deceived S. Thomas 
 Aquinas, who unsuspectingly embodied it in his Theology, and 
 since then these quotations have been accepted as genuine 
 and quoted repeatedly as genuine — yet forged they were, and 
 now are grudgingly acknowledged as such. 
 
 The Popes have been apologized for in acting upon these 
 spurious decrees, and taking advantage of them for the building 
 up of their power, on the plea that they themselves did not 
 fabricate them j but, as Dr. Salmon has pointed out, the case 
 is much the same as that of a man who has not himself forged 
 a cheque, but who presents one that has been forged by some one 
 else, and pockets the money. 
 
 With respect to the New Testament texts quoted by Roman 
 apologists, a signification is put upon them that was not thought 
 of by the Early Church, and such quotations as they produce 
 have to be verified and the context studied before accepting 
 them. It was a custom among Cornish mining captains, when 
 a widely advertised lode was visited by prospective investors, 
 to " salt the mine," that is to say, to blast sufficient tin ore 
 into the sterile rock to make it appear rich and inspire con- 
 fidence in the visitors. In like manner, Ultramontane writers 
 have dealt with Scripture and the Fathers. They have blasted 
 into them that which was never originally present there. 
 
 No fact is more strongly established than that the whole 
 Papal claim to supremacy and infallibility is based on a fiction 
 and built up piecemeal with profligate mendacity. 
 
 III. We have next to consider whether the authoritative 
 voice of the Pope has always proved reliable. Innocent III 
 sent a horde of the scum of Europe against the Albigenses to 
 massacre, rob, and outrage these poor, ignorant people, because 
 they would not be converted by his missionaries ; and he 
 promised them heaven as their reward. They acted on his 
 exhortations, and committed frightful atrocities, turning the 
 fair fields of Provence into a shambles. 
 
 Did not Julius II, by Bull dated October 2, 1507, throw the 
 cloak of infallibility over that preposterous fraud, the Holy 
 House of Loretto ? And on the grounds that this house was 
 
330 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 translated by angel hands from Bethlehem to Loretto, Bulls 
 were granted to confirm its privileges by Leo X, Adrian VI, 
 and Clement VII. Thousands and tens of thousands of pilgrims 
 visit Loretto to obtain the indulgences accorded to them on so 
 doing, and they go relying on the authority of the Papacy. 
 
 Did not Leo XIII authorize a proper office and mass in honour 
 of the Lourdes apparition, babbling ungrammatical nonsense ? 
 And did not Pius X, on November 13, 1907, extend the festival 
 of this apparition as obligatory on the whole Church, to be 
 observed on February 11 ? 
 
 At few times did the calumniated more need a protecting 
 hand extended over them, and the Western world more require 
 an authoritative voice controlling and instructing, than in the 
 fifteenth century, when the mad fear of witchcraft fell on the 
 people. And how did the Papacy utter its authoritative voice ? 
 On December 5, 1484, Pope Innocent VIII issued a Bull Summis 
 desiderantes that encouraged and systematized the judicial 
 murders of poor ignorant women and men charged with witch- 
 craft, and inaugurated a reign of terror which invaded every 
 country of Europe where the voice of the Pope was heard, left 
 whole principalities mere smoking places of execution, and 
 decimated their inhabitants. 
 
 Pope Leo X, in his bull Exsurge in 1520, condemned as 
 pestiferous and heretical the declaration of Luther " that to 
 burn heretics is against the will of the Holy Spirit." By this 
 Roman Catholics are bound. 
 
 On May 27, 1632, Galileo was condemned, and his doctrine 
 pronounced to be heretical, because he showed that the world 
 moved round the sun. 
 
 In 1704, the Sacred Congregation of the Inquisition decided 
 
 that the Orders in the Abyssinian Church were valid, where the 
 
 Archbishop ordains only when some eight to ten thousand 
 
 candidates have been assembled. They stand in rows, and he 
 
 walks up and down in front of them, imposes his hand on each, 
 
 and says : " Receive the Holy Ghost ! " Nothing more. But 
 
 in the case of English Orders the Pope pronounced them invalid 
 
 through deficiency of form and intent. In 1875 an awkward 
 
 attempt was made to wriggle out of this contradiction. 1 It 
 
 1 Church Quarterly Review (1878), p. 276. Here is another case: 
 Sixtus V undertook to provide a version of S. Jerome's Latin Bible that 
 should be authentic. " His Bull declared that this edition, corrected by 
 his own hand, must be received and used by everybody as the only true 
 and genuine one, under pain of excommunication ; every change, even of 
 
SECESSIONS 
 
 331 
 
 must be remembered that the Congregation of the Inquisition 
 is the official organ of the Pope in all matters connected with 
 the Faith. 
 
 Then again, in the domain of morals, is the Pope a sure 
 guide ? It is not difficult to test such a claim. On September 6, 
 1816, Alfonso Liguori was canonized by Pope Gregory XVI, 
 and on March 23, 1871, Pius IX raised him to the dignity of a 
 Doctor of the Church, on a level with S. Augustine and S. 
 Gregory, on account of the value of his Moral Theology, and 
 now this work of Liguori is the accredited guide to Confessors 
 in dealing with souls. His system is one that destroys all sense 
 of truth, and raises equivocation to a fine art. I can but give 
 one specimen. He teaches that if an adulteress be asked by her 
 husband whether she has been faithless, she is justified in 
 answering that she has not, for she can affirm she has not broken 
 the marriage tie, for that bond in the eye of the Church is 
 indissoluble j or again, if after her transgression she has been 
 to Confession and been absolved, she may deny that she is 
 guilty, because her guilt has been purged by Absolution ; or, 
 thirdly, if charged with adultery, she may repudiate it by 
 giving to the term its metaphorical, Biblical sense of idolatry. 
 
 Is it to be wondered at that among Romanists, as compared 
 with Protestants, the standard of truthfulness is low ? The 
 morality of any religious body may be measured by the authorized 
 pronouncements of its teachers, and by the practical results of 
 their teaching. If a hydrangea produce blue flowers instead of 
 pink, you know that it has been watered with liquid impregnated 
 with iron rust. You do not gather grapes of thorns, or figs of 
 thistles ; and if a tree is known by its fruit, so also is a Church. 
 We have but to look at the lands and peoples where Romanism 
 is the general religion, and test the results. Is the condition of 
 morality and the appreciation of truth in Spain, Italy, France, 
 Mexico, South America, higher than in Protestant lands ? Are 
 
 a single word, being forbidden under anathema. But it soon appeared 
 that it was full of blunders, some two thousand of which had been intro- 
 duced by the Pope himself. Bellarmine advised that the peril Sixtus 
 had brought the Church into should be hushed up as far as possible, all 
 the copies were to be called in, and the corrected Bible printed anew, 
 under the name of Urban VII, with a statement in the Preface that the 
 errors had crept in through the fault of the compositor. Bellarmine himself 
 was commissioned to give circulation to these lies, to which the Pope gave 
 his name, by composing the Preface." (Janus, The Pope and the Council 
 (1869), p. 62.) Sixtus had brought himself under his own sentence of 
 anathema and excommunication by issuing the revised edition. 
 
332 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 the gentry and the peasantry there purer in life, more honest 
 in their dealings, less murderous, less licentious than the corre- 
 sponding classes in England ? 
 
 If we cannot trust the voice of the Pope in matters of morality, 
 what guarantee have we that it can be trusted in matters of 
 faith ? 
 
 As for those who clamour for an infallible guide, and expect 
 to find one in the Pope, how, one may ask, is it that not till 
 Boniface VIII, in 1303, was any decree of a Pope addressed to 
 the Universal Church ? The gift, if ever possessed, lay dormant 
 when most needed, in the great conflicts of the Faith at the time 
 of the Arian domination, for instance, when Athanasius took 
 the lead, and Liberius, the Pope, fell. For over a thousand 
 years the voice that should have guided Christendom was 
 silent. 
 
 In the next place, are we to be babes all our days, needing 
 a nurse's hand to prevent us from stumbling ? The voice of 
 the Church is clear enough in all things necessary for salvation 
 as to what to believe and what to do. The great facts pro- 
 claimed in the Creeds and the divine institution of the Sacra- 
 ments suffice. They are firm enough. Beyond them is a tract 
 on which v/e are allowed freedom to walk, and must exercise 
 our judgment as to where to go and how to walk. There are 
 problems in life we must work out for ourselves, and not hand 
 them over to a master to solve for us, as a dull boy, too inert to 
 work out a sum, passes over his slate to the schoolmaster. 
 
 Reason is given to man to be exercised and not to be atrophied. 
 The Church of Rome confines us within stone walls, in which is 
 not a gate through which we can look out into the open country. 
 
 There are, however, persons who love to be helpless, and to 
 be directed as to what they shall read, how they shall think, 
 what they shall hear, what they shall see and taste and smell. 
 Such persons will always take happily to the nursery of the 
 Roman Church ; it saves so much trouble not to have to think 
 for oneself, to have one's mind made up for one. 
 
 There will always be those who look over their shoulders at 
 the past, and who idealize what has been and disparage what 
 is. They see the past in a haze of splendour ; they have never 
 looked below this mirage and seen what really was. Such 
 will be inclined to go to Rome, fancying that it was what 
 actually it never was. But the genuine Churchman looks the 
 present in the face and has an eye to the future. 
 
SECESSIONS 
 
 333 
 
 The first danger that the Christian Church encountered was 
 from those who harked back to the more ornate and highly 
 articulated Judaic Church. The Christian Church was in pro- 
 cess of organization and development, and the Jewish converts 
 reverted with a sigh to the more strict and narrow regulations 
 of the Mosaic rule, that bade them touch not, taste not, handle 
 not. They craved for limitations, they desired to be ever in 
 a strait waistcoat. The future is not with such. They are 
 with the dead. It is not the strong natures that are ever look- 
 ing backwards. The past appeals less to the understanding 
 than to an unintelligent sentiment. This inclination is based 
 rather on the perceptible shortcomings of the new than on the 
 fancied merits of the old, which merits, with a little study of 
 history, would be dissipated. 
 
 As Jeremy Taylor wisely said in a sermon preached before 
 the University of Dublin, " Let us go to God for Truth ; for 
 Truth comes from God only, and His ways are plain, and His 
 sayings are true, and His promises Yea and Amen ; and if we 
 miss the Truth, it is because we will not find it ; for certain it is, 
 that all that Truth which God hath made necessarie, He hath also 
 made legible and plain, and if we will open our eyes, we shall 
 see the sun, and if we will walk in the light, we shall rejoice in 
 the light. Every man must, in his station, do that portion 
 of duty which God requires of him, and then he shall be taught 
 of God all that is fit for him to learn : there is no other way for 
 him but this." 
 
 The Romanists may say of the Church of England that it is 
 a City of Confusion, but it is not so. On all essentials we are 
 one. The Universal Church herself has been a city of confusion 
 at several epochs of her career. That there are among us those 
 whose faith is feeble, and who deny the verities of the Catholic 
 religion, is true of every age, is true of the modern Roman Church 
 as well, only in it every effort is made to hush up or " fire out " 
 those who do not submit unintelligibly and without exercise of 
 their reason to matters outside the great verities of the Faith. 
 Throughout Catholic Europe there is surging up a tide of revolt 
 against the Vatican and all its proceedings. Men desire to get 
 out of the atmosphere of the nursery into the pure air of 
 heaven, and to look up to the blue vault above, and not to the 
 depressing dome of S. Peter's ; to eat solid food and not to be 
 condemned to draw their nutriment out of feeding-bottles. 
 
 Another reason for " 'verting" has been that some clergy, 
 
334 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 through special circumstances, have found it impossible to continue 
 useful in the sphere in which they were. One had a wife whose 
 example counteracted his teaching ; another had contracted 
 debts at the University which he could not hope to discharge 
 as a curate, being without interest, and with no prospect of an 
 incumbency. He trusted that he might be able to clear off his 
 liabilities in a clerkship, or, by disappearance, evade his creditors 
 altogether. A third had quarrelled with his leading parishioners, 
 and in place of recognizing that the fault lay in his own want 
 of tact or temper, flying into a tiff against the English Church, 
 deserted her. In a word, his secession was due to galled vanity. 
 
 There are some women and not conspicuously virile men 
 who delight in tinsel and paper flowers, and do not concern 
 themselves to look behind the frippery for the ends of twine and 
 twisted wire ; persons who care mainly for what is outside, and 
 regard as less material that which is within. Highly coloured 
 sweets are not invariably wholesome. Larded veal is more 
 palatable, but not more nutritious, than plain roast. Such 
 persons as those mentioned repudiate the latter, because their 
 soul lusts after the strips of bacon. Such are attracted to Rome 
 by its gorgeous ceremonial and ritual elaborations, and will 
 gulp down any amount of superstitious abuses without making 
 wry faces. Paulus Jovius, who wrote the life of his patron, 
 Leo X, tells us that this Pope was wont to serve his guests at 
 table with flesh of monkeys and other unclean beasts, highly 
 spiced, and when those who had partaken of these meats com- 
 mended their excellence, he chuckled over their credulity. 
 
 But, on the other hand, there be earnest souls that have 
 been brought up in a nebulous religion without definite teach- 
 ing, who crave for distinct, dogmatic truths that they can lay 
 hold of, and without which they languish j when these secede, 
 if it be from the Anglican Communion, it is due to the neglect 
 or ignorance of their clergy who ought to have given bread, but 
 instead supplied gruel. But, as far as my experience goes, it 
 is not from the Church — at all events, not from such as have been 
 brought up in Church principles — that Rome gains her converts, 
 but from Dissent and Evangelicals. And it is for this reason 
 that the Romans look with a peculiarly jealous eye on the 
 Catholic party in the English Church. Souls must have definite 
 truths to grapple. Standard roses will not thrive in a light 
 soil. They must have something solid that their roots may 
 grip. Samuel Wilberforce, when Archdeacon, told the Earl of 
 
SECESSIONS 
 
 335 
 
 Carlisle that the fact of Dr. Arnold having " no defined system 
 on religious subjects " conduced to his pupils becoming Trac- 
 tarians. He might have added, Romanists also. 
 
 Adjoining one of our most popular watering-places is a 
 parish that was rapidly being covered, in the first half of the 
 last century, with villa residences. The squire was a strong 
 Evangelical, and he greatly disliked the Anglicanism of the vicar 
 and the mild ritual of the services. When it came to chanting 
 the Psalms he abandoned his parish church, and drove down 
 every Sunday to an extremely Low church in the town. But 
 after half a year's experience of that, he could endure it no 
 longer, with the continuous denunciations of Rome as Babylon ; 
 and by way of curiosity he went to the Roman chapel to see 
 for himself what Popery was. He was so struck and fascinated 
 by what he saw and heard that he was converted and received. 
 Then he set to work and built a convent for Sisters and a 
 Roman Catholic church on his property. 
 
 Now, so long as in the parish church the services were of a 
 stiff Anglican character, a great many of the young people of 
 both sexes would go to the Roman chapel, mainly for Vespers 
 and Benediction, being attracted by the beauty and the poetry 
 of the same ; and several were by this means lost to the Anglican 
 Communion. But, after a while, at the parish church, full 
 Catholic ritual was adopted, and distinct and emphatic teaching 
 of the Faith. Since then the young folk have ceased to go to 
 the Roman chapel, or, if they go, it is to draw comparisons, and 
 say, "We have more beautiful, more solemn, and better con- 
 ducted services in our parish church." 
 
 As may well be supposed, there is no love entertained for 
 the latter by the members of the Latin Communion. 
 
 As said elsewhere, Manning had been brought up as an 
 Evangelical as truly as had Newman. The same may be said 
 of other notable seceders, Sibthorp, Ryder, Simeon, Dodsworth, 
 Hope-Scott, Dikes, Noel, Faber, etc. The three sons of Mr. 
 Wilberforce who " 'verted " came from the purest Evangelical 
 source. " These men drew scores, nay hundreds, in their train, 
 and of all the leaders it must be said that, as they proceeded 
 from Oxford (so to speak) to Rome, so they had already 
 marched from Clapham to Oxford." 
 
 As already said, conviction generally jumps with inclination. 
 Conviction is much like the divining-rod, that turns and points 
 in the direction a man wishes and expects it to indicate. The 
 
336 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 Dowser really believes in the apparatus, is quite honest in pur- 
 pose. The action of the muscles on the hazel twig is uncon- 
 scious, but not involuntary. And the individual who is pre- 
 disposed to join the Church of Rome, or Esoteric Buddhism, or 
 Mormonism, will discover cogent reasons impelling his con- 
 science to pursue the course to which his inclinations lead. 
 
 " Out of these Convertites," said Jaques, " there is much 
 matter to be heard and learnt." 
 
 We have among our clergy a certain number of priests who 
 are Roman in their sympathies. Whatever is Roman is good, 
 whatever is English is bad. Happily, they are few, and have 
 very little influence. If they go over to Rome, they are no loss 
 to us, and they are no gain to Rome. 
 
 Because lazy French people and priests sit for the Psalms, 
 some of those most affected by foreign novelties ostentatiously 
 decline to rise to their feet when the Psalms are said or sung. 
 I have known cases where the choir have been forbidden to turn 
 to the East at the Creed, because this is an English and not a 
 Roman custom. 
 
 We lost a good deal at the Reformation that we have reason 
 to regret ; we lost more during the dead time of the Hanoverian 
 obsession. But it is one thing to endeavour to recover or to 
 revive what is good, old, and wholesome, that has been let 
 slide, and another thing to introduce novelties that have 
 nothing to recommend them but that they are un-English. 
 
 Probably the principal reason why Dissent gained such a 
 hold on the uneducated, especially in country places, is that 
 the Prayer Book was unintelligible to them. Anciently the 
 Mass they could grasp, though in Latin, as an act of worship. 
 But the Book of Common Prayer was not common except among 
 those who could read. The service in the meeting-house was 
 level with their comprehension. This inability to understand it 
 is passing away, but we still need simplification and not elabora- 
 tion. We should gauge the capacity of our congregations, pre- 
 cisely as a farmer tests the soil of his fields before he resolves 
 what his crops shall be. 
 
 The Catholic Faith in its simplicity will always command 
 the belief of devout souls ; and Catholic worship appeals to 
 the heart. According to Duchesne, the highest liturgical 
 authority, Matins and Vespers were originally family prayers 
 among the early Christians, then, along with the other Hours, 
 were adopted by the monks, and when cathedral chapters were 
 
SECESSIONS 
 
 337 
 
 formed, passed on to them, and from them finally to parish 
 churches. But the Holy Eucharist, as the one service of divine 
 institution and of apostolic appointment, was the service of 
 Christendom, and is so still everywhere in Catholic and Oriental 
 Christendom. We got into the way of substituting what was 
 supplementary for that which was essential. 1 
 
 But the Eucharist should be rendered dignified and simple. 
 Over -elaboration of ritual was all very well for mediaevals, but 
 it does not commend itself to English people of the present 
 day ; still, less do all the fancy functions that Rome has 
 formulated. 
 
 It is a significant fact that where there has been a secession 
 of clergy to Rome from a large town Church, the number of 
 lay-folk who have followed has been insignificant ; nay, further, 
 the relief from the presence of unfaithful guides has acted 
 sensibly, the Church has gained in vigour, increased the number 
 of communicants, and has had larger offertories. 
 
 If we remain staunch to the Church of England and its formu- 
 laries, I have no hesitation in saying that we shall carry the 
 people along with us ; but if we adopt strange and unintelligible 
 rites we shall repel them. 
 
 The foreign plants introduced into England that have rooted 
 and spread have now become English plants. The foreign 
 settlers who have come among us, in the second generation, have 
 become Englishmen. But we English people will never become 
 Italians in our religion — such is foreign to our blood, to our 
 instincts, to our traditions. 
 
 I once wanted to plant rhododendrons on limestone rock. 
 My gardener said to me : " You don't feed an 'oss on veal 
 cutlet, and you don't give a cat beans. You must give 'em not 
 what you fancy, but what they likes. And rhododendrons won't 
 thrive on lime." And so — Romanism may seed itself on English 
 soil, but will never thrive in free English air and flourish on 
 English soil. It will draw out, maybe, a sickly existence for a 
 time, and then finally perish. As Virgil says : 
 
 Cura sit 
 
 Et quid quaeque ferat regio, et quid quaeque recuset. 
 
 1 The rubric, " Then shall the priest say to them that come to re- 
 ceive," was objected to by Bucer as acknowledging non-communicating 
 attendance, and he vainly endeavoured to get it expunged. In 1559 
 an abortive attempt was made to introduce a dismissal of non-communi- 
 cants after the offertory. 
 
 22 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 PROGRESS 
 
 AS has been already intimated, the Tithe Commutation Act 
 was generally welcomed as a relief by both clergy and 
 tithe-payers, as doing away with much friction. Mr. 
 Mozley mentions calling on an incumbent previous to 
 its passing, and finding that his parishioners had deserted the 
 church and built for themselves a large meeting-house, because 
 he had claimed some disputed tithe. 
 
 But there was another grievance besides tithe that created 
 ill-feeling, and that was the imposition of Church rates. 
 
 ' ' To them and their collection a determined resistance was 
 offered. It began in an attempt to diminish the amount col- 
 lected for the purpose of repairing the churches and providing 
 the things that were required for the due and decent celebration 
 of divine service in them. But the opposition to them was 
 carried further. Payment of the rate being deferred, it was 
 enforced by seizure of goods and the imprisonment of recusants. 
 In the great Braintree case, after expensive legislation protracted 
 over many years, it was finally determined, on appeal after 
 appeal, that a rate laid by a minority at a meeting of the 
 parishioners could not be enforced. In Rochdale, the contest 
 was carried to such a pitch that upwards of 13,000 votes were 
 recorded, and the military were called out to preserve order. 
 
 " But the victorious party, although they had expended 
 large sums of money on the contest, did not collect a single 
 penny of the rate they had with so much difficulty succeeded in 
 laying. It had become evident that the impost was not worth 
 the trouble and expense incurred in obtaining it, and after the 
 two defeats mentioned above, it was gradually expiring, when 
 Mr. Gladstone's Church Rate Bill (i860) virtually abolished it " 1 
 A sore was removed and a way was opened for voluntary 
 contributions, that have more than doubled the amount extorted 
 1 Molesworth, History of the Church in England (1882), p. 395. 
 338 
 
PROGRESS 
 
 339 
 
 by the rate, to be spent on the sacred edifices and the services. 
 I will now give a few examples of progress such as I have noticed 
 myself — not that there is in them anything extraordinary, but 
 as an instance of how the Church is making way, and the level 
 of her services is rising. 
 
 I do not think that a more marked instance of progression 
 can be found than in Cornwall. This, as I remember it, was 
 infected with all kinds of Dissent. It was in the diocese of 
 Exeter, already too large to be worked effectively by a single 
 Bishop. It. was separated in 1876, and made into a diocese of 
 Truro. Cornwall possesses now a Bishop of its own and a 
 suffragan. 
 
 At present there are two bishops in the Exeter diocese, so that 
 where some years ago there was but one, in Devon and Cornwall, 
 there are now four working, and working hard. Truro possesses 
 a stately cathedral, the first after S. Paul's reared in England 
 since the Reformation. When Bishop Benson became its first 
 head, he is reported to have said, " I shall find more difficulty 
 with the clergy than with the people." And it was so. A 
 great many were torpid, inert, because hopeless, and some 
 because indifferent, but of these last there were not many. I 
 recall going as a boy with my parents to Minster Church, near 
 Boscastle, of a morning on Sunday. We passed meeting-houses 
 in which were many people, and the sound of hymnody poured 
 through the windows. At Minster the sole congregation was 
 composed of our family, that of the parson, and the clerk ; and 
 the incumbent preached to us on the evidences for the existence 
 of a God. 
 
 The Cornish are an emotional people, and a Catholic service 
 appeals to their hearts, a stirring sermon they especially relish ; 
 and where both are provided in the Church, there most certainly 
 congregations gather and are moulded in life, feeling, and 
 practice. Among Dissenters there is a general admission that 
 the numbers are falling off. With the Cornish people I do not 
 think it is, as elsewhere, to indifference, but that they are being 
 drawn to the Church ; and they are drawn to the Church because 
 in her they learn what it is to love God, whereas in the chapel 
 they are roused by the fear of God. I will venture to quote 
 Mr. Hudson : 
 
 14 Last year one day a Truro acquaintance of mine got into 
 a railway carriage in which were five Methodist ministers 
 returning from a conference they had been attending. They 
 
340 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 were discussing the decrease of the number of converts and the 
 decline of revivals during the last few years. One of them, a 
 stout, elderly person, said he did not take so pessimistic a view 
 as the others appeared to do. He thought the falling off, if 
 there were any, was perhaps attributable to the ministers them- 
 selves, and then added : ' All I have got to do is to preach my 
 Judgment Day sermon to set them howling.' The others were 
 silent for a while, and then one said : 1 Do you think it wise 
 to say much about everlasting punishment at the present 
 juncture ? ' No one replied to the question, and after an un- 
 comfortable interval they changed the subject." 1 
 
 Then, again, at the present day the sense of the beautiful 
 is sedulously cultivated. Even advertisements must now be 
 made artistically attractive. Books must be illustrated with 
 charming pictures. The day of crude colouring and bad de- 
 lineation is past. And it is impossible for the young people 
 not to draw a contrast between the old granite parish church, 
 with its carved screen, its radiant altar, the beautiful singing, 
 and the tender sermon, with their Bethels in which is the very 
 cult of ugliness; and the result is they desert these latter and 
 flock into the former. 
 
 Again I will quote Mr. Hudson, for he is impartial: 
 
 " 'Any house is good enough to worship God in,' is a treasured 
 saying, and it has been remarked that no place of worship 
 has ever been raised by Nonconformity in England which any 
 person would turn aside from the road to look at. This would 
 be too little to say of the chapels in West Cornwall, where the 
 principle of any-house-good-enough has been carried to an 
 extreme. These naked granite boxes set up in every hamlet 
 and at roadsides, hideous to look at, and a blot and disfigure- 
 ment to the village and to God's earth, are assuredly an insult 
 to every person endowed with a sense of beauty and fitness. 
 
 " The interior of these chapels is on a par with their exterior 
 appearance. A square, naked room, its four dusty walls distem- 
 pered a crude blue or red or yellow, with a loud-ticking kitchen 
 clock nailed high up on one of them to tell how the time goes. 
 Of the service I can only say that after a good deal of experience 
 of chapel services in many parts of England I have found nothing 
 so unutterably repellent as the services here . . . the intolerable 
 sermon, the rude singing, the prayers of the man who with 
 ' odious familiarity ' buttonholes the Deity, and repeats his 
 1 Hudson (W. H.), The Land's End (London, 1908), p. 199. 
 
PROGRESS 
 
 341 
 
 ' And now, O Lord/ at every second sentence — the whole squalid 
 symbolism ! " 1 
 
 In the towns it is otherwise: there, with good music, with 
 sensational advertisements and florid preaching, every effort 
 is made to keep adherents and attract outsiders. The Church 
 has a serious task before her in Cornwall. If Methodism has 
 stirred religious feeling, it has failed entirely to make the Cornish 
 a moral people. Both Wales and Cornwall, alike hotbeds of 
 Dissent, are far from moral, in marked contrast to the Catholic 
 Bretons, who are of absolutely the same mixture of races. 
 
 In 1912 there were 190 churches in Cornwall in which the Holy 
 Communion was celebrated weekly, and 51 fortnightly, whereas 
 in 40 it was monthly — where the fag-ends of old usage lingered 
 on. The number of communicants was at Easter 16,000. 
 
 There is a certain living in the West of England, with a popu- 
 lation of a thousand and a half, that was for three generations 
 in the hands of one family. The grandfather was the first 
 rector of this set ; then came his son, who was incumbent for fifty 
 years ; lastly the grandson, who held the living for forty. All 
 three neglected their duties, and set by no means a high standard 
 of life before the people. The children of the parish were left 
 in ignorance of the simplest Bible stories. In a word, for a 
 hundred and twenty-five years, or thereabouts, the place remained 
 in practical heathenism. 
 
 The few decent Churchmen in it refused to communicate, 
 because the communicants were notoriously bad characters. 
 The church was bepewed and had a three-decker. The altar 
 was a deal table with a moth-eaten red cloth on it. 
 
 Now all is changed, and there has been progress. The church 
 has been cleared of pews, the chancel cut off from the nave by 
 a rood-screen; a well-appointed altar has taken the place of 
 the shabby deal table ; services are frequent, Holy Communion 
 at the least weekly, and the children are regularly catechized. 
 With every year the roll of communicants increases. 
 
 The adjoining parish to mine, Bridestowe, had formerly Sourton 
 annexed to it. 
 
 In the church there were but two services on Sunday, and 
 quarterly Communion. 
 
 In 1846 the Rev. Hinds Howell became rector. He had been 
 curate-in-charge of Washfield from 1833 to 1839, when there 
 was no resident rector. With a population of 500, he had 120 
 
 1 Ibid. pp. 201-3. 
 
342 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 regular communicants. I know the church well. It has a 
 magnificant post- Reformation carved oak screen, and till recently 
 — or comparatively recently — a village orchestra performed in 
 the services. When the order came from Bishop Phillpotts of 
 Exeter for the use of the surplice in the pulpit, and that of the 
 Church Militant prayer, a storm of disapproval broke out. 
 On the following Wednesday, being Ash Wednesday, all the 
 farmers of the parish, with the exception of two, absented them- 
 selves from the service, which, till then, they had always attended. 
 The malcontents pressed Mr. Howell to give way ; they were 
 met by a resolute refusal. But by his assiduity in visiting the 
 sick amongst those who had rebelled, he broke down their 
 prejudice. The ensuing Good Friday and Easter Day saw 
 every farmer, with the members of his family, in their seats in 
 church. At the annual dinner, given on Easter Monday, after 
 the parish meeting, the farmer who had led the opposition first 
 moved that Mr. Howell should take the chair, and then delivered 
 himself as follows : " Sir, you have conquered us. We did 
 object to your reading the prayer for the Church Militant every 
 Sunday, and to your public christenings, but we have talked it 
 over, and we have come to the conclusion that your way is right ; 
 and now not one of us will go against you." More than twenty 
 years later, at a Church Conference, his hand was grasped by 
 a West Country Archdeacon, who said : "I must shake your 
 hand, Mr. Hinds Howell. How you helped us by standing firm 
 on the surplice question ! " 
 
 The surplice riots that broke out in Exeter shook the iron 
 nerve of Bishop Phillpotts, and he sent for Mr. Howell, showed 
 him a letter he had written, and asked his opinion on it. After 
 a short silence, he returned the letter to his diocesan. " You do 
 not tell me what you think of my letter," said the Bishop. 
 " My Lord, I would rather have cut off my right hand than 
 written it." That letter abandoned the whole position, and 
 left the wearing of the surplice to the option of the clergy. 
 
 This was the man who in 1846 became Rector of Bridestowe. 
 He was staunchly orthodox, but not in any degree a ritualist. 
 
 Indeed, among the old Tract arians there were no ritualists. 
 They conceived it their duty to state the Faith, to proclaim 
 the mission of the Church, and the grace in the Sacraments. 
 Mr. Howell's views had been largely identical with those of 
 Bishop Phillpotts, and to these he remained faithful to the day 
 of his death. 
 
PROGRESS 
 
 343 
 
 In Bridestowe he soon proved a power. He opened his 
 school daily at nine o'clock with prayer and a Bible lesson. 
 After teaching in the school he visited in the parish ; and it 
 was one teeming with dissent. There were Baptists, Wesley ans, 
 and Plymouth Brethren. With the former he acquired so much 
 influence that before long he had baptized every one of their 
 children and closed their chapel. 
 
 With Bridestowe went the daughter church of Sourton, on 
 the edge of Dartmoor, and this, which was in a dilapidated 
 condition, he restored, and rebuilt the chancel. 
 
 Mr. Howell rose every morning at five o'clock, and as soon 
 as his family came down, the psalms and lessons and prayer 
 for the day were gone through, after which came breakfast. 1 
 In 1855 he was succeeded in the Rectory of Bridestowe by Rev. 
 Alexander Watson, previously of S. Mary's Church, Torquay, 
 where he had raised a noble chancel, well appointed, but was 
 unable to rebuild the nave. He instituted daily choral service. 
 His successor " restored " the church by calling to his aid a 
 common builder, who put up ugly deal benches in place of the 
 pews, demolished the beautiful carved-oak screen, with its painted 
 post-Reformation tympanum, and lined the chancel with yellow 
 pitched deal boarding, varnished, making it look like a ship's cabin. 
 
 In 1889 the Rev. J. Loveday Frances became rector, and 
 nearly all that which Alexander Watson had instituted, and 
 which had been allowed to lapse, was restored. There is now 
 daily service and weekly Celebration, as also on Saints' and 
 other Holy Days. 
 
 At Mary Tavy was Antony Buller (1833-77): Mr. Mozley 
 has given a brief notice of him in his Reminiscences. His parish 
 was one very difficult to deal with, as the population was largely 
 made up of miners, congregated at a considerable distance from 
 the parish church, on Black Down. Mr. Buller was a scholar — 
 a modest, shy man — and one of more force was needed to deal 
 with very rough men and their equally rough wives and 
 children. The church was pewed to the ears, the altar was a 
 deal table covered with a flowing red cloth. He had daily 
 service, but only monthly Communion, and the number of com- 
 municants, out of a population of considerably over a thousand, 
 was twenty. Then ensued a change, and now the church has 
 a beautiful screen and rood-loft, a high altar, a side-altar in the 
 Lady Chapel, and a daily celebration. 
 
 1 Hinds Howell : a Memoir (Norwich, 1899). 
 
344 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 The parish of Bratton Clovelly, that adjoins mine on the north, 
 comprised 8,316 acres ; the tithe commutation or rent charge 
 was fixed at £460, and there is a glebe of 159 acres. From 
 1822 to 1844 the rector was a Mr. Birdwood, and the story is 
 told of him that he was wont to visit the parish twice only in 
 the year, to collect his tithes, on which occasions he remained 
 over the Sunday and always preached the same sermon from 
 the same text: "Render unto Caesar the things that are 
 Caesar's, and unto God the things that be God's " — which the 
 parishioners altered into : " and unto Birdwood the things that 
 be God's." 
 
 The Rectory originally stood near the church, but it had 
 been burnt down, and the curate was put to live in a small 
 farmhouse furnished with cob walls, on the glebe, at a consider- 
 able distance from the church and village, to which he had 
 to ascend 150 feet of steep hill, by a road that in winter was 
 sometimes a torrent bed and at others a sheet of ice. 
 
 The curate who served the church under Mr. Birdwood had 
 quarterly Celebrations. Then came a Mr. Budge, a scholar and 
 able man, and he instituted monthly Eucharists. When the 
 Rev. E. Seymour succeeded he had them at first fortnightly, 
 in 1833 they became weekly, and so they have continued since. 
 The altar has candles and vases, and a reredos of carved alabaster ; 
 every window is filled with stained glass ; in the chancel is a 
 surpliced choir, and in lieu of the old deal pews the church is 
 fitted throughout with richly carved oak benches. 
 
 At Plymouth both S. Andrew's and Charles Church are in 
 the hands of very- Protestant trustees. At S. Andrew's on 
 " Christening Sunday " a crowd of low characters was wont to 
 gather round the doors of the church, eagerly offering to stand 
 sponsors in return for sixpence or a pint of beer. The church 
 was bepewed and was furnished with a three-decker. Even 
 in S. Andrew's there has been advance. The three-decker 
 has disappeared, and a surpliced choir occupies the chancel, 
 precisely one of the things that was objected to as Popish at 
 S. Peter's. Now the florid musical service is the great attrac- 
 tion. As the supply of Evangelical clergy is running short in 
 England, the trustees have had to import Irishmen for the last 
 two incumbents. 
 
 S. Peter's, as already related, was opened in November 1848. 
 At the present date there are in Plymouth and Devonport 
 seven churches in which the Eucharistic vestments are worn, 
 
PROGRESS 
 
 345 
 
 and lights are used at Holy Communion. In five incense is 
 burned. 
 
 A great friend of our family was the Rev. Christopher Bartho- 
 lomew, incumbent of S. David's, Exeter. This was a peculiarly 
 ugly church in debased Italian style, with a tower surmounted 
 by a foolscap. Internally it was smothered in pews and choked 
 with galleries. A few hard free seats at the back were the 
 sole provision made for the poor parishioners. Christopher 
 Bartholomew altered nothing in the fittings of the church, used 
 the three-decker to the end, with a table behind it in flaming 
 red drapery for an altar. He did, however, have daily prayer 
 and frequent Communions. He taught definite doctrine, and 
 was considered an able preacher. The congregation comprised 
 fashionables from the handsome villa residences of rich merchant 
 families, but also from the country came carriages with liveried 
 servants on the box and heraldic decorations blazing on the 
 harness, that deposited county families at the church gate, driven 
 in to hear the popular preacher. 
 
 Old S. David's has vanished as a bad dream, and its place is 
 now occupied by one of the finest and most skilfully designed 
 of modern churches. It is larger than the old building, and 
 when I have attended it has been crowded, not with county and 
 merchant families, but with tradesfolk, shopmen, and girls. The 
 altar is adorned with a superb reredos of carved oak. The 
 service is fully choral, with surpliced choir and candles burning 
 on the altar. But that is not all. Out of S. David's has grown 
 a second parish, that of S. Michael, with another fine church 
 and a tower and spire that are an ornament to the city. Here 
 also Divine worship is conducted much as in the mother church, 
 and S. Michael's is in a poor district and is the church of the 
 poor, who were wont in old days to be thrust away at the back 
 under a gallery in " free seats." 
 
 In the cathedral, in which there was formerly but a monthly 
 Celebration, there is now one daily. 
 
 At S. Sidwell's, in the " forties," the Rev. Edward Harold 
 Browne was rector. He introduced daily service and weekly 
 celebration. His successor was Francis Courtenay, and it was 
 under him that the storm burst, described in another chapter, 
 and the disturbances continued throughout his short tenure 
 (he died in 1849) an( * during the early days of John Lincoln 
 Gait on, who was the next incumbent. He discontinued the 
 surplice for a time, but continued everything else. In 1870 he 
 
346 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 was able to restore the church with the addition of a chancel, 
 have a surpliced choir and choral services. Since then lights 
 have been used at all celebrations, also the singing of the Bene- 
 dictus and Agnus Dei at the choral Celebration has been 
 adopted, and Eucharistic vestments. 
 
 At the cathedral lights are used at the early Celebration, 
 also at S. Stephen's and S. Laurence's and S. John's. There are 
 lights at all Celebrations at eight parish churches, vestments 
 worn in six, vestments, lights and incense at one. 
 
 Now let us turn to Cambridge, that has ever been a breeding- 
 ground of Puritanism. 
 
 When I was there as an undergraduate, in 1853-7, there was 
 but one church in the town in which was a weekly Celebration, 
 and that was late. This church was S. Giles, a curious octagonal 
 structure with the seats so arranged as to radiate from the 
 pulpit as a centre. That pulpit was a huge structure with 
 a sounding-board above it, and the acoustic properties were 
 such that not only could every word of the preacher be heard 
 by every individual in the congregation, but the faintest whispered 
 remark of one of these latter was audible in the pulpit. 
 
 The incumbent was under sentence of suspension for three 
 years by Turton, Bishop of Ely, because he had refused to read 
 the Burial Service over a notoriously bad character in the parish 
 who, when drunk, had fallen into the Cam and been drowned. 
 
 Mr. Dodd, the vicar, sat in a pew in cassock and gown, and 
 the curate celebrated in surplice and funereal stole. No other 
 ritual than what was then general was observed. The altar 
 was muffled in white linen, and the chalice, paten, and wine- 
 jug were, if I remember rightly, on the altar, not on a credence, 
 and were covered with a napkin. Such undergraduates as 
 desired to make their weekly Communion used to go to the 
 church, and wait outside till the sermon was over, and the 
 non-communicants trooped out at 12 o'clock. This hideous 
 church was demolished in 1870, and the present S. Giles's 
 Church was built. On the other side of the street has been 
 erected a stately new church, S. Peter's, and the two — S. Giles's 
 and S. Peter's — are served by one vicar with three curates. 
 There is a daily celebration of the Holy Eucharist at 7.30 a.m. 
 at S. Peter's, and daily also at S. Giles's, at 7.45 a.m. There is 
 at least one weekly Celebration in seven other churches in Cam- 
 bridge ; in all, there are five in which the lights and vestments 
 are in use. 
 
PROGRESS 
 
 347 
 
 Twenty-five years ago there were but two churches in Liver- 
 pool in which vestments were worn ; there are now eleven. 
 And this means far more than ritual advance, it signifies advance 
 as well in definite Church teaching. 
 
 The Church revival in England has passed through three 
 marked phases or stages that must not be overlooked. 
 
 The appeal made by the Tractarians, for a restoration of 
 doctrine forgotten or in abeyance, was made to the ears of 
 scholars and clerics, and to men and women of culture generally, 
 and it reached and influenced them . Scott 's novels had awakened 
 an interest in what was mediaeval ; and there was a revulsion 
 against the debased taste in architecture everywhere manifest, 
 and a desire to recur to the purer types of the Middle Ages. 
 But this was among the noble and gentle and refined alone. 
 And it was among the noble and cultured that the Tracts 
 met with ready reception. This generation passed away. The 
 sons and grandsons did not care to tread in the footsteps of 
 their forebears : they were animated with other enthusiasms, 
 if not too blase to have any at all ; some were immersed in 
 politics, others in pleasure, went with their rifles stalking tigers, 
 or with butterfly nets pursuing American heiresses. I can recall 
 how, in the first period, so many spiritual faces were to be seen — 
 faces of men and women that seemed to see God j such as I 
 have noticed nowhere else, save in convents and monasteries, 
 and among the Brittany peasants and peasantesses. I do not 
 see quite so many of these now. 
 
 As Walter Pater says in Marius the Epicurean, the beauty 
 of their faith was irradiated in the faces of the Christians, " as 
 if some profound correction and regeneration of the body by 
 the Spirit had been begun and already gone a great way ; the 
 countenances of these men, women, and children had a bright- 
 ness upon them which he could fancy reflected upon himself." 
 Pater in these words described what he saw in the faces of the 
 old Tractarians ; faces still to be seen among saintly Romanists, 
 and among ourselves. 
 
 The movement presently entered on a second stage. Hitherto 
 the middle classes had been wholly given over as a prey to the 
 teeth of Dissent, but now the Oxford Movement began to affect 
 them. It was like the descent of the angel into the pool of 
 Bethesda to trouble the waters and make them wholesome and 
 healing. Men who had been formal Churchmen became such 
 now by conviction, because they had learned what the Church 
 
348 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 was : the kingdom of God on earth, not a mere State creation. 
 Many who had been bred in the negations and emotionalism 
 of Nonconformity came over to the Church and embraced 
 Catholic teaching with avidity. Others craved for a broader 
 outlook and a freer air than they could gain in Evangelicalism. 
 
 The Evangelicals had had their day and had not known 
 how to use it. Almost all benefices and positions of authority 
 that the State could give had been shovelled out to them, as 
 a banker shovels out gold. They had laboured as individuals 
 to advance personal religion, without any concerted plan of 
 action. They met and shouted in Exeter Hall, they denounced 
 High doctrine and practice in shrill cries from their pulpits. 
 The bishops of this faction started up like the leather-topped 
 hammers of a piano, twanged a string, dropped out of sight, 
 and the note they had sounded died away without an echo. 
 
 And now came the third phase. 
 
 In Yorkshire and in the East of London, and in places that 
 appeared most unpromising, the High Church clergy cast them- 
 selves amidst a teeming artisan population, among mill-hands, 
 colliers, dock labourers. Since then this field has been specially 
 their own. Wherever there were men and women earning their 
 bread with the sweat of their brow, there zealous, enthusiastic 
 Church men and women are to be found. 
 
 The movement has not by any means captured the class, any 
 more than as a whole it has mastered the middle class, but 
 it has effected a breach in the walls of ignorance and prejudice, 
 and every year shows progress. As to the upper class — the 
 nobility, the gentry, the plutocrats — they are pretty well left to 
 stew in their own fat, to ride their polo ponies, play bridge, 
 race over the country on Sundays in their motors, and eat and 
 drink of the best. It is with the shopkeeper and the operative 
 that the Church will do most. 
 
 Mr. Robert Lowe, when the franchise was extended, said : 
 " Now we must teach our masters." The future of England — 
 of the Empire — is in the hands of the working man: he has 
 a vote as well as the squire, the factory hand as well as his 
 employer. The future of the English branch of the Catholic 
 Church depends now, and will depend to an increasing degree, 
 on the horny and begrimed hands of ploughmen and artisans, 
 and into these the Church must commit her cause, will she nill 
 she. It is the working man who will be called on to decide 
 whether she is to be cast forth naked, despoiled, disinherited ; 
 
PROGRESS 
 
 349 
 
 whether she is to be accorded full liberty to control her own 
 actions, direct her own course ; or whether she is to be further 
 crippled and manacled. There must be no blinking of facts. 
 The power to decide her future resides in these scarred but 
 stout and iron hands, and the work set before the Church is 
 to Christianize, to cleanse, to direct aright the masters of the 
 future. 
 
 On Saturday afternoon, June 21, 1913, was held in London a 
 demonstration, by nearly a thousand parishes of the metropolis 
 and its suburbs, against the Disendowment, Disestablishment, 
 and Disruption of the Welsh Church. There were sixteen 
 processions from divers quarters of London converging on Hyde 
 Park. I was down on the Embankment to see the gathering 
 and march-past of the contingent from the East of London, of 
 poor clerks, dock labourers, seamstresses, artisans, and factory 
 hands. Each parish was preceded by its banner, and each was 
 provided with scrolls inscribed with significant sentences, as 
 n S. George stands by S. David," " Fight for the Faith," " For 
 God and the Church." Those forming the procession walked 
 some four, some eight abreast, and took an hour in passing. 
 As they moved on they sang " The Church's one foundation," 
 " O God, our help in ages past," " Onward, Christian soldiers," 
 etc. There was no mistaking the fact that these demonstrators 
 belonged to the labouring class, that they were in thorough 
 earnest. It was variously computed that in Hyde Park they 
 numbered from 120,000 to 150,000. 
 
 What this great gathering of the clans revealed to me, and 
 to many others, was the great progress the Church had made 
 in the affections of the people. Could such a demonstration 
 have been attempted fifty years ago ? I trow not. 
 
 Nor was this all : similar processions for the same purpose had 
 been organized all over England ; at Leeds from 8,000 to 10,000 
 men, and men only, walked in the procession ; at Plymouth 
 there was at the smallest computation 30,000 ; in Nottingham 
 they numbered 11,000 ; there were at Swansea 20,850 in proces- 
 sion. One thing shown by this demonstration was the fact 
 that the Church of England was a living force, and that it had 
 taken deep and enduring root in the hearts of tens of thousands 
 everywhere, and especially in those of the working class, men 
 and women. 
 
 Rene Bazin, in his touching story Le Ble qui leve, has shown 
 how that in France, notwithstanding the repeated mowing down 
 
350 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 of the Church, religion being trampled under foot, buried and 
 smothered under layers of Materialism and Socialism, the blade 
 of Faith is beginning to show above the surface. This is true 
 as well of England. Gilbert Cloquet, in Bazin's story, after 
 long godless years of friendlessness, desertion, disappointment, 
 at the age of fifty recovers his faith. Kneeling up in his bed 
 he tries to pray, but has forgotten the words of prayer. Only 
 he recalls how once, as a little lad, when his mother had sent 
 him to church, and he had returned late, he said : " Mother, 
 I have been long absent, but I have come back at last ! " And 
 Gilbert, stretching out his arms, now cried the same words. 
 
 Out of the well-to-do and leisured class, the blade of living 
 faith springs but sparsely ; but in the low and rugged plain of 
 labour, there the green points show on every side. 
 
 From the coalmine and the factory, from the shop-counter 
 and the clerk's desk, from behind the sowing machine and from 
 the plough, from the barracks and the trawler and the iron- 
 plated battleship, goes up the cry to-day, " Mother, we have 
 been long absent, but we have come back at last ! " 
 
 The Societies which had so great a share in the work of the 
 Revival, such as the English Church Union and the Guild of 
 S. Alban, were founded by laymen and managed by them. 
 
 The Revival was sporadic, starting here and there, without 
 any indication of concerted action, yet everywhere animated 
 by the same spirit, and aiming in the same direction. It was 
 like the bursting forth of a thousand springs from every side, 
 but all flowing together into one bed. The only Church paper, 
 and that one of which Newman was a founder and shareholder, 
 was the Record, and that became the organ of the Low Church 
 party. The Guardian and the Church Times were results of 
 the Revival, and not contributing causes. Before they appeared, 
 Church Literature consisted of pamphlets that circulated only 
 among the clergy and the leisured classes. 
 
 The breath of life had passed over the land, and the thrill 
 of a resurrection was felt everywhere. 
 
 There is a striking tale by Mr. A. E. W. Mason, entitled The 
 Broken Road. It tells how an Indian official was set to construct 
 an important highway, how he spent his life upon it ; how, when 
 he died, his nephew took up and continued the task ; how, after 
 landslides and storms carrying the road away, hostility shown 
 by natives, indifference displayed by Government, he fell a 
 victim to assassination ; how next the son, as to a solemn 
 
PROGRESS 
 
 351 
 
 duty, devoted himself to repair and continue the road, ac- 
 cording to the original design. This, I take it, is the story 
 of the Church, especially in England. There have been dis- 
 astrous cataclysms, there has been bad material used ; torrents 
 have swept over the highway, avalanches have buried the 
 track in detritus ; there have been riots provoked by it, and 
 Government has interfered to stop the work ; but happily the 
 milestones have never been displaced. So soon as the period 
 of devastation or of hindrance has been overpassed, the work of 
 restoration was begun. From the very first start, men have 
 laboured, at one time strenuously, at another slackly, upon 
 God's Royal Road. At the present date, I am confident, from 
 the priest holding the chalice to the crossing-sweeper with his 
 broom, there exists in the hearts of thousands in every class, 
 and in all parts, fervent zeal to toil at the Highway of the Lord, 
 that leads from the mountain in Galilee, where the Risen Saviour 
 commissioned His Apostles, to the hill of Zion and the palace 
 of the Great King, paved and hedged in with the Catholic 
 Faith, Apostolic Order, and the divinely appointed Sacraments. 
 One particular class of clerics may stand aside, shrugging their 
 shoulders, and pursing up their lips, jingling in their pockets 
 the sovereigns received from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. 
 Impediments may and will arise ; but the work will go on. As 
 Sybil Lindforth says in the book from which I take my illustra- 
 tion : " The Power of the Road is beyond the Power of Govern- 
 ments," aye, and of the whole world. Not among the road- 
 menders will be found those just alluded to. But lo ! before 
 the arduous and earnest workers gleams a glorious Presence, 
 leading, encouraging, strengthening, and promising achievement. 
 
 Let us give a hasty glance at the increase of our Colonial 
 and other foreign bishoprics. 
 
 Immediately on the termination of the War of Independence, 
 the members of the Church in the United States of America 
 realized that it was a condition of life or death to the Church 
 to have a bishop or bishops of their own. The clergy of Con- 
 necticut elected Samuel Seabury, and he sailed for England 
 in 1783. Dr. Moore, then Archbishop of Canterbury, hesitated 
 about consecrating him, and he applied to the Scottish bishops. 
 On November 14, 1781, he was consecrated Bishop of Connec- 
 ticut by three of them in Aberdeen. 
 
 In 1785 a convention of Church clergy and laymen met at 
 Philadelphia and desired the Archbishop of Canterbury to con- 
 
352 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 secrate for the Church in the United States two clergy whom 
 they sent over. This request was complied with on February 4, 
 1787, and they were consecrated to the Sees of Pennsylvania 
 and New York, by the two Archbishops, and the Bishops of 
 Bath and Wells and Peterborough. On August 12, 1787, Dr. 
 Charles Inglis was consecrated Bishop of Nova Scotia, the first 
 English Colonial bishop. In 1793 the See of Quebec was founded, 
 and in 1839 that of Newfoundland. In 1814 the first English 
 bishop was sent to Calcutta, and in 1824 two bishoprics — those 
 of Jamaica and Barbados — were founded in the West Indies. 
 And now in the Colonies and foreign parts we have 118 bishops, 
 the United States has 95. 
 
 At home there were great difficulties encountered in the 
 forming of fresh dioceses out of those that were old. The multi- 
 plication of duties, along with the rapid increase of the popula- 
 tion, constituted an overwhelming burden to the English bishops, 
 not felt when they but little understood what the work of a 
 bishop should be, but realized more and more as time went on. 
 Two only had been formed since the period of the Reformation, 
 and this increase had been reduced by the union of Gloucester 
 and Bristol. At the time of the passing of the Manchester 
 Bishopric Bill in 1847, it was proposed to found three new sees, 
 but this had fallen through. The Cathedral Commission in its 
 report of 1855 had recommended the establishment of ten new 
 sees, but this had been equally disregarded. In 1870, however, 
 Dr. Christopher Wordsworth, Bishop of Lincoln, bethought him 
 of an Act passed in the reign of Henry VIII, authorizing the 
 appointment of suffragan bishops, but the Act had fallen into 
 abeyance. Proceeding upon this, he obtained the appointment 
 of a bishop to Nottingham, the see being afterwards transferred 
 to Southwell. Suffragans now number thirty-four. 
 
 But the appointment of suffragan bishops did not altogether 
 meet the existing want, and a special Act of Parliament was 
 passed to constitute S. Alban's a see. Truro was also founded 
 out of the huge diocese of Exeter. Then came Liverpool, 
 Newcastle, Southwell, and Wakefield. There are now thirty- 
 seven dioceses in England and Wales, and more would be created 
 but for the obstruction of the Dissenting and Orange members 
 of the House of Commons, who oppose every attempt made to 
 improve the condition of the Church and perfect her organization. 
 
 In 1717 Convocation was prorogued by the Government of 
 the day in order to prevent its passing a formal condemnation 
 
PROGRESS 
 
 353 
 
 of Hoadly, Bishop of Bangor, for heresy in his sermon On the 
 Kingdom of Christ. The Lower House had passed a declaration 
 to this effect, which was presented to the Upper House on 
 May 10, 1 71 7, whereupon Convocation was summarily prorogued 
 against its will by the exercise of the Royal Supremacy. For 
 all practical purposes it was silenced for one hundred and thirty- 
 five years. But the prorogation was on all occasions the act 
 of a subservient Archbishop and Primate, and, as it appeared 
 eventually, he had no power to act in this matter without the 
 consent of his suffragans. 
 
 After the Gorham Judgment it was felt by all Churchmen 
 save the Evangelicals and Latitudinarians that the Church 
 must be allowed to voice her own opinions. Several bishops 
 were opposed to its revival ; Lord Shaftesbury, at Fishmongers' 
 Hall, used violent language against it, protesting that it would be 
 sure to encourage Confession. 
 
 Eminent lawyers were consulted, and the opinion given 
 was that Convocation had a right to discuss ecclesiastical 
 matters ; and it was generally resolved by the clergy that the 
 next Convocation, in November 1852, should act. The Times 
 and other papers either denounced the assembly or sneered at 
 it. In the summer of that year came the election of proctors, 
 concurrently with the elections for the new Parliament. 
 
 " The Synod of the province of Canterbury met in full force 
 at S. Paul's Cathedral on the day appointed, November 5, 1852. 
 The cathedral was in a state of the greatest confusion, through 
 the preparations for the Duke of Wellington's funeral, but the 
 first glance at the assembled party, when standing under the 
 dome, was enough to show that Convocation had mustered in 
 large force. Deans, archdeacons, and proctors glided about full 
 of mutual recognition and inquiries ; and this whole group, 
 set off by the picturesque effect of full canonical costume, 
 presented a curious and suggestive scene. We saw a highly 
 educated and ecclesiastical- looking collection of men. They 
 looked like what they were, and the sight gave strength and 
 reality to our convictions that Convocation had met for business. 
 From the dome a movement was made towards the morning 
 chapel at the north-west comer of the Cathedral. Here the 
 Bishops assembled in their red chimeres, and were shortly sum- 
 moned to the west door to receive the Archbishop of Canterbury. 
 The procession which forthwith commenced towards the choir 
 of the cathedral was a wonderful phenomenon. Here was the 
 23 
 
354 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 Church of England by representation, in its most stately costume. 
 There followed in the rear, as the climax of honour, the Arch- 
 bishop himself, with his long scarlet train borne by an attendant. 
 All marked to a thoughtful eye the ecclesiastical majesty of 
 Lambeth, which enjoys a longer pedigree and a more uninter- 
 rupted history than any temporal throne or dynasty in Europe." 1 
 After the Latin Service and the election of a prolocutor by the 
 Lower House, the Convocation was prorogued to November 12, 
 in the Jerusalem Chamber at Westminster. 
 
 In the northern province the opposition of Archbishop Mus- 
 grave prevented the assembly of the Northern Synod from fol- 
 lowing the example of that in the south during his life, but 
 obstructives do not live for ever, and the Northern Convocation 
 met under his successor in 1861. Since then, both Convocations 
 have continued to meet, and have done good work, passing 
 canons under royal licence j and in 1885 both Houses of Con- 
 vocation agreed to a scheme for the constitution of a House of 
 Laymen, to be appointed by the lay members of the diocesan 
 conferences and by the archbishop, to act as a consultative 
 adjunct to Convocation on all subjects except the definition and 
 interpretation of doctrine. 
 
 " The revival of the active life of Convocation is distinctly 
 due to Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford. It was extorted 
 from an unwilling primate (Sumner), an amiable prelate whose 
 sympathies were not with Church action, and who had not 
 emancipated himself from the fear of the high and low factions, 
 such as those which squabbled through the reign of Queen 
 Anne. His apprehensions were shared by many. Most of the 
 public prints were divided in their comments between expres- 
 sions of the most utter contempt and prophecies of the most 
 terrible mischief from the mass of contentious bigots. These 
 prophecies have been utterly falsified." 2 
 
 The Church had found her voice once more. But Convoca- 
 tion is composed of too many dignitaries, and the parochial 
 clergy are not sufficiently represented. Difficulties have stood 
 in the way of reform, and impatience has been felt at the lack 
 of united assemblies in which pressing difficulties might be 
 considered, and men differing in opinion might meet and ventilate 
 their views. In 1861 the Cambridge Church Defence Associa- 
 tion invited about three hundred delegates from similar associa- 
 
 1 Convocation of November 1852, p. 158. 
 
 2 Perry (G. G.), A History of the English Church (1887), iii. 308. 
 
PROGRESS 
 
 355 
 
 tions to assemble at Cambridge and take counsel together over 
 the difficulties of the day. The Second Church Congress met 
 at Oxford in the ensuing year, and since then it has become 
 an annual institution. Any member of the Church, cleric or 
 layman, may attend, and is invited to speak. It passes no 
 resolutions, but merely discusses. It has proved of conspicuous 
 value in removing asperities, and in getting men of divergent 
 views to appreciate the goodness there is in those with whom 
 they do not agree, and to make allowance for them. 
 
 Of far greater importance, and a more conspicuous sign of 
 progress, has been the summoning of Pan- Anglican Conferences. 
 In 1865 the Provincial Synod of Canada entreated Archbishop 
 Longley of Canterbury to summon a General Council of the 
 Anglican Communion to counteract the disturbing cases of 
 Bishop Colenso and the Essays arid Reviews. The Convocation 
 of Canterbury approved of the proposal, and Archbishop Longley, 
 after some hesitation, issued an invitation to all bishops of 
 the Anglican Communion to meet in 1867. A large proportion 
 of the American and Colonial bishops were most anxious to 
 give formal approbation to the excommunication launched at 
 Bishop Colenso by his metropolitan, the Bishop of Cape Town. 
 But some English prelates — notably Thirlwall of S. David's — 
 dreaded nothing so much as a sort of synodal confirmation of 
 the condemnation. It was purposed to meet for a Common 
 Communion at Westminster in the Abbey, but Stanley, the 
 Dean, had the bad taste — to use the least offensive term — to 
 refuse admission to them, and the Bishops, to the number of 
 seventy-six, met for intercommunion at Lambeth. The slight 
 put on the American and Colonial bishops by Stanley was 
 deeply resented. In December the Conference issued an Address 
 to the Faithf ul, characteristically vague, but the Bishop of Cape 
 Town carried a resolution which was condemnatory of Dr. 
 Colenso, and declared the deposition right, by 40 to 3. The three 
 who through thick and thin had backed up Colenso were Tait 
 of London, Thirlwall of S. David's, and Sumner of Winchester. 
 
 But the most important result of the Conference was that, 
 by uniting the bishops of the United States of America, the 
 Colonial bishops, and the Scotch as well, on equal terms with 
 the English as members of a world-wide Communion, it supplied 
 a refutation of the favourite theory of the Latitudinarians that 
 the Church of England was a State establishment, and nothing 
 more. 
 
356 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 A second Conference was convened, much against the liking 
 of Archbishop Tait, in 1878, and was attended by bishops 
 from all parts of the world, to the number of 100. The Pan- 
 Anglican Conference of 1888 saw 145 bishops gathered together. 
 
 Another was held in 1897, which coincided with the thirteen- 
 hundredth anniversary of the landing of S. Augustine, and a 
 pilgrimage was made to the spot and a commemorative cross 
 was erected. To this conference 197 bishops came. That of 
 1908 was attended by 242 bishops, and preceded a Pan-Anglican 
 Congress attended by 7,000 clerical and lay delegates from all 
 countries under the sun. 
 
 There are other indications of progress that might be noted. 
 The first Sisterhood was that of Miss Sellon at Plymouth, in 
 1841 ; then, in or about 1851, Mrs. Tennant, a widow, and a 
 Spaniard by race, began rescue work for fallen women at Clewer. 
 At her death a Sisterhood was established to carry on the good 
 work. About 1855 the East Grinstead Sisterhood was formed 
 for the nursing of sick people in their homes, and the education 
 of orphan girls. Another Sisterhood was that of Wantage, 
 founded in 1848; that of S. Thomas's, Oxford, was started 
 a year earlier. They became very numerous, and have their 
 branches all over England, India, and the Colonies. At the 
 time of the Dissolution there were but 745 Sisters in England ; 
 at the present date there are over 1,300. 
 
 There are now in London alone nine Sisterhoods, and each 
 has its branch establishments. There are also eighteen other 
 Sisterhoods in England and Wales. This does not include sixty- 
 eight Orphanages for girls, mostly under the care of Sisters. 
 
 The growth of Religious Orders among men has been slower. 
 One following the Benedictine rule was attempted by " Brother 
 Ignatius," the Rev. J. Leycester Lyne, in 1863 ; but he was 
 impulsive, self-willed, and lacking in judgment. I met him 
 several times, and he did not at all attract me to him and inspire 
 confidence : with a beautiful face, with a magnificent voice and 
 flowing oratory, he had no gift as an organizer, and he com- 
 mitted extraordinary acts of folly. His abbey at Llanthony 
 came to naught. The most famous of all Brotherhoods is that 
 of the Cowley Fathers, founded by the Rev. R. M. Benson in 
 1865, which has supplied a Bishop to America. Beside the 
 mother house of Cowley it has branch houses in London, at 
 Bombay and Poona in 'India, at Cape Town in South Africa, in 
 Kaffraria, and at Boston in the United States 
 
PROGRESS 
 
 357 
 
 The Community of the Resurrection is one of celibate clergy 
 living under a Rule with a common purse. It originated in 
 1890, its mother house is at Mirfield in Yorkshire, and it has 
 a branch at Johannesburg. Its great work is the training of 
 candidates for Holy Orders. 
 
 The Society of the Sacred Mission at Kelham, Newark-on- 
 Trent, also trains for Holy Orders ; it has branches in South 
 Africa, Central Africa, and in Korea. 
 
 I can but briefly mention the Guilds. The first to be founded 
 was that of S. Alban in 185 1. It is an association of laymen 
 who profess themselves ready, by the grace and under the 
 providence of God, as loyal members of the Church of England, 
 to do all that they can in answer to the call of the Divine Master. 
 The objects are : to assist in spreading a knowledge of the 
 Catholic Faith and the doctrines of the Church, also to support 
 the Church 's independence in spiritual matters . Beside Parochial 
 Guilds, which are very numerous, there are some twenty-six 
 others whose headquarters are either in London or in the several 
 dioceses in which their work is specialized. " The growth of 
 the Religious Orders in the English Church in the period 1845- 
 1900 is almost without parallel in Christian history." 1 The 
 Bishops, Archbishops, and Convocation have all approved and 
 welcomed these institutions. 
 
 Fourteen years ago, in 1898, was founded the Church of 
 England Men's Society ; it consists of men in every department 
 of life, but mainly artisans. In 1908 it numbered 60,000 
 members, in 1912 it reached 126,625. There are in England 
 and Wales 3,730 branches. It is already a power, and is destined 
 to become a very much greater power. 
 
 What is its work ? In every direction it is extending, and it 
 embraces men in earnest for God and the Catholic Church. The 
 two fundamental pledges of this Men's Society are prayer and 
 personal service. Under the first heading is grouped all that 
 is intended to help the spiritual life of the members, and to bring 
 them in contact with the Life of the Lord Jesus Christ. Many 
 of the branches arrange that their members shall meet from 
 time to time at Holy Communion, and especially in the season of 
 Ascensiontide ; all over the world branches of the Men's Society 
 are asked to join in the great Sacrament of Loyalty and Brother- 
 hood, and to lay their common petitions before Almighty God, 
 for the progress of the movement to which they belong. On 
 
 1 Dictionary of the English Church (1913). 
 
358 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 the side of personal service, new ways of " doing something to 
 help forward the work of the Church " are continually presenting 
 themselves. I may instance two or three. At Barnstaple a 
 branch of the Men's Society is attached to the principal parish 
 church. That church had become dingy and dirty. The 
 C.E.M.S. set to work, erected scaffolding, cleaned, washed, 
 scraped, renovated the interior; and all the work was done 
 voluntarily, at hours when the members were off their regular 
 work. At S. Stephen's, near Launceston, a parish club-room 
 was needed. The C.E.M.S. set to work and built one. Except 
 for the material, it cost not a penny. If it be rumoured that 
 the Kensit preachers are coming to create a disturbance, the 
 Men's Society members are ready for them. They look after 
 one another in the Colonies and at home, and are of vast service 
 to the clergy in smoothing difficulties in parish and mission 
 work. It has its members in the ranks of the Army, in the 
 Navy, in shops, in mines, in factories, and aboard fishing smacks, 
 abroad as well as at home. There are as many as 351 branches 
 in Australia, and in New Zealand 134. In the Army are 86 
 branches, and the Seaman's Guild numbers 71 branches. A 
 member of the C.E.M.S. endeavours to be a " handy man " 
 for all sorts of Church work. I quote from the Men's Magazine 
 of October 1912 : " Even summer reports show that our 
 members are responding nobly to the ideal, and in addition to 
 the various definitely religious work, such as Sunday school 
 teaching (one secretary writes : ' All our members are connected 
 with our Sunday school '), members are ready to do anything 
 and everything that needs to be done. One branch is providing 
 the labour for building a new mission hall ; others are beautifying 
 and fencing off the churchyard, painting the railings, or assisting 
 to raise funds at bazaars, either for clearing off debts or extension 
 of work. One is trying to get a note of promise. Another 
 says : ' We had a small stall, and realized nearly thirty pounds ; ' 
 or yet again : 1 We find it practically impossible to get a full 
 branch meeting, as the members, one or other, are doing Church 
 work every night in the week.' " 
 
 A few words must be said about the English Church Union. 
 There had existed Unions of Churchmen in Bristol, Exeter, 
 Chester, Manchester, Leeds, Coventry, Gloucester, Norwich, 
 Yorkshire, and a South Church Union. These had all done active 
 work for the maintenance of the Faith and had striven to press 
 on the restoration of action to Convocation. But they had no 
 
PROGRESS 
 
 359 
 
 outward link binding them together, till the outbreak of the 
 S. George 's-in-the-East riots in 1859, when it was felt to be 
 advisable to unite all these local associations in one Union. 
 Accordingly on February 8, 1859, a Conference of sixteen earnest 
 Churchmen met under the chairmanship of Sir Stephen Glynne, 
 and this assembled again on May 15 and founded the Church 
 of England Protection Society. All the dispersed Church 
 Unions were invited to join, and to this all agreed, and in i860 
 the Society changed its name to the " English Church Union." 
 The objects it sets before it are : 
 
 To defend and maintain unimpaired the doctrine and discip- 
 line of the Church of England. 
 
 To afford counsel, protection, and assistance to all persons, 
 lay or clerical, suffering under unjust aggression or hindrance 
 in spiritual matters. 
 
 In general, so to promote the interests of religion as to be, by 
 God's help, a lasting witness for the advancement of the glory 
 and the good of the Church. 
 
 Membership is strictly confined to communicants of the 
 English Church. 
 
 At present — in 1913 — it numbers 40,000 laymen, 26 bishops, 
 and 4,000 clergy. 
 
 The number of churches built or rebuilt during the first 
 seven years of the nineteenth century were twenty-four. In 
 1875 a return was made to Parliament as to the amount of 
 money that had been spent on church-building or church-restora- 
 tion, and it was found that the sum expended amounted between 
 1840 and 1874 to £25,548,703. In 1884 the amount spent in 
 one year on the building and restoring of churches, the building 
 of parsonage-houses, and enlargement of churchyards, amounted 
 to £1,455,839, or, in round numbers, about a million and a half. 
 Between 1884 and 1910 it reached the prodigious sum of 
 £38,219,374. In the year 1910 it amounted to £1,436,776. In 
 1913 in S. Paul's Cathedral the jubilee of the Bishop of 
 London's Fund for church-building in his diocese was observed 
 by a solemn service. In the fifty years as many as 240 
 churches have been built in London, with districts appointed for 
 them, and endowments provided. It may well be questioned 
 whether in two thousand years of Church history anything 
 quite so remarkable has taken place. 
 
 In Germany, for the building of a church the town finds the 
 money, or the major part of it, and in France till of late years 
 
360 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 the State contributed to the building or restoration. But in 
 England the State does not give a penny. All the sums come 
 from freewill offerings, either made personally or through one 
 of the church-building societies. This certainly does not look 
 as though the Anglican Communion were in extremis. 
 
 But if there has been progress, and unmistakeable progress, 
 there has been a cooling down of enthusiasm, and a sad invasion 
 of worldliness into the Church and among the clergy. The 
 early Evangelicals glowed with a holy and fervent zeal that 
 warmed and stimulated such as were brought into contact with 
 them. But after a while the heat passed away and was suc- 
 ceeded by an affectation of what had been real, and became 
 formal, much as a bar of iron dipped in vermilion may look like 
 one at red heat. It was something the same with the Tractarians. 
 Those of us who are old can recall the enthusiasm with which 
 the first apostles of the movement proclaimed forgotten truths, 
 and their sanguine hopes of bringing the English Communion 
 back to the glories of her Catholic past. They preached a new 
 crusade, like Peter the Hermit and S. Bernard, and expected 
 that their burning words would thrill all hearts, and that all 
 English mouths would acclaim " Dieu le volt." But they dis- 
 covered that the regeneration of the English Church was not 
 to be effected suddenly. The English mind is slow to accept 
 new ideas, and slow to shake off old prejudices. In their im- 
 patience some threw up the sponge and abandoned the English 
 Communion. Many another plodded on through discourage- 
 ment, " segro in corde senescit," saying with the poet : 
 
 Nos hoc agimus tenuique in pulvere sulcos 
 Ducimus et litus sterili versamur aratro. 
 
 Others, again, sank into indifference, and abandoned the 
 struggle. Any white-haired man who knew the first Tractarians 
 and was carried forward by the rush of their confidence, must 
 have noticed that at the present day there is little enthu- 
 siasm remaining among the upper classes. Fifty years ago 
 young men and young women of the gentle class caught the fire 
 and burned with zeal. I do not see many such now. In a 
 Russian church on Easter Eve, at the boom of midnight, the 
 new fire is struck, the flame runs from candle to candle of the 
 vast congregation, till the whole interior of the building blazes 
 with a thousand lights. The people disperse, some blow out 
 their candles, some of the flames are extinguished by the wind 
 
PROGRESS 
 
 361 
 
 or falling snow, a few — only a few — carry it home to their 
 hearths. 
 
 The enthusiasm that filled the first Tractarians has been 
 replaced by a less fiery spirit. Immediate results are no longer 
 expected ; the successors of the old Tractarians are content now 
 to endure discouragement and leave results in higher Hands. 
 The novelty of the movement brought with it perhaps extra- 
 vagant enthusiasm, and some objectionable exaggerations 
 in doctrine and in practice. Sydney Smith had pointed out to 
 him one day a man with exaggeratedly wide trousers below 
 the knee. "Is that a sailor?" he asked. "No, he is a 
 Highlander, lately bare-legged." "Ah," said the humorist, 
 " converts are always enthusiasts." 
 
 There has been, to my mind, a sad deterioration in the 
 character of the clergy. 
 
 In early days there was a reaction against fox-hunting and 
 amusements of that kind ; both the Evangelicals and the 
 High Churchmen were opposed to the sinking of the clerical 
 character into that of the mere sportsman. 
 
 The laudatores temporis acti said, in defence of these hunting 
 and dancing parsons, that it brought the Church, innocently 
 enough, into touch with manly men — the farmer and the squire 
 and the yeoman. 
 
 Evangelicals and High Churchmen set their faces against 
 the clergy making themselves " cheap " in that way. Then 
 ensued a calm time, when a good deal of genuine spiritual work 
 was done, and the Church and the Power of the Keys seemed 
 upon the point of prevailing. But about thirty years ago came 
 another reaction. It was supposed that the clergy were be- 
 coming too spiritual, and were withdrawing too much into their 
 shells ; and it was desirable that they should get into closer 
 touch with men and women, their business and their pleasures. 
 So the long coats were abandoned, and short-cut jackets adopted. 
 Moustaches were worn, mostly by the feeblest of curates. Many 
 priests acted as accountants, impresarios, sang comic songs on 
 a stage, became ardent tennis-players, golfers, hockeyers, etc., 
 always with the same plea that they were bringing the Church 
 into touch with the people. It was bringing it under their 
 feet. Look at the result ! The clergy of the Church of England, 
 take them as a whole, are less in touch with the people than 
 was the case fifty to eighty years ago. The laity laugh at the 
 idea that this course brings the Church closer to them : it 
 
362 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 degrades the parson ; and never were the clergy of this type 
 looked on by the well-to-do with such contempt as at the 
 present day. 
 
 Twenty years ago the clergy would not dance, nor go to 
 anything in the shape of the modern music-hall. That is not 
 the position now. They have gone to the other extreme ; they 
 smoke with the laity, they drink with them, and, for fear of 
 being thought too starchy, they indulge to excess in athletic 
 and field sports and other less innocent amusement. It provokes 
 no little surprise (to use a mild word) , on visiting the houses or 
 lodgings of the clergy who are most anxious about getting into 
 touch with men and boys, to see so many " unexpurgated " 
 editions on their shelves and tables, to show, presumably, how 
 very human they are. What have we to show for this human- 
 izing of the priesthood ? Empty churches and neglected Sacra- 
 ments. These men have made themselves cheap. " Ye are the 
 salt of the earth," said Christ to His apostles, " but if the salt 
 hath lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted ? It is 
 thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out and to be 
 trodden under the foot of men" — and trodden under the foot 
 of men these moust ached, bridge-playing, comic-song-singing, 
 capering parsons are. Was there ever any saltness in them ? 
 Never any saline particle in these curtailed clerics, and they 
 have borne a false label — Salt — whereas they were only washing 
 soda. 
 
 Thank God there are still devoted and earnest men in the 
 ministry of the Church, and these will save her. And among 
 the laity of the middle and lower classes there is growing an 
 eager devotion to the Church, wherever the clergy are doing 
 their duty. 
 
 It is where there are men living and expending themselves 
 for God and human souls that the Church makes way — and 
 that marvellously. The other day I was in a large church in 
 the extreme east of London. It was crowded on Sunday, both 
 morning and evening. And — as the Vicar said to me — there 
 was not a rich family in the place, not a housewife who did not 
 scrub her doorstep every morning. 
 
 That there is a steady influx of Dissenters into the Church, 
 and that such is growing in volume, is a fact that can hardly be 
 doubted. It is this, in Wales, that has roused such political 
 animosity. But it is the same also in the United States of 
 America, where the Church started under manifold disadvan- 
 
PROGRESS 
 
 363 
 
 tages. Far surpassed in numbers and wealth by various sects 
 which occupied the ground before the Church received any 
 bishops, it has steadily gained in the respect of the people, and 
 in the number of its adherents. It does more : it attracts to its 
 ministry, year by year, the very flower of the sectarian pastorate. 
 As far back as 1883 this was noticed, and Professor Hopkins, 
 of the Presbyterian Seminary at Auburn (N.Y.), wrote: "A 
 very large number of the children of Presbyterian families, 
 and many of the cultivated and tasteful of our number, have 
 sought a more cheerful, more varied, more sympathetic service 
 in another Communion. There is not a Presbyterian pastor in 
 the land but can testify to such losses. The Anglican Church 
 has been largely recruited from our ranks. There are many 
 thousands in that Church at present who have been drawn away 
 merely by the superior attractions of its cultus. Certainly they 
 have not been enticed by the greater impressiveness or elo- 
 quence of the pulpit. . . . The tracks are all one way. Look 
 through any circle of your acquaintanceship and count up the 
 Presbyterian families in which one, two, or more lambs have 
 strayed into the Bishop's fold ... It is very largely due to 
 this fact, that, of all sects in the United States, the Anglican is 
 growing the most rapidly at the present time. It is forming new 
 congregations and organizing new dioceses with extraordinary 
 rapidity. On the other hand, the Presbyterian Church is almost 
 stationary. It requires a close calculation to show that she is 
 even holding her own." 1 This was written in 1883 — and now, 
 in 1913, it is truer still. The Church, like a rolling snowball, 
 gathers substance and size with each succeeding year. 
 
 It was wont to be said that well-to-do Dissenters' children 
 joined the Church for social reasons. This hardly is the case 
 now, when knighthoods, baronetcies, and coronets have been 
 showered on Nonconformists by the Radical Government. As far 
 as my experience goes, and with mine coincides that of most 
 clergy with whom I have spoken on the subject, it is the earnest 
 and devout among the sectarians who come over to the Church : 
 their souls crave for worship, and they get only preaching in 
 their chapels ; they desire building up in the Faith, and they 
 get only noisy sensationalism in the meeting-house, or venomous 
 political diatribes. That such a phenomenon should manifest 
 itself equally on both sides of the Atlantic, under very different 
 conditions, and in both be due to the rise of High Churchman- 
 1 Quoted in Church Quarterly Review, No. 32, 1883. 
 
364 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 ship, a lifting of the dignity of worship and a strengthening of 
 dogmatic teaching, is significant. 
 
 On the other hand, the disestablished Church of Ireland has 
 consistently upheld the Protestant, as opposed to the Catholic 
 interpretation of the formularies, and has toned down its wor- 
 ship to the lowest note of its diapason. Consequently, every 
 cleric who has any Church instincts flees from Ireland, and comes 
 to England to take a curacy and obtain a living where are to be 
 found those things which the Irish Church has repudiated. 
 There was, and exists still, an exodus of the ultra-Evangelical 
 clergy to England for the livings to be had from the Protestant 
 Societies, but there is also this other migration for conscience' 
 sake, because the Catholic-minded man cannot get that in the 
 Irish disestablished Church which he needs, where the worship 
 is rendered in so bald a fashion as to be repugnant to the feel- 
 ings ; why, the very internal appearance of one of the churches 
 strikes a chill to the heart, where the cross of Christ has actually 
 been ejected from them, and only tolerated outside on the 
 apex of a gable. Consequently the Irish Church is suffering like 
 a man bled in both arms. 
 
 The teaching of experience is that a body such as is the 
 Anglican Church lives and flourishes by virtue of her Catholicity, 
 by absorbing what agrees with her constitution, by rejecting 
 all that is strange and new-fangled in doctrine. When she 
 pursues her course along the road traced out for her by Christ, 
 His Apostles, and the Ancient Fathers, then she advances from 
 strength to strength ; but should she lend an ear to strange 
 counsellors, she loses ground. When a man is half-drowned, 
 and his lungs are full of water, he is flung across a barrel, and 
 the liquid allowed to drain out of him, and then he is pommelled 
 in the chest to expel the last drop, and to restore the play of the 
 lungs to respire again the pure air of heaven. It has been 
 something like this with the English Church. She had inhaled 
 deleterious matter instead of the breath of God, and she has 
 had to get rid of this in order to recover life. The process has 
 been painful. It cannot be asserted that she is already wholly 
 free, and till she is, she must lie across the cask and submit 
 to pommelling. 
 
 Something should be said about our Church music — and 
 here, to a large extent, there is progress only into confusion. 
 
 In the Early Victorian days there could be no real congrega- 
 tional music in village churches, because the bulk of the con- 
 
PROGRESS 
 
 365 
 
 gregation could not read. The old orchestra was bad, the in- 
 struments were often out of tune, and the performers delighted in 
 playing music beyond their capacity of rendering respectably. 
 
 In 1 841, at the consecration of Leeds Parish Church, came 
 the first application of the cathedral service. Thence it spread 
 even to small country parishes, and it was held as an axiom 
 that the " cathedral should be the model for the diocese." Then 
 in came surpliced choirs located in the chancel, cut off from 
 the congregation — supposed to lead it, but actually silencing it. 
 
 I fear that we are perpetuating an evil by our choral festivals. 
 The choirs of a rural deanery are given intricate and totally un- 
 congregational music to practise, and then are gathered together 
 at the cathedral or in some great parish church to show forth 
 their skill. A bad type of Church music is fostered thereby, 
 and a bad lesson taught — that the choir, composed of men, boys, 
 and girls, is to sing to the congregation, instead of being, as they 
 should be, helps to the congregation. 
 
 It was considered the correct thing to have a surpliced choir, 
 and this even in small country parishes. The result has been 
 deplorable. Bad as was the choir perched on high in a west 
 gallery, worse by far is the choir in the chancel, and the organ 
 moved into an eastern side-aisle. The organ and choir are 
 needed to back up the congregation. The best place for the 
 organ is at the west end, and for the choir the seats behind 
 the congregation, though not in a gallery. Moreover, unhappily, 
 but very naturally, choir and organist desire to show themselves 
 off and perform musical gymnastics. They desire to sing 
 florid cathedral music and intricate anthems and " services," 
 all utterly and unredeemedly uncongregational. As Bishop 
 Gore said in his primary charge at Worcester in 1904 : " In 
 most parish churches we have fallen, I know not how, under 
 the despotism of choirs." The people come together to worship 
 God, not to listen to elaborate music in which they cannot join. 
 Let the richest music be given in our cathedrals, but in our 
 parish churches let the service be entirely congregational. 
 
 In 1844, in Margaret Street Chapel, now replaced by the stately 
 church of All Saints', the old Plain Chant was revived, after a 
 century of disuse. The Anglican Chant grew out of it, and 
 finally superseded the Faux Bourdon, which consists in the Plain 
 Song being in the tenor, with the treble and alto superposed. 
 No one who has heard the Faux Bourdon in a French church 
 can fail to admit how splendid is the effect, when the first and 
 
366 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 third verses, and so on, of the Magnificat or Psalms, are sung 
 to the tone, and the alternate verses in this rich harmony. 
 
 The Anglican Chant did not invade our cathedrals till 1730 
 or 1740, displacing the beautiful music of the Catholic Church. 
 Some of the old Anglicans are actually Faux Bourdons, but the 
 tone is no longer sung alternately with the chant, and loses its 
 effect. Moreover, by barring the music, the rhythmic character 
 of the words of the psalm has been lost. Our Church music is now 
 in a condition of anarchy, and what is needed is to standardize 
 it on an old English basis. Till this is done, the course of our 
 progress will not be complete. The subject is so vital that I 
 shall recur to it in another chapter. 
 
 Take the matter of hymnals. In early days a prejudice 
 existed among High Churchmen against their use. Even the 
 late Canon Woodard, the founder of so many Church schools, 
 was reluctantly brought to consent to the introduction of a 
 hymn-book. He could not see what need there was to go beyond 
 Tait and Brady. The Evangelicals introduced these hymnals, 
 usually of a washy, mawkish sentimentality in some hymns, 
 and grouped under fanciful headings, not in the order of the 
 Church's seasons. Now Hymns Ancient and Modern includes the 
 best of the Evangelical hymns, and they are very good ; it is 
 also of a definite Church tone, and is found everywhere. It was 
 launched in 1861, and by the end of 1912 over sixty million 
 copies had been sold. 
 
 I have left to the last one of the most important and far- 
 reaching tokens of progress. On September 15, 1896, Leo XIII 
 issued an unqualified condemnation of Anglican Orders, and, 
 with singular indiscretion, gave as his reasons defect of form, in 
 that there was no delivery to the priest of the instruments, 
 and deficiency of intention in the consecration of bishops. The 
 English Archbishops thereupon issued a formal and authorita- 
 tive reply and declaration as to the status of the Anglican 
 Church. It was a pronouncement ex cathedra, not only of the 
 Archbishops, but of the whole Anglican episcopate. 
 
 The Responsio Archiepiscoparum Anglice began with a few 
 words of introduction. It addressed the Pope of Rome as 
 " our venerable brother," and treated him as equally with them- 
 selves amenable to the Universal Episcopate of the Catholic 
 Church, East and West. They were able to show that the 
 porrectio instrumentorum did not exist in the ancient Roman 
 Pontifical ; they indicated the uncertainties both of practice 
 
PROGRESS 
 
 367 
 
 and of formularies : " From these documents so obviously 
 discordant and indefinite, no one, however wise, could extract 
 with certainty what was considered essential and necessary to 
 Holy Orders by the Roman Pontiffs." As to intent, the Arch- 
 bishops pointed out that what the Church says is the index of 
 her mind, and they demanded that the English Ordinal should 
 be judged by the facts of history and by the requirements of 
 Scripture. They showed that, on the points of priesthood and 
 Sacrifice, it comes up to the standard of the Western Ordinals. 
 They went out of their way to state specifically the Anglican 
 doctrine with regard to the Eucharistic Sacrifice, and they 
 concluded with the words, " The Sacrifice of the Eternal Priest 
 and the Sacrifice of the Church ... in some ways certainly are 
 one." 
 
 The whole document was bold and Catholic, resting on all 
 that was Scriptural, Primitive, and Apostolic, and may safely 
 be said to have established the Anglican position on an impreg- 
 nable basis. 
 
 A German writer describes the Bay of Naples after the abating 
 of the sirocco or tramontana. He says that for a mile out 
 the water of the gulf is charged with dirty paper, rotten oranges, 
 broken corks, scraps of torn nets. For some time this filthy 
 wash remains, but gradually sinks or disappears till again the 
 glad waters are limpid and blue. This is what has taken place, 
 and is still taking place, in the Anglican Church. She has 
 harboured, and been sullied with, a thousand abuses ; there has 
 been non-residence, pluralism, neglect of duty to the people and 
 of observance of duty to God ; there have been indifference, 
 disbelief, tampering with Dissent, with negations, with false 
 doctrine. Efforts were made, determined efforts, to keep the 
 refuse together, and prevent the waters from purifying them- 
 selves ; but in vain. All the alien stuff thrown into the Church 
 must gravitate to the bottom. It has rottenness in itself. It 
 is not and never was a part of the Church — an organic portion : 
 it was an importation. God never designed the Church to be 
 a religious cesspool. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE BROAD CHURCH 
 
 HERE is a passage in Mr. H. G. Wells's story Mar- 
 riage in which is described the condition of modern 
 thought with regard to Christianity. 
 
 " The invisible selves of men were never so jumbled, 
 so crowded and complicated and stirred about as they are at the 
 present time. Once, I am told, they had a sort of order, were 
 sphered in religious beliefs, crystal-clear, were arranged in a 
 cosmogony that fitted them as hand fits glove, were separated 
 by definite standards of right and wrong, which presented life 
 as planned in all the essential aspects from the cradle to the 
 grave. Things are so no longer. That sphere is broken for 
 most of us, even if it is tied about and mended again ; it is burst 
 like a seed-case ; things have fallen out and things have fallen 
 in." This is absolutely true of members of the well-to-do and 
 more or less cultured classes. It is true of old, middle-aged, 
 and young, of women and men. There is no hostility enter- 
 tained towards Christianity, only indifference. A vague belief 
 in God exists, but is inert, and there is respect for Christ as one 
 higher in quality than Buddha and Mahomet, but belonging 
 to the same category. There is Christian morality, honour, 
 truth, charity, and chastity, very generally hanging on after 
 that which produced these flowers has decayed. Phaedrus tells 
 of the old woman who found an empty wine-cask. Applying 
 her nose to the bung-hole, " Ah ! " said she, " how good you 
 must have been when full." And what remains of virtue in 
 sceptical social and private life is the aroma of lost Christianity. 
 
 That a certain number of the clergy should have been infected 
 with this unrest as to the basis of the Faith is not to be wondered 
 at. " It is very plain," they say, " that Christianity can only 
 influence the age if it looks that age full in the face, and accom- 
 modates itself to the prevalent ideas and modes of thought 
 
 368 
 
THE BROAD CHURCH 
 
 369 
 
 of those with whom it has to deal. If the age were perfectly 
 stationary, then there would be no need for adaptation. The 
 exposition and defence of Christianity that served in the days 
 of Paley and Berkeley would serve to-day. But such is not 
 the case. So far from remaining stationary, the world is ever 
 on the change, and in such an age as this the changes are momen- 
 tous." This is what the Broad Churchmen recognize, and they 
 endeavour to adapt the doctrines of Christianity to the notions 
 of the day ; but this they can only effect by treating them as 
 boys do eggs, blowing out their contents, but preserving the shells 
 as curiosities for the colour and mottling. The great doctrines 
 of Christianity — the Incarnation, the Resurrection, and the 
 Ascension — cannot be so treated. It is an effort to put the 
 new wine into old bottles, to patch the old garment with new 
 cloth. I quite allow that what the Broad Churchmen aim at is 
 to reconcile the intellect of the present day, which is divorced 
 from Revealed Religion. But can they effect it ? Certainly 
 not by eviscerating every Christian doctrine of its life and power. 
 Of what good are these doctrines when robbed of their power ? 
 As little as exploded cartridges we come upon in the grass and 
 kick aside. 
 
 One may be in possession of a beautiful old house, rich in 
 carved oak, tapestries, and plaster ceilings, but defective in 
 sanitary arrangements, cold and damp, and difficult to light 
 satisfactorily. The owner naturally and reasonably desires 
 to adapt it to the requirements of modern life. But for this 
 purpose he would not rip up the foundations. Even if there 
 were cracks in the walls he would do no more than consolidate 
 them. And so with regard to the Church ; we are bound to 
 endeavour to accommodate it to the mentality of the present 
 day, but not to touch the foundations ; or, if we touch them, it 
 must be only to run cement about them. 
 
 As Mephistopheles, " the Spirit I that evermore denies," 
 says to Faust, so might the Spirit of Negation address one of 
 the clerical Broad Churchmen: "Why dost thou seek our 
 fellowship, if thou canst not go through with it ? " 
 
 We must, however, distinguish between two classes of Broad 
 Churchism. A very large number of men in the Church, in 
 the Kirk, and in the Chapel, have been influenced by the Higher 
 Criticism ; and they see clearly that the old doctrine of verbal 
 inspiration of the Scriptures is no more tenable. That is one 
 thing, but the rejection of the truths enunciated in the Creed 
 24 
 
370 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 is quite another. There is a legitimate place for the former 
 in the ministry of the Church, but not for the latter. 
 
 We should remember the words of S. Jerome relative to the 
 interpretation of Scripture : " It is customary in Scripture for 
 the historian to give the common opinion as generally received 
 in his own day ; " and again, " Many things are related in the 
 Scriptures according to the opinion of the day in which the 
 facts occurred, and not according to what in reality took place 
 (et non juxta quod rei Veritas continebat)." According to his 
 canon the account of the miracle of Bethoron, as usually under- 
 stood, would represent the general impression left on the minds 
 of the combatants by a long-protracted day of battle, and not 
 be a statement of what literally occurred. 1 What perplexities 
 of mind, what doubts and distresses would have been avoided, 
 had the canon of S. Jerome been held to be at least permissible I 
 
 The Church has never defined how far inspiration goes in 
 Scripture ; but what she has done is to lay hold of certain 
 historic facts relative to Our Lord, and dogmas as to the Godhead, 
 and to insist on the acceptance of these by such as pertain to 
 her Communion, above all by such as minister at her altars 
 and preach in her pulpits. 
 
 And it is with reference to those who more or less openly 
 disbelieve in these tenets, that what I have to say applies. 
 
 I venture to quote from an article on " The Sterile Party " 
 from the Church Times of February 7, 1913 : " Latitudinarians 
 of the newer sort sit to-day in the high, or at least the profitable 
 places of the Church. Not to mention the five or six bishoprics 
 in the two Provinces which may be regarded as Latitudinarian 
 preserves, we notice that the deaneries especially seem to be 
 regarded as their due. A glance down the list of deans reveals 
 the fact that no fewer than sixteen are members of the party. 
 Canonries also without number fall to them. It can hardly 
 be contended that all these dignitaries are distinguished persons j 
 of some, indeed, no one had ever heard, until their merit was 
 
 1 The difficulty about sun and moon standing still is due to mistrans- 
 lation. The true rendering of the Hebrew, as has been pointed out by 
 Keil and Delitzsch, is "The sun and moon became silent, or entered into 
 their habitation," i.e. became obscured. There had been a hailstorm, 
 and the dense vapours obscured the heavenly bodies ; and as the Amorites 
 were sun and moon worshippers, this would increase their panic. The 
 address of Joshua and the answer should run : "Be silent (darkened), 
 O sun, upon Gibeon, and thou, moon, in the valley of Ajalon ! And 
 silent (darkened) was the sun and silent (invisible) was the moon, till the 
 people avenged them on their enemies." 
 
THE BROAD CHURCH 
 
 371 
 
 discovered by acute politicians and they were set in their stalls. 
 Nor will it be maintained that they are the men who make the 
 best use of the cathedral churches.' ' 
 
 Long ago Goethe had said (Israel in der Wuste) : " All those 
 epochs in which belief is supreme, under whatsoever form it 
 may be, are brilliant, elevating, and fruitful for contemporaneous 
 times and for posterity. All those, on the contrary, in which 
 unbelief, be it under whatsoever form it will, maintains a direful 
 supremacy — even if it should shine for a moment with a tinsel 
 brilliancy — vanish before posterity, because no one willingly 
 torments himself with a knowledge of the unfruitful." 
 
 At the Reformation a basis was sought whence to fight the 
 doctrine of the Infallibility of the Church. Faith in that infalli- 
 bility had broken down. The Church, under the domination of 
 the Papacy, had harboured the grossest abuses, thrown her mantle 
 over the most preposterous superstitions. The Reformers 
 required another infallibility to pit against that claimed by 
 the See of Rome, and they found what they wanted in the 
 Bible. It was to them the Word of God, not to be disputed, 
 doubted, or disobeyed. It did not occur to them that Scrip- 
 ture stood on precisely the same footing as the Church. In 
 both there is the human and fallible element united with the 
 divine and infallible. What they wanted was a weapon with 
 which they might smite their foes hip and thigh, and they used 
 it with vigour and success. But there was gross exaggeration, 
 and every exaggeration produces a revulsion. 
 
 When those who had been taught that every word of the 
 Bible was inspired came to find, as they thought, that the ac- 
 counts of the Creation, the Flood, and the Tower of Babel were 
 legends containing an element of truth, but were also stricken 
 with the infirmity that touches all legendary matter, their faith 
 dissolved like snow in summer, and in its dissolution swept 
 away with it all their Christianity. 
 
 J. Anthony Froude's Nemesis of Faith, published in 1849, 
 illustrates this theme. There is in the book a beautiful and 
 pathetic passage that I must quote, because it expresses exactly 
 the aspect of disbelief of the present age. He is representing 
 an ancient ruin as speaking : " Look at me. Centuries have 
 rolled away ; the young conqueror (Christianity) is decrepit 
 now, dying as the old (Pagan) faith died, and lingering where 
 it lingered. The same sad sweet scene is acting over once again. 
 I was the college of the priests, and they are gone, and I am 
 
372 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 but a dead ruin where the dead bury their dead. The village 
 church is outliving me for a few generations; there still ring, 
 Sunday after Sunday, its old reverent bells, and there come still 
 the simple peasants in their simple dresses — pastor and flock 
 still in their own beliefs, there beneath the walls and ruins they 
 still gather down into the dust ; fathers and children sleeping 
 there together, waiting for immortality ; wives and husbands 
 resting side by side in the fond hope that they shall wake and 
 link again the love-chain which death has broken, so simple, 
 so reverend, so beautiful. Yet is not that, too, all passing away, 
 away beyond recall ? The fairies dance no more around the 
 charmed forest ring. They are gone. The creed still seems 
 to stand, but the creed is dead in the thoughts of mankind. 
 Its roots are cut away, down where alone it can gather strength 
 for life, and other forms are rising there ; and once again, and 
 more and more, as day passes after day, the aged faith of aged 
 centuries will be exiled as the old was, to the simple inhabitants 
 of these simple places. Once, once for all, if you would save your 
 heart from breaking, learn this lesson — once for all you must 
 cease, in this world, to believe in the eternity of any creed and 
 form at all. Whatever grows in time is a child of time, and is 
 born and lives, and dies at the appointed day like ourselves. 
 To be born in pain, and nursed in hardship, a bounding imagina- 
 tive youth, a strong vigorous manhood, a decline which refuses 
 to believe it is a decline and still asserts its strength to be what 
 it was, a decrepit old age, a hasty impatient heir, and a death- 
 bed made beautiful by the abiding love of some few true- 
 hearted friends ; such is the round of fate through nature, through 
 the seasons, through the life of each of us, through the life of 
 families, of States, of forms of government, of creeds. It was 
 so, it is so, it ever will be so. Life is change ; to cease to change 
 is to cease to live : yet if you may shed a tear beside the death- 
 bed of an old friend, let not your heart be silent on the dissolving 
 of a faith." 
 
 This is beautiful writing. I know few passages more beauti- 
 ful. Yet I disbelieve entirely in what it insists upon. I do 
 not for one moment hold that Christianity is foredoomed to 
 perish, because those well-off in the world's goods, the readers 
 of novels and magazines, and persistent golf-players, Tango- 
 dancers, scholars, students also, have lost their faith. What 
 Froude and the Latitudinarians fail to understand is that the 
 power of Christianity does not reside in a form of religion, but 
 
THE BROAD CHURCH 
 
 373 
 
 in the person of Christ, Who manifests Himself and ever will 
 manifest Himself in the human soul as a Master. What He 
 said to Simon Peter is still true, and men know that it is true. 
 " Flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father, 
 which is in heaven." 
 
 " You make a mistake," said Caleb Bateson ; " you go con- 
 founding principles with persons. It isn't my love for my wife 
 that lights the fire and cooks the dinner, and makes my little 
 home like heaven to me — it's my wife herself. It isn't my 
 children's faith in their daddy that fed 'em and clothed 'em 
 when they were too little to work for themselves — it was me 
 myself. And it isn't the religion of Christ that keeps us straight 
 in this world and makes us ready for the next — it is Christ 
 Himself." 1 That is just the verity hidden from the wise and 
 prudent Broad Churchman, which is revealed to babes, even in 
 the lowest tabernacles of the rudest Dissent. 
 
 I venture to quote from a recent sermon by the Bishop of 
 London at the close of a mission : " I do not think I have ever 
 had in my life such a sensation that Jesus Christ has been per- 
 sonally with us all the time. If it were only a human agency 
 I should feel a certain trepidation lest, by want of preparation 
 or care in myself, the mission might fail in its last effort ; but 
 I have no fear, because He who has done such extraordinary 
 things for us can operate without human agency at all. We 
 know that that Presence cannot be resisted. Of course the 
 message or the effect can, but nothing can stop the strong 
 spiritual Person working among us in the person of the Spirit." 
 
 This is the great mysterious truth to which the devout Church- 
 man and Nonconformist can alike testify — that Christ is present 
 and in power among His people. This it is that has inspired 
 such enthusiastic love and devotion in all ages of the Church. 
 
 A visitor once ventured to ask Alfred Tennyson what he 
 thought of our Saviour. They were walking in a garden. The 
 poet was silent for a moment. Then he stopped by a beautiful 
 flower, and pointing to it, said : " What the sun is to that 
 flower, Jesus Christ is to my soul." 
 
 But to return to the difficulties which beset man as to the 
 Scriptures. Criticism that has acted as a corrosive acid upon 
 the Old Testament has also assailed the Gospels. 
 
 According to the doctrine of the Incarnation, the divine and 
 the human are united. What is divine is infallible truth and 
 1 The Farringdons (London, 1902), p. 114. 
 
374 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 imperishable, what is human is subject to the frailty of humanity 
 and is evanescent. It has been pointed out that in the Gospels 
 there are slight discrepancies. There must be such, because 
 written down by men. The Gospels are the memorabilia of the 
 Apostles, and in S. Luke of the Virgin Mother, existing origin- 
 ally in scraps, afterwards pieced together, and eventually put 
 into the form in which we have them, as the first three Gospels. 
 There are in them, possibly, inaccuracies in arrangement of facts, 
 and they do not always accord in minute details. This is due 
 to variations in the reminiscences of the narrators. 1 But sub- 
 stantially they give us a true report, and it is with the substance 
 we are concerned — the great foundation facts. It is the same 
 with the Church : she has her divine inspiration, but the human 
 element is in her very strong. Consequently, whereas sub- 
 stantially she is the quod semper quod ubique quod ab omnibus 
 in her teaching and in her order and ministration, she is subject 
 to faults and failings. 
 
 The Broad Churchmen of the advanced type more or less 
 openly display their unbelief in the fundamentals of Christianity ; 
 not too openly, lest they should be taxed with dishonesty in 
 holding benefices. The dogma of the Incarnation is held but 
 loosely by this school. The tendency is to deny it altogether. 
 
 Hence the Sacrifice on Calvary loses in their teaching its 
 atoning efficacy. Its moral lessons are dwelt upon, to the ex- 
 clusion of issues of far deeper importance. Such teachers are 
 unable to account for the widespread sense of sin and need for 
 forgiveness felt by mankind. They cannot understand the 
 former nor satisfy the latter. To them sin has no real existence ; 
 it is a sentiment, a spiritual headache, which the healthy breeze 
 of common sense will dissipate. In the language of modern 
 philosophy, of which they are the expositors, " The higher man 
 of the day is not worrying himself about his sins at all." The 
 
 1 Eusebius quotes from S. Clement of Alexandria: "Peter having 
 publicly preached the Word at Rome, and having spoken the Gospel by 
 the Spirit, many present exhorted Mark to write the things which had 
 been spoken, since he had long accompanied Peter, and remembered 
 what he had said ; and that when he had composed the Gospel, he de- 
 livered it to them who had asked it of him. Which, when Peter knew, he 
 neither forbad nor encouraged it." (H.E. vi. 14.) Now if this be a true 
 tradition, it shows that in the Apostle's eyes — though the details of our 
 Lord's life, the miracles and the parables, might be of extraordinary 
 interest to Christians, the knowledge of them was by no means essential. 
 That which was essential was the recognition of the fundamental verities 
 — the Incarnation, the Atoning Death, the Resurrection, and the Ascen- 
 sion, and the moral and eschatological teaching of Christ. 
 
THE BROAD CHURCH 
 
 375 
 
 Atonement is with these men no remedy for the Fall, because 
 the Fall itself is nothing but a fable. The doctrine of original 
 sin is " simply comic." Actual sin, so long as it does not con- 
 flict with the social standard of morality, is non-existent, or, at 
 the utmost, is a temporary survival of a former and lower stage 
 of culture. Of guilt attaching to the individual there is none — 
 it is the fault of his surroundings, or due to a hereditary taint. 
 
 Such teaching is not only opposed to the doctrine of the 
 Atonement, but it robs the individual of conscience. It makes 
 repentance, which is the first step towards higher and better 
 things, needless, and renders futile all efforts of amendment, since 
 it removes that which alone can make those efforts successful. 
 
 The Incarnation is the basis of the Christian Faith. I am 
 well aware that the notion of the virginal birth presents diffi- 
 culties that must be respected. 
 
 In most heathen religions there was a belief in a virginal 
 conception, apart from the ordinary process of nature. There 
 is to the imagination of man something so transcendental, so 
 exquisitely beautiful and clean, in the thought of a pure maiden, 
 and again, something so lovely, so tender and touching in that 
 of the mother with her babe, that there has been an instinctive 
 tendency to combine the two ideas. We find it in the Popol 
 Vuh, the sacred book of the Quiches, in the Kalwiopog of the 
 Esths, in classic mythology in the stories of the birth of Vulcan 
 from Juno, in those of Cceculus, Erigone, and Hebe. 1 The sun 
 before it rises has foregleams, and flushes the clouds. 
 
 But either we must accept the possibility of miracle or not. 
 If not, then the creeds must be revised out of existence, and the 
 whole fabric of historical Christianity falls to the ground. If 
 we do accept the possibility, then there is no greater difficulty 
 about the foundation-miracle of Christianity than about any 
 other. It is simply a matter of the unbroken tradition of the 
 Church corroborated by the evidence of Holy Scripture. In 
 most heathen religions, as said above, there have been a yearning 
 and an aspiration after a virginal birth. But how different 
 are these cases from the Gospel narrative of the birth of Jesus, 
 with the whole superstructure of the Catholic Church built on 
 " Jesus and the Resurrection." 
 
 With regard to the Atonement, we suffer from the exaggera- 
 tions of the doctrine by the Evangelicals who represented a 
 
 1 See, for examples from all parts of the world, from nearly all religions — 
 Sepp, Das Heidenthum (Regensburg, 1853), iii. 55, 59. 
 
376 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 wrathful God whose anger must be assuaged by sacrifice, and 
 those who doubt it may say with Augustine: " I barked not 
 against Thy truth, but against fictions of carnal men, which 
 I mistook for Thy truth.' ' 
 
 When there is a sense of sin, there is a craving for its expia- 
 tion. With a denial of the existence of sin comes disbelief in 
 the Atonement. 
 
 The advanced Broad Churchman of the present day has but 
 a hesitating belief, if he has any at all, in the Incarnation. 
 The Virginal Birth is dubious. Moreover, the Crucifixion is to 
 him an historical fact, nothing further. If in Orders, what mes- 
 sage has he to take to his parishioners ? He is a messenger 
 without a message, a post-office employe flourishing an orange 
 envelope with no telegram inside. He holds the Christian 
 verities with as tremulous and uncertain a hand as does a 
 partially paralysed man when attempting to put a cup to his 
 lips. And he is spiritually paralysed, for he has lost his Faith. 
 
 Of what do the sermons of these men consist ? They are 
 lectures on Browning or the housing of the poor and other 
 social subjects, on anything but doctrine, and they are cautiously 
 evasive on Evangelical truths, so that it is not easy to catch 
 their preachers and put salt on their tails. But look at such 
 men as the late Father Stanton, who for fifty years, as a humble 
 curate, could draw weekly crowds of men ; look at the present 
 Bishop of London, who can fill a cathedral with attentive 
 listeners, by preaching, not with enticing words, or words of 
 man's wisdom, but the simple Gospel. 
 
 When I was a little boy of eight years old, I told my father 
 a lie. I was miserable. I crept into the room where he sat in 
 his arm-chair. I jumped on his knees, put my arms round his 
 neck, sobbed on his breast, and confessed my sin. He embraced 
 and forgave me. So we say to our penitents : Go to the Eternal 
 Father, confess to Him, and trust that the everlasting arms 
 will enfold you, and forgiveness will be freely given. Can the 
 Broad Churchman do this ? I doubt it. I doubt it because 
 it is no work of his to rouse souls to the consciousness of sin 
 and need for repentance. I do not think it, for his moral sense 
 must be blunted when he recites the " I believe " without be- 
 lieving — and for what ? The quarterage from the Ecclesiastical 
 Commissioners, the price of equivocation. 
 
 Beyond the limits of the English Provinces the party is neg- 
 ligible. It had its Bishop Colonso, and a backing up by the 
 
THE BROAD CHURCH 
 
 377 
 
 State in South Africa, and it died of inanition. It has con- 
 tributed nothing towards the spiritual life of the Church, because 
 it is lacking in spirituality. Questions connected with the 
 higher criticism or abstract theological arguments are out of 
 place in teaching intended for the multitude. This they feel, 
 and so their pulpit utterances are confined to social questions or 
 to mere morality. But this is a state of things fraught with 
 danger to religion. 
 
 Broad Churchism appeals mainly to college tutors and school- 
 masters — men who have but little knowledge of human nature, 
 its wants and aspirations. It has, as well, its adherents among 
 the social reformers who limit their activities to the improve- 
 ment of the conditions under which the working classes live ; 
 who imagine that all that is needed are education, better domestic 
 arrangements, cheap food and recreation, physical and mental ; 
 in a word, material amelioration. They are satisfied if they can 
 make the environment pleasant, never thinking of the higher 
 interests of the organization that it surrounds. Reason is the 
 supplanter of faith. Faith is, in fact, a faculty of the soul they 
 do not seem to possess or understand ; never exercised, it 
 becomes atrophied. 
 
 In the Atlantic is a tract left undisturbed by the currents — 
 that is, torpid — called the Sargasso Sea. The Gulf Stream pours 
 past, carrying warmth to northern regions of Europe, even to 
 Nova Zembla, and the south equatorial current is streaming 
 past, conveying chilled waters to be heated in the Mexican basin. 
 But in the Sargasso Sea all is still ; it breeds a festering mass 
 of vegetation and animalcules. As in the ballad of the " Ancient 
 Mariner " : 
 
 Day after day, day after day, 
 
 We stuck, nor breath nor motion, 
 
 As idle as a painted ship 
 
 Upon a painted ocean. 
 
 Water, water, everywhere, 
 
 And all the boards did shrink ; 
 
 Water, water, everywhere, 
 
 Nor any drop to drink. 
 
 The very deep did rot. O Christ, 
 
 That ever this should be ! 
 
 Yes, slimy things did crawl with legs 
 
 Upon the slimy sea. 
 
 Broad Churchism is the Sargasso Sea of the Church. In London 
 the men of this party have their churches and proprietary chapels, 
 
378 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 and these are attended by individuals who have sufficient salt 
 of their youth to lead them to attend worship on Sunday morn- 
 ings when they cannot conveniently get up a party for a motor 
 excursion. When such clerics get transferred to country livings 
 they do not know what to preach about ; how to comfort the 
 sick and sorrowful and how to reclaim the sinful. Christ 
 Jesus is the friend, the dear friend, the hope, the standby of the 
 suffering : but He is only the bowing acquaintance of the 
 Broad Church pastor ; they are hardly on speaking terms. 
 
 I remember reading of a philosophic agnostic who was visit- 
 ing his old nurse at an almshouse. She was suffering, crippled, 
 and fading. He spoke to her of one thing after another — 
 how that rheumatism was due to uric acid in the blood ; but 
 the thought of uric acid did not comfort her. Just then the 
 chaplain passed, and seeing the aged creature with tears stream- 
 ing down her cheeks, he held up his finger, pointing heavenwards. 
 The old nurse smiled, her face brightened, and she dried her 
 eyes. " There," remarked the writer who narrated this fact, 
 " I found that we lack something to give which so far only 
 Christian faith can accord." 
 
 Many years ago I was at Freiburg in Breisgau, where at that 
 time resided an English governess, who was dying of cancer. 
 Her German Protestant pupils visited her. They were kind 
 souls, and read to her Schiller, Heine, and Goethe ; but could 
 afford her no comfort, instil into her no hope. Then she sent 
 for the English chaplain, and he spoke to her of Christ, His 
 Cross and His Resurrection. The sun shone out on that poor 
 sufferer's last days ; she had the Gospel of hope, of immortality ; 
 she had Jesus Christ, God and man, who had died on the Cross 
 and had conquered death, to cling to in place of Schiller's " Diver," 
 Goethe's " Faust," and Heine's " Atta Troll." " Oh," exclaimed 
 the pupils, " she has gone back to superstition." 
 
 I will take another case and submit it to the Broad Church 
 cleric, as one might to a medical man, and ask what treatment 
 he would adopt. And I take it from Miss E. Thorneycroft 
 Fowler's novel The Farringdons. I take it because it is an exact 
 reproduction of what has been the experience of thousands of 
 Roman and Anglican priests, and of Wesleyan ministers as 
 well, and each one of them has known at once what medicine 
 to apply. 
 
 The authoress is speaking of Jemima Stubbs, whose early 
 years were devoted to attendance upon an ailing mother, and 
 
THE BROAD CHURCH 
 
 379 
 
 later on a crippled brother. She is addressed by Caleb Bateson, 
 a class-leader and occasional preacher among the Methodists. 
 
 " You don't seem to be enjoying yourself, my lass," he had 
 said in his cheery voice, laying a big hand upon the girl's narrow 
 shoulder. 
 
 M 'And how should I, Mr. Bateson, not having a beau, nor 
 nobody to talk to ? ' she replied in her quavering treble. 
 ' What with havin' first mother to nurse when I was a little 
 gell, and then havin' Johnnie to look after, I've never had time 
 to make myself look pretty and to get a beau, like other gells, 
 and now I'm too old for that sort of thing, and yet I've never 
 had my chance, as you may say.' 
 
 " 1 Poor lass ! It's a hard life as you've had, and no mistake.' 
 
 " 'That it is, Mr. Bateson. Men wants gells to look pretty 
 and make 'em laugh. They don't care for the dull, dowdy ones 
 such as me — and yet, how is a gell to be light-hearted and gay, 
 I should like to know, when it's work, work, work all the day ; 
 nursing, nursing, nursing all the night ? Yet the men don't 
 make no allowance for that, not they. They just see as a gell 
 is plain and stupid, and then they has nothing more to do with 
 her and she can go to Jericho for all they cares.' 
 
 " ' You've had a bad time of it, my lass,' repeated Bateson in 
 his full, deep voice. 
 
 " ' Right you are, Mr. Bateson, and it's made my hair grey, 
 and my face all wrinkles, and my hands a sight o' roughness and 
 ugliness. I'm a regular old woman and a fright, and I'm but 
 thirty-five, though no one 'ud believe it to look on me. Lots o* 
 women, them as has had easy times, and their way made smooth 
 for them, look little more than gells when they are thirty-five, 
 and the men run after them as fast as if they was only twenty. 
 But I'm an old woman, I am, and I've never had time to be a 
 young one, and I've never had a beau.' 
 
 " 1 It seems now, Jemima, as if the Lord was dealing a bit 
 hard with you, but never fret yourself, He'll explain it all, and 
 make it all up to you in His own good time. My lass, do you 
 remember how S. Paul said, " From henceforth let no man 
 trouble me, for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus " ? 
 Now it seems to me that your grey hair and your wrinkles 
 and the roughness that comes to you, when we are working for 
 others, and doing our duty, are nothing more nor less than the 
 marks of the Lord Jesus. There are lots o' men in this world, 
 Jemima, and still more women, who grow old before their time, 
 
380 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 working for other people, and I take it that when folks talk o' 
 their wrinkles, the Lord says, " My Name shall be on their fore- 
 heads ; " and when folks talk o' their grey hairs, He says, 
 " They shall walk with Me in white, for they are worthy." And 
 why do we mark the things that belong to us ? Why, so as we 
 may know 'em again and can claim 'em as our own afore the 
 whole world. And that is just why the Lord marks us, so as 
 all the world should know we are His, and so as no man shall 
 ever pluck us out of His hand.' 
 
 " Jemima looked gratefully up at the kindly prophet who 
 was trying to comfort her. ' Law ! Mr. Bateson. That's a 
 consoling way of looking at things. But all the same, I'd have 
 liked to have a beau of my own just for onst, like other gells.' 
 
 " ' The Lord made women, and He understands 'em, and He 
 ain't the one to blame 'em for being as He Himself made 'em. 
 Remember, the Book says, " As onewhom his mother comforteth," 
 and I hold that means as He understands women and their 
 troubles better than the kindest father ever could. And He 
 won't let His children give up things for His sake, without 
 paying them back some thirty, some sixty, and some an hundred- 
 fold, and don't you ever get thinking that He will. ' " 
 
 This is a long quotation, but I give it as typical of situations 
 in which a clergyman will be placed, conditions he will have 
 to meet. 
 
 Now, Messieurs les Modernistes, look round your pharma- 
 copoeia and see whether you have any medicine for such a case. 
 If you repeat the old words of consolation, it will be as gramo- 
 phones grinding out in harsh notes a melody which you do not 
 hold to be true, do not feel to be true, to which you are as 
 insensible as the revolving disc on which the notes are lightly 
 scored. 
 
 Where in the mission field are the Broad Churchmen to 
 be found ? Low Churchmen are there, with their truncated 
 Gospel ; High Churchmen are there ; the Wesleyan, the Inde- 
 pendent, the Baptist are there — but the Broad Churchman is 
 absent, because he has nothing to give, no glad tidings of great 
 joy to announce to the heathen. In the slums, by the sick-bed, 
 by the starving, he is not found. He has nothing to give them. 
 No Gospel, no glad tidings of great joy. Among the sinful, the 
 fallen, the agonized souls — he is not found. He looks on the 
 sufferer and passes by on the other side. He has no Gospel, 
 no glad tidings of pardon and peace for them. 
 
THE BROAD CHURCH 381 
 
 At a recent Wesleyan Conference held at Plymouth (July 1913), 
 a Mr. Ensor Walters, addressing the assembly, expressed his 
 belief that the future is with the dogmatic Churches. Speaking 
 for London, at all events, he said that sensational evangelizers 
 had gone for ever. The churches in inner East London that 
 were full, if any were full, were those of the Roman Catholic and 
 High Anglican Communions. He was not there to plead that 
 these Communions alone had the truth, but they had said to a 
 weary and restless world, " Thus saith the Lord." 
 
 We have but to cross the water and study the Evangelische 
 Kirche of Prussia, of Wiirtemberg and Baden, to see to what 
 a condition of religious deadness an all-but-creedless Church 
 can sink. 1 
 
 On the stagnation of this Church, which was an invention of 
 King Frederick William III of Prussia in 1817, I might refer 
 to Laing's Notes of a Traveller (1842), an impartial evidence, 
 as he was a Scottish Presbyterian ; but I prefer to take a later 
 testimony. It must be understood what this Evangelical 
 Church is — it is a fusion of Lutheranism and Calvinism on an 
 undenominational basis. When this vague religion was imposed 
 on Wiirtemberg, 1,500 families migrated with the purpose of 
 settling in Georgia. Two-thirds of them perished before reach- 
 ing Odessa, where the remnant were reinforced by a further 
 body of their countrymen, to the number of 100 families. The 
 Emperor Alexander I established them in colonies about Tiflis 
 and Elizabethopol, where their descendants remain to this day. 
 
 As to the condition of religion in this " Church " on an almost 
 creedless basis, I will quote the words of Dr. Bruckner: " It 
 must not be concealed that the great part of the Protestant 
 population is at variance with the Protestant Church. Even 
 when outward opposition is not expressed, inward declension is 
 not lacking. If the prevailing disposition of the age is not an 
 irreligious one, it certainly is not on the whole a Church one. 
 I will not inquire whether the Bishop of Paderborn is right 
 
 1 It does retain the Apostles' Creed, but this is only used at Baptisms 
 and Confirmations. Nothing but the personal interference of the Em- 
 peror William — a man of eighty — as Summits Episcopus prevented the 
 Apostles' Creed from being struck out of the Prussian Liturgy in 1877, 
 by the vote of the Consistories. The same took place at Baden, where 
 it would have been expunged by vote of the pastors, but for the veto of 
 the Grand Duke. Although the Creed stands in the baptismal formulary, 
 an eminent pastor in Baden told me in 1878 that he did not fancy there 
 were half a dozen in the Grand Duchy who used it. It was optional to 
 the parents whether it should be recited or not. 
 
382 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 when he affirms that he knows of Protestant towns of 18,000 
 inhabitants in which only about thirty-two churchgoers are to 
 be found. But it is a fact that, in a town such as Berlin, with 
 its population of 65,000 inhabitants, the existing churches can 
 accommodate 40,000, and that these are said to be seldom 
 filled." 1 
 
 I do not give my own experiences, as I might be considered 
 prejudiced. In the Sunday Magazine of 1870 is an article on 
 Tubingen, the University in which are trained those who are 
 to be pastors in the Evangelical Church of Wurtemberg. The 
 writer says : 
 
 " When we leave the class rooms, which are crowded by 
 earnest and accomplished young men — we seem to have left, 
 not theology only, but religion behind us. In the Stift-Kirche 
 (where almost all the worshippers go) you do not on any Sunday 
 morning see above a hundred and fifty of the eight hundred 
 and odd students who are enrolled in the University. You can 
 count on your fingers all who occupy the seats of the male 
 citizens. That intelligent and courteous man with whom you 
 walked yesterday among the vineyards is not there ; nor any 
 other with whom you had some talk on politics ; nor any of 
 those whose faces are familiar to you in the streets. Stranger 
 still, you will see very few of the professors ; you may go to 
 church for a whole summer and never see Professor Beck. Aye, 
 and stranger still, that good lady with whom it was your privi- 
 lege to have had Christian conversation, and whose humble and 
 loving trust in Christ impressed you so much, is not there. It 
 was her manly son and his friends whom you saw pass your 
 window very early this morning, setting out for a long walk 
 amongst the hills. If, in your amazement, you devote Monday 
 to inquiries, you will find that public worship is not regarded as 
 their duty by any of the most pious among your friends ; and 
 you will learn that many of the most thoughtful men and most 
 inquiring students have long ceased even to expect any good 
 from churchgoing. You will find, on the whole, that the most 
 
 1 " Never did I behold Sunday so ill-observed as in these Protestant 
 cities of North Germany. From sunrise to sunset, thousands of the 
 people are absorbed in one idea, that of pleasure. Setting all other 
 observances aside, it is neither a day of rest to man nor beast. The 
 churches are ill filled. We attended the Lutheran (Evangelical, actually) 
 service at the Marien-Kirche (Liibeck) this morning, a service I particu- 
 larly dislike — a standing and sitting congregation — much singing, little 
 praying, and a long-winded sermon." Horace Marryat, A Residence in 
 Jutland (i860), i. 5. 
 
THE BROAD CHURCH 
 
 383 
 
 pious people on the one hand, and the most intellectual on the 
 other, and those who may be said to belong to both classes, do 
 not attend church in Tubingen. If you proceed to country 
 parishes you will probably find the church well attended, but 
 you will not find that its services have much influence on the 
 daily life of the farmers and cotters ; you will not even find that 
 the minister holds that place spiritually and socially among his 
 people to which he seems so well entitled. You will be struck 
 probably in church itself, certainly out of it, by the lack of 
 sympathy between the pulpit and the pews, the manse and the 
 houses of the parishioners. It is unquestionable that this is 
 due to a want of living religion. If a political revolution were 
 to occur to-morrow, the throne is not so sure to be cast into the 
 mire as is the pulpit ; and be it remembered that we speak of 
 a country where there is no dissenting church — where the con- 
 test would not be between Establishment and Nonconformity, 
 but, in the first instance at least, between Church and 
 no- Church. 
 
 " To what then is due that strange alienation of the people 
 from the Church ? It seems to me that it comes chiefly from 
 . . . the negative theology which, while it has lost its hold on 
 at the best men and the best thinkers, while as a school it is 
 attempting to make up by extravagance what it has lost 
 in power, has passed down into the heart of the people and 
 chilled it." 
 
 This testimony is valuable, for it comes from the pen of a 
 thoroughgoing Protestant. Confirmation may be found in 
 Religious Thought in Germany (Tinsley, 1870). 
 
 There is, undoubtedly, a sad decline in churchgoing in Eng- 
 land, but there is, among us, a large body of enthusiastic wor- 
 shippers who could not and would not let the Church go, whereas 
 in Protestant Germany only a few women would be found who 
 would care to lift a finger to save the Evangelische Kirche from 
 sinking into the earth ; and professors and students would 
 drink a bock with a " Hoch ! Hoch ! Hoch ! " above its grave, 
 and the German people would look on with supreme indifference. 
 
 Here, then, we have an undogmatic Church, a compromise, 
 before us as an acknowledged failure ; and yet it is to this con- 
 dition that English Latitudinarians would reduce the Anglican 
 Church. Religion is not dead in Germany, far from it; but 
 it is like the unsatisfied craving for love in the heart of an aged 
 spinster, and it is not sought in the Evangelical Church ; I do 
 
384 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 not think it occurs to any devout minds to suppose that a heart- 
 satisfying religion is to be found there. 
 
 There is, unquestionably, great inducement to a Broad 
 Church clergyman to occupy the position he has taken up, 
 because it pays to be vague and vaporous. It ensures advance- 
 ment. It is worth to him some thousand a year. It is the 
 popular current on which he floats. But assuredly a priest of 
 God should not follow the line of least resistance, and take his 
 religion from the fashion of the day. 
 
 There used to be carriages to which was attached a " rumble " 
 behind, in which sat the lady's maid. The Broad Churchman 
 seats himself in the body of the ecclesiastical coach, among 
 soft cushions, and where is the luncheon basket with cold pheasant, 
 jam puffs, and champagne, also pleasant female society. We 
 once drove over Haldon from Exeter to Dawlish, and only 
 on reaching our destination discovered that the rumble had fallen 
 off with the maid in it. I fear that with most Broad Church- 
 men their religion is consigned to the rumble behind, and that 
 they will not discover their loss till the end of life's journey. 
 
 With men of the old Evangelical school, a High Churchman 
 can always have much in common. So can he with an earnest 
 Dissenting minister. They have in their hearts the love of 
 God, and more or less of the Faith. But it is otherwise with 
 the Broad Church parson. Though we can quite realize how 
 great have been his difficulties, still we cannot but feel that he 
 ought not to occupy the place he does. One is separated from 
 him by a wall, because we cannot regard him as an honest man. 
 If scholars desire to investigate the credibility of the Virginal 
 Birth and the Resurrection, let them step outside the Church ; 
 but to dispute or disbelieve in them, and to continue to hold a 
 position and pocket its emoluments, whilst definitely protest- 
 ing twice daily that they do believe in these articles, is to be 
 blind to the dictates of that integrity which is to be expected of 
 gentlemen. The old Broad Churchmen, such as Dr. Arnold 
 and Maurice and Kingsley, were men of different type. Arnold, 
 though bitterly hostile to the Oxford Movement, which he 
 attacked with a pen dipped in gall, was an earnest teacher, and 
 his sermons to the boys at Rugby were marked by devotion to 
 our Blessed Lord. At one time he had strong Unitarian lean- 
 ings, but these he certainly mastered. In a letter addressed 
 to a Unitarian father who had sent his son to Rugby he pro- 
 tested that such tenets were irreconcilable with the essentials 
 
THE BROAD CHURCH 
 
 385 
 
 of Christianity, and expressed his determination as a master 
 to try to impress on this boy, as on all other pupils committed 
 to his charge, belief in these solemn verities ; and the father, 
 after such a warning, must resolve whether he would allow the 
 boy to stay. This is what he wrote to Dr. Greenhill : "I 
 believe that any man can make himself an atheist speedily, by 
 breaking off his own personal communion with God in Christ ; 
 but if he keep this unimpaired, I believe that no intellectual 
 study, whether of nature or of man, will force him into atheism ; 
 but on the contrary, the new creations of our knowledge, so 
 to speak, gather themselves into a fair and harmonious system, 
 ever revolving in their brightness around their proper centre, 
 the throne of God. Prayer and kindly intercourse with the 
 poor are the two great safeguards of spiritual life — its more than 
 food and raiment." 
 
 It was on such topics as the Church, Orders, and Sacraments 
 that Arnold laid no stress, if he did not sometimes contravene 
 the Prayer Book. 
 
 J. F. Denison Maurice, the son of a Unitarian minister, was 
 also regarded as pertaining to the Broad Church, but he stoutly 
 maintained that the Catholic Church was the Kingdom of 
 Christ upon earth, that the Sacraments were pledges and 
 guarantees of grace ; that the ministry had a real commission 
 from God. His teaching was not fully approved by the Trac- 
 tarians, as he fell short of much on which they insisted. But 
 of his sincerity, of his loyalty to Christ and to the Church, there 
 can be entertained no doubt whatever. 
 
 Stanley, Dean of Westminster, was the nearest to the modern 
 Broad Churchman. He was a thorough Erastian, regarding 
 the clergy in no other light than as the moral police force of 
 the State and conservators of her ancient monuments. His 
 theological views were vague, and it is doubtful whether he 
 knew himself how far his belief went, and how far it fell short 
 of Socinianism. I met him at the Alt Katholik Congress at 
 Cologne in 1872, but he played there a very inconspicuous part, 
 as Bishop Wordsworth of Lincoln was present, with very definite 
 views, and it became obvious to Stanley that the Old Catholics 
 were determined to adhere to the Creeds and maintain the 
 sacramental teaching of the Church. 
 
 Mr. (afterwards Dean) Church wrote of Stanley to Mr. 
 Mozley in 1865 : "He seems to me in the position of a prophet 
 and leader, full of eagerness and enthusiasm and brilliant talents, 
 25 
 
386 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 all heightened by success — but without a creed to preach." In 
 1881 he wrote : " Stanley had intellectual defects, like his 
 physical defects as to music, or smell, or colour, or capacity 
 for mathematical ideas, which crippled his capacity for 
 the sympathy he wished to spread all round him. One of 
 these defects is indicated in his aversion to metaphysics and 
 dogmatic statements. They were to his mind like the glass 
 which a fly walks on and cannot penetrate ; when he came to 
 them his mind * would not bite.' Another defect seemed to 
 me always his incapacity for the spiritual and unearthly side 
 of religion ; the elevations and aspirations after Divine affec- 
 tions, and longings after God, which are above the historic plane 
 which was congenial to him. These were two enormous dis- 
 qualifications to a religious teacher, and there were others, 
 among them a certain freely indulged contempt for what he did 
 not like, and a disposition to hunt down and find faults where 
 he did not love people." 
 
 He offered a gratuitous insult to the Bishops of the Anglican 
 Communion, English, Scottish, Irish, Colonial, and American, 
 when they assembled for the first Pan-Anglican Council, by 
 refusing to allow them to hold the Conciliar Communion in the 
 Abbey. On the other hand, when the revisionists of the Eng- 
 lish Bible were to begin their labours, though comprising Dis- 
 senters and a Unitarian minister, he invited all to communion 
 in the Abbey. When Convocation met on July 5, Bishop 
 Wilberforce spoke on what was then called the " Westminster 
 Scandal." "I am bound to say that I deeply lament that 
 any one professing not only to hold, but to be the teacher of, a 
 doctrine so dishonouring to our Lord and Saviour as the denial 
 of His Godhead, joined in that act of Holy Communion of our 
 Church, with the Bishops of that Church. I do most deeply 
 lament that such should have been the case." 
 
 If Stanley refused the use of the Abbey to the Bishops of 
 the Anglican Church, he was ready to lend the pulpit for lay 
 lectures. Stanley was at Canterbury for the enthronement of 
 Archbishop Tait (I take the story from the Church Quarterly 
 Review). Dean Alford was worried because at the conclusion 
 of the ceremony the Archbishop is enthroned in the Dean's 
 seat, whence he would give the final Benediction, facing East, 
 and the congregation in the nave would see and hear nothing 
 of the blessing. The prospect distressed the Dean, and some 
 one suggested, " Why not ask him to say it twice ? Let him 
 
THE BROAD CHURCH 
 
 387 
 
 step out of his stall, stand at the top of the steps and bless the 
 multitude outside, papal fashion, urbi et orbi." But the 
 Bishop of Oxford started some technical objection of precedent. 
 At this Stanley cut in with the happy quotation, his eyes 
 positively twinkling with mischief, "Hast thou but one blessing, 
 my father ? Bless me, even me also, 0 my father t " " Hark at 
 him," said the Bishop promptly: " on Esau's side, as usual." 
 
 The Rev. Canon Fowler, Vice-Principal of Bishop Hatfield's 
 Hall, Durham, many years ago, went to Westminster and asked 
 Dean Stanley to allow him to study some mediaeval Hebrew 
 documents ; but, seeing his long coat and clerical waistcoat and 
 collar, the Dean treated him with marked coldness. A Jew 
 scholar, who afterwards went for the same purpose, wrote 
 to Dr. Fowler to express how courteous and gracious the Dean 
 had been to him, allowing him to have the documents out 
 of the library. Such was Stanley. He contemplated a Church- 
 man with definite faith, from a distance, and with inveterate 
 dislike ; but would receive with open arms, and a face wreathed 
 in smiles, a Dissenter, an agnostic, even a Jew. 
 
 In 1 910 a book was published called Confessions of a Clergy- 
 man. It was anonymous, but the author informs his readers 
 that he is a beneficed priest of the Church of England, but that, 
 although he has lost his faith, he has no desire to lose his bene- 
 fice and its emoluments, and therefore writes anonymously. 
 He wrote : "I am still in the active ministry of the Church. I 
 see no reason why I should sever this connection ; " and yet he 
 says, " I recognize Jesus as my Saviour, but I do not recognize 
 Him as my God." 
 
 When Mr. Stopford Brooke found that he had ceased to 
 believe in the Apostles' Creed, he resigned his benefice like 
 an honest man. 
 
 There can be no manner of doubt as to what the teaching of 
 the Church is, relative to the nature of our Lord Jesus Christ ; 
 and to remain in the ministry whilst contravening its teaching 
 on a fundamental doctrine, if not with the lips, yet in the 
 heart, shows how the loss of faith has demoralized the 
 conscience. Yet these are the men that our Prime Ministers 
 are disposed to advance to deaneries and canonries and perhaps 
 to bishoprics. It is much as though dishonest clerks in a 
 bank, who falsified the accounts and purloined the cash, were 
 advanced to be managers. 
 
 Mr. (now Dean) Hensley Henson in his Liberty of Pro- 
 
388 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 phesying has spoken of the acute conflict between the modern 
 intellect and conscience and the Prayer Book. It may be so, 
 but that is no reason why we should make over our treasure 
 to those who would burgle us of it. 
 
 Such as hold to the immutability of natural law would re- 
 strict the efficacy of prayer to supplication for spiritual graces. 
 Inexorable law governs the world of human affairs, and cannot 
 be deflected to one side or another. The course of nature is 
 rigidly mapped out, and no deviation from it is thinkable; 
 consequently such supplications as occur in the Prayer Book 
 for rain or for fine weather should be deleted. If the Broad 
 Churchmen's conception of the valuelessness of prayer in matters 
 material be carried to its logical conclusion, it is useless to pray 
 for the recovery of the sick, for release from pain, because a 
 malady must take its course, and pain is a necessary con- 
 comitant of disorganization of the system. It would also be 
 irrational to pray for cessation of an epidemic " in the Time 
 of any common Plague or Sickness," because these are due to 
 the drinking water being impregnated with sewage, or to some 
 other remediable cause ; and the prayer should be addressed to 
 the sanitary authorities or to the local inspector of nuisances, 
 not to the Almighty, in whose hands it is commonly supposed 
 are the issues of life and death. 
 
 It is on the same ground they hold it to be quite a mistake 
 to call upon the Lord of Hosts, who maketh wars to cease in all 
 the world, " for peace and deliverance from our enemies;" the 
 application should be made to the Board of Arbitration at the 
 Hague. 
 
 These men are like Paddy's steed, which he offered to sell to 
 his squire as " a raale good Protestant horse." " What do you 
 mean, Patrick ? " " Sir, sure he's never been down on his 
 knees." 
 
 Take the case of one of these men when a loved wife or darling 
 child is in sickness nigh unto death. Though we are meant 
 to use means, yet he leans all his trust on a mustard poultice, 
 and flies for succour — not to Him who is the Great Physician, 
 but to Mr. Boots the chemist, for a bottle of mixture, to be 
 shaken before taken three times a day, and which costs him 
 eighteenpence. 
 
 The aim of the Liberal Theologians now is to clear the Prayer 
 Book of definite doctrine, rather than to eliminate the objec- 
 tionable rubrics. A broad comprehensiveness is what they 
 
THE BROAD CHURCH 
 
 389 
 
 aim at, so that all should be embraced within the Established 
 Church, whatever they believe or disbelieve. A Church such 
 as this, built not on the living Rock, but on the shifting sands 
 of human opinion, would not be worth a pinch of salt. 
 
 In the Gospel parable it is the man that has been faithful 
 over a few things who is made ruler over many things. In 
 England at the present day, in the Church, it is the faithless 
 servant who is exalted to be a rector, a canon, or a dean. 
 
 The Liberal Church party would open the doors of their 
 churches and escort to their pulpits the ministers of dissenting 
 bodies. Tarpeia offered to unfold the gates of Rome to the 
 Sabines, if they would give her what they bore on their left 
 arms, meaning their golden bracelets. They accepted, and as 
 they entered the postern, despising the traitress, cast on her 
 their shields and crushed her to death. And these male Tarpeias, 
 what do they expect from the enemies of the Church whom 
 they would let in ? Their goodwill, their golden opinions ? 
 They will be buried under their contempt. 
 
 But it is not only that they would betray the doctrines of the 
 Church. They, or at all events some of them, would betray its 
 morals also. Mr. H. M. Garrod, in The Religion of all Good Men, 
 writes : " Criticism of Christianity upon the ethical side has 
 scarcely begun. I do not see how we can escape the necessity 
 of wholly revising our view of Christian ethics." Again : " We 
 cannot abandon Christian dogma and keep Christian ethics — 
 that is true enough. The objection of young men to Christianity 
 is not intellectual, but moral." He says that " the world and 
 the flesh are the things which mankind will never consent to do 
 without. The instinct of the average man is healthy, his cry is 
 ever still, Give us the world and the flesh, or we will smash every 
 window in your palace of painted superstition." So — not only 
 must Christian dogma be revised, but Christian morals as well. 
 
 Into the ark of Noah were taken of clean beasts by sevens, 
 male and female, of unclean by pairs. But these reformers 
 would make of the Ark of Christ's Church a receptacle for the 
 unclean by sevens, and for the clean — if they cared to enter so 
 squalid a menagerie — by twos. 
 
 There are two distinct conceptions as to what a National 
 Church should be. It is either a body in which exists a definite 
 and living faith, not maybe everywhere in evidence ; like pitch- 
 blende, it would contain radium, always giving out light but 
 never exhausting itself, confined necessarily to the few as an 
 
390 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 active principle, but permeating the whole body more or less. 
 The other conception was that of Dr. Arnold, and is that of the 
 modern Broad Churchman, a tent spread over a quicksand that 
 engulfs and buries out of sight everything that is real and solid. 
 
 We have such a Church in the Evangelische Kirche of Germany, 
 already referred to, and a more unsatisfactory creation of the 
 State can hardly be conceived. 
 
 Addison tells ,the story of an artist who set up his painting 
 in the market-place, with a brush, a pot of black paint at its 
 side, and a request that every passer-by should blot out what 
 he regarded as a blemish. When he revisited his canvas, every 
 portion of the picture was hidden under a dash of tar. And such 
 would be the treatment accorded to the Church by these broad- 
 minded reformers. Every sectarian, every crank, every man 
 who had a prejudice would be invited to daub over and daub 
 out a doctrine, a creed, a psalm, a collect, a sacrament, a rite, 
 a rubric — till all left would be a worthless blank of blackness. 
 
 At the battle of Maupertuis (Poitiers) the English archers 
 drew up in line across the King's highway, each provided with 
 a stake, broad enough to cover his person, pointed at the 
 extremity, which extremity he rammed into the ground, thus 
 forming an impregnable rampart by means of which he was able 
 to rout and ruin the chivalry of France. Like these stakes has 
 been the shield of the Faith to every Christian man, a sure 
 protection, unless it be whittled down to the slimness of a 
 fishing-rod. 
 
 On the day upon which I corrected these proofs I walked 
 from Bayonne to a village a few miles distant, and, entering the 
 churchyard, saw above a grave a stone cross, on which was 
 inscribed but one word, Credo. The happy soul whose body 
 lay beneath that cross, in living was sustained and strengthened 
 by grace, and in death was radiant in hope, through the virtue 
 of that same word Credo. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 VIA MEDIA 
 
 THERE is now almost nothing remaining of the bitterness 
 that once reigned between the Evangelicals and the 
 High Churchmen. Members of the two parties have 
 been brought into contact in diocesan Synods and 
 Church Congresses, and have come to understand one another 
 better, and to modify their opinions. Indeed there has been a 
 continuous levelling up of the Low Church party, both in doctrine 
 and in practice, and among the High Church there has been a 
 deepening of spiritualism, so that the members of the two sections 
 can work harmoniously together, are in point of fact no longer 
 to be regarded as sections, for they melt imperceptibly into one 
 another like the colours in the rainbow. Not only so, but many 
 Low Church parents have children who have gone up higher, 
 and of whose sincerity and godliness they can entertain no doubt. 
 This even applies to the Dissenters. The present Archbishop of 
 York, a man very definite in the Faith, is the son of a Presbyterian 
 minister, and a well-known, highly esteemed Wesleyan preacher 
 in the West of England has a son who is a Cowley Father, and a 
 daughter among the Clewer sisters. Very few of the children 
 of Evangelicals remain on the same platform as their parents. 
 Almost invariably, if they continue earnest and devout, they 
 have become High Church. 
 
 In my own neighbourhood there is a lane about a quarter of 
 a mile long, between high banks, and very steep. At the lower 
 end, on ascending it, one can see in April the right-hand bank 
 one mass of primroses, dense as the stars at night in a clear sky. 
 On the left bank, not one. But after mounting some fifty feet, 
 sporadically appear a few primroses on the left bank. They 
 become by degrees more numerous, till at length the banks on 
 both sides of the lane are starred with the beautiful flowers, on 
 each equally abundant. It has been so in the English Church. 
 
 39i 
 
392 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 The beauty of holiness — by beauty I mean the expression in 
 worship — was for awhile confined to the High Church party, the 
 right. But by degrees it has extended to the Low Church side, 
 till at last we may confidently look to the same loveliness and 
 abundance of the manifestation of Divine Life in worship on 
 one side as on the other. 
 
 In the South of France it is not unusual for boys to keep 
 small green frogs in glass pickle- jars as barometers. A little 
 water occupies the bottom of the vessel, and a tiny ladder is 
 inserted, the base of which is in the fluid and the top reaches 
 nearly to the mouth of the jar. In very wet weather the frogs 
 remain submerged, but at a change they ascend the scale, and 
 the degree on which they squat indicates what the weather 
 will be. 
 
 On visiting a large town in the North of England, I was talking 
 to my host about the religious condition of the place. He said : 
 " We have here churches of all kinds, from the lowest of the low, 
 through the stages of high and dry, to very high." 
 
 That is as it should be, for when Dissenters emerge from their 
 native element, either because they are weary of pulpit politics 
 in their chapels, or because they have quarrelled with the 
 deacons, or because their spiritual condition demands something 
 higher and better, they at first find their way into the seats 
 of the Low Church. Perhaps they may remain there all the 
 rest of their lives, perhaps they may begin to crawl higher ; 
 but almost invariably they see their young people advance 
 to churches above their own heads. 
 
 This ladder system in the English Church is altogether to be 
 commended. There is a rung for every kind of temperament 
 and spiritual condition. And this is what every Bishop in 
 England and the Colonies, who is wise, recognizes and welcomes. 
 
 In France and Germany a great gulf is fixed between the 
 Catholics and Protestants. There is no bridge to connect them, 
 there are no ladders. Every year each community loses members 
 that drop off into indifference or into actual hostility to religion. 
 It is most unusual for the members of one community to leap 
 across the chasm into the other. To the Catholic, Calvinism 
 is absolutely repulsive, and an Evangelical cannot stomach 
 the amount of superstition that goes along with positive truth 
 in the Catholic Church. The statue on a column is sometimes 
 so surrounded with the frippery of decoration as to obscure the 
 figure itself. I was much struck with the impassable gulf when 
 
VIA MEDIA 
 
VIA MEDIA 
 
 393 
 
 in the Cevennes. At Merueis the population is about equally 
 divided between Calvinists and Catholics. The temple of the 
 former is octagonal. Internally it has a pulpit in the middle, 
 and the seats of the audience are ranged about it. Not a decora- 
 tion of any sort to relieve the utter barrenness of the place of 
 preaching. Nothing there to attract, everything to repel. In 
 the Catholic parish church an excess of the most trumpery 
 tinsel adornment, the music at High Mass execrable, the service 
 slatternly, the preaching commonplace. Obviously it occurred 
 to neither community that it was worth while trying to attract 
 across the chasm. 
 
 It would be fatal in England were there not rungs at regular 
 intervals in the Church ladder. All minds, all souls, are not con- 
 stituted alike. Some desire a vague sentimentalism in religion ; 
 like Ixion, they embrace a cloud and are content to hug a 
 chilly nebulosity ; others abhor indefiniteness. I saw in the 
 newspaper the other day that a man on the Thames Embank- 
 ment had died of the London fog. And souls perish who are 
 given only a vague and vaporous Christianity, with soot in 
 suspension. 
 
 It is well, it is essential, that a Church resting on the broad 
 basis of humanity should have provision made for those who 
 have little power of assimilation. This was realized to a certain 
 extent in the Latin Church in the Middle Ages, when in the 
 Cistercian churches the decoration was reduced to a minimum — 
 when even singing was forbidden in the Offices. A dull, grim, 
 and tedious service was provided for dull, grim, and heavy minds ; 
 that were able to lay hold of the principles of the Christian Faith, 
 but preferred to have them painted drab. 
 
 It is with Faith as with the sight. All are not specially clear- 
 sighted. So long as the men see, we must be content if they see 
 but a little way, and be thankful that we see more ; and if some 
 see incorrectly — " men as trees walking " — we must be patient 
 with them, and help them to see accurately, and not be angry 
 at their mistakes. Heresy is really the exaltation of one article 
 of faith at the expense of other truths. Neither Manicheism nor 
 Gnosticism was a heresy, it was a religion apart from Christianity, 
 that had certain shreds and particles of Christianity adhering 
 to it. Mormonism is the same. But the Protestant sects of 
 the present day in England owe their vitality to the truth of 
 one or more articles of belief to which they cling. Where they 
 err is that they fail to grasp the complementary verities. Some, 
 
394 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 like Pterilaus, have but one gold hair on their heads — one Truth. 
 Deprive them of that and they perish. Some sects are like the 
 Gorgon sisters, with a single tooth between them ; all the rest are 
 useless stumps. There may be but one hair, yet that is gold ; one 
 tooth, yet that is sound ; one Christian verity, but that is very 
 truth. Anyhow, one is better than none at all. 
 
 When a tadpole is about to change into a frog it must have a 
 ledge just within reach, and no more, above water, on which to 
 effect its transformation. Without such a ledge it infallibly dies. 
 I kept tadpoles in a pail when I was a boy, and I could not make 
 out at first how it was that in the morning, after they had given 
 promise of change, their corpses floated on the water. I put in 
 a bit of wood, and the rest mounted that, and lived. Before 
 each changed, it had not developed legs wherewith to leap. 
 And for those whose heads are just above Nonconformity, and 
 are inclined to be transformed into Churchmen, the Churches 
 which are in Evangelical hands are a spiritual necessity. 
 
 In most of our towns the ladder system prevails, but there 
 are some, and certain seaside resorts, where it does not — such, 
 for instance, as are pocket boroughs of the Simeonite Trustees. 
 The spiritual condition of the residents suffers, for there are 
 now thousands grown to man's estate, aged and grey-headed, 
 who have been brought up from childhood with full Catholic 
 training and accustomed to Catholic worship, and who cannot 
 endure what they find in these churches. In a good many cases 
 they cease to attend them, and make journeys, when weather 
 permits, to surrounding villages where they can obtain that 
 to which they have been accustomed. 
 
 The same thing applies to foreign chaplaincies. Such as 
 are in the hands of the Colonial and Continental Society have 
 too often their services on so low a scale that those who at home 
 have never seen anything like the weird performances in these 
 chapels, withdraw after a single visit, and either move to another 
 place where is an S.P.G. chaplaincy, or else attend the Roman 
 Catholic churches ; not that it occurs to them for a moment to 
 quit the Anglican Communion, but that they cannot relish her 
 services carried out in a way to which they are not accustomed 
 and which to them is absolutely repellent. There is, however, 
 this to be said for Colonial and Continental Society chapels, 
 that a good many have been levelled up, provide early Celebra- 
 tions every Sunday and Holy Day, and are improved on what 
 they were, as I can remember, fifty years ago. Still, they 
 
VIA MEDIA 
 
 395 
 
 represent the English service in its basest form. They are a 
 pis aller, and nothing more. 1 
 
 In country villages there is no choice given to the parishioners. 
 There is but the one parish church ; and the incumbent, if he 
 has any discretion, recognizes this fact, and makes a ladder of 
 his services, so that all spiritual requirements may be met. It 
 is just as foolish to give pap to a healthy man as it is to give salt 
 beef to one with a feeble digestion. I knew the case of a wretched 
 tramp who for a frolic allowed some young men to ram a billiard 
 ball down his throat. It was extracted with extreme difficulty, 
 after the man had spent the worst half-hour in his life. If it 
 had descended into his stomach he could not have digested it. 
 Certain inconsiderate young clergy think to ram full Catholic 
 doctrine down every throat. They do not consider that souls 
 have digestions as well as stomachs, and that some can no more 
 assimilate such teaching, taken in a lump, than the hungry tramp 
 could have digested the billiard ball. 
 
 It must be borne in mind that the English people for a long 
 time have been given little solid food in the form of definite 
 instruction. Every sensible man knows that it is fatal to give 
 those who have been starved as much solid food to consume 
 as, perhaps, they would like. 
 
 Those at the summit of the Church ladder regard such as are 
 planted on lower perches with sympathy and goodwill, but it 
 is otherwise, too often, with those at the bottom — they con- 
 template the occupants of a higher rung with suspicion and 
 alarm ; for, unlike Jacob's ladder, on which angels descended as 
 well as ascended, there is no down-current on this scale ; indeed, 
 hardly ever are there instances of retrogression. 
 
 Nebulous matter has condensed into planets, but no planet 
 has ever resolved itself back into a nebula ; and it is scarcely 
 conceivable that one who has absorbed and assimilated definite 
 Catholic teaching can eject it and return to amorphous Protes- 
 tantism. 
 
 The ladder system is in conformity with nature. All life 
 is constituted on a scale from the lowest bit of animated proto- 
 
 1 I see that Mr. Athelstan Riley's A Guide to High Mass Abroad, " being 
 a manual for the use of English churchmen attending the Celebration 
 of the Holy Eucharist in Roman Catholic countries," has gone into a 
 fifth edition already. What does this show but that a large number of 
 English people on the Continent so dislike the manner in which the 
 Anglican service is performed in Colonial and Continental Society chapels, 
 that they give them a wide berth, and go to towns better served, or to 
 Roman Catholic churches ? The same applies to Ireland. 
 
396 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 plasm to the most highly organized being. The breath of life, 
 which is the Spirit of God, is in the lichen on the wall as well 
 as in the rose and the palm tree ; in the sea-slug as well as in 
 the gold-fish. Why should there not be degrees of spiritual 
 capacity and apprehension in man ? And if there be, as as- 
 suredly there are, then the Church of England is right in pro- 
 viding for all. Our " unhappy divisions " are only the intervals 
 in the inevitable ladder of progression. 
 
 An old friend, when I invited him to accompany me for a 
 walk, replied : "No, thank you. Your legs are long and mine are 
 short. You stride far ahead of me. If you want me to listen 
 to your opinions, gain instruction or amusement from your dis- 
 course, you must accommodate your pace to mine." Intelli- 
 gences, like bodies, have not all the same length of leg, and some 
 lag far behind others. If we desire to convince or persuade the 
 short-legged minds, we with long legs must limit the length of 
 our stride. When one of twain acts as a guide he may keep a 
 foot-length ahead of the other, but he is valueless as a leader if 
 he be a mile in advance. 
 
 A friend, now no more — Canon Sowden of Hebden Bridge, 
 Yorkshire — had the very ugliest of the Peel churches I ever 
 saw, pewed high with deal, with a three-decker obscuring the 
 little altar in an alcove behind it. I asked him how he could 
 endure to minister for many years in such a place. He replied, 
 " I must educate the people till they can no longer endure it." 
 
 He did so, and before he died saw risen in its room a glorious 
 fabric, with dignified chancel and stately altar, such as for 
 long years he had desired — built by the people whom he had 
 trained no longer to tolerate the former unsightly edifice. First 
 the blade, then the ear, afterwards the full corn in the ear. 
 Genuine, consistent advance is made by steps, not by jumps, 
 least of all with a leaping-pole. 
 
 If there be truth in the doctrine of Evolution, then in every 
 stage of life there is a prophecy and promise of something higher. 
 The serpent has undeveloped limbs beneath its skin, but they 
 come into existence as members in the lizard. In this upward 
 march there are starts and expansions that are unfulfilled in the 
 higher- developed creatures. We, with our pithy teeth, have 
 to submit them periodically to the dentist ; but the snail has 
 them so hard that, like diamonds, they will scratch glass. We 
 have our lungs folded up behind our ribs, and we protect them 
 with flannel and occasionally have to nurse them with a mustard 
 
VIA MEDIA 
 
 397 
 
 poultice. But in the butterfly the lungs are drawn forth at the 
 sides, unfurled and feathered with every tint of the rainbow. 
 Is this a prophecy of what may be with us in a higher reach of 
 creation ? We cannot say ; but we do know that this teaches 
 us not to regard ourselves as the crown and ne plus ultra of nature. 
 And so in religion. 
 
 There are generally, in phases of religion below the highest, 
 among the Evangelicals, even in the various forms of Dissent, 
 important truths that have been too long neglected in the Church. 
 There is a truth in Congregationalism, that the people should have 
 something to say as to the appointment of their pastors. At 
 one time, the bishops, even the Popes, were elected by people 
 and clergy. That we have lost. There is a truth in Calvinism, 
 there is such a thing as predestination. Are not we who 
 have our Christian and Church privileges predestined to know 
 and serve God in a way denied to the Mussulman and the 
 heathen ? Is there not a truth in Mohammedanism itself — the 
 conviction that there is but One God, and that He must be 
 worshipped ? And have not our Christians forgotten this, who 
 neglect their private prayers, desert public worship that they 
 may boat on the Thames or motor about the roads on the Lord's 
 own day ? There is a truth in the Wesleyan — the truth of 
 necessity for many souls to be converted, and brought to realize 
 the importance of religion, and of a change of life from one of 
 worldliness to that of love of, and obedience to God. There is a 
 truth in Mrs. Eddie's faith-healing, that prayer avails mightily, 
 and above the administration of drugs. We must look down 
 on these manifestations of religious conviction, and learn from 
 them. 
 
 Of course liberty of worship and of prophecy have to be 
 restrained within due bounds, otherwise the door is opened to 
 confusion and anarchy. And then, again, we have to remember 
 that individual tastes must be subordinated to general edification 
 and corporate worship. Bacon says in one of his Essays : "It 
 is noted by one of the Fathers, Christ's coat indeed had no seam, 
 but the Church's vesture was of divers colours ; whereupon he 
 saith In veste varietas sit, scissura non sit ; they be two things, 
 unity and uniformity." 
 
 Bishop Wilberforce wrote in 1866 : " There may be differences 
 of opinion as to the extent to which Ritualistic observances 
 should prevail in public worship. The conformation of men's 
 minds differs. The conformation of my mind leads me to be 
 
398 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 satisfied with the simplest form as being the most productive of 
 devotion ; but it is not so with others, and I have no right to 
 make what suits me the law for everybody else." In his charge 
 of 1866 he advocated " the revival of old English, not the 
 aping of Roman ways." A development, a growth after long 
 sleep of what had been, not an importation from abroad of what 
 had never been. 
 
 Some of the early Tractarians took umbrage at the attitude 
 of Hooker and other Anglican divines because they refused to 
 unchurch the Zwinglian, Calvinist, and Lutheran Communities 
 which had — so they considered — ruptured the spinal cord of 
 Church continuity. But these divines drew a distinction be- 
 tween wilful schism and schism compelled by necessity. There 
 is a man now working on the roads near my home who some years 
 ago fell down a mine-shaft and dislocated his shoulder. This 
 was not at first found out, and when finally it was discovered, 
 the socket had been filled by osseous formation ; but a false 
 socket had been formed, so that the man can use his arm and 
 earn his bread with it, though he cannot raise it high. Now 
 what has happened to the Communities in the Protestant world 
 is, that they do a good work, and proclaim certain Christian 
 truths, are zealous and devout ; but this is the case only because 
 a false socket has been formed. As in nature, so in spiritual 
 matters, there are recuperative powers, makeshifts, and side- 
 adjustments. 
 
 Since Dr. Newman veered about, and in Via Media of the 
 Anglican Church (1877) laboured to confute the theory which he 
 had himself broached in earlier years, and pronounced it an 
 unworkable theory, it has fallen somewhat into disrepute. And 
 it is not a tenable theory, if it be held that the English Church 
 was deliberately reformed on the principle of standing between 
 two antagonists, and trying to keep the peace between them, 
 without compromising herself with either. What she did 
 attempt under Elizabeth was to allow a corner within her house 
 for those infected with foreign heresies, in hopes of reclaiming 
 them, just as in a family one or two members, showing signs of 
 aberration of intellect, are allowed to remain. There is a shrinking 
 from turning them out of doors, or sending them to an asylum, 
 unless they become raving maniacs. It was possibly a mistaken 
 policy, but it was a policy conceived in charity. 
 
 Newman's view of the via media, which he condemned as an 
 impracticable system, was that the English Reformers tried to 
 
VIA MEDIA 
 
 399 
 
 occupy a middle position between the Church of Rome and the 
 Continental Reformers. But I do not think this view is tenable. 
 They were engrossed in purifying the English Church as best 
 they might according to their lights, without any definite purpose 
 of taking a via media position. 
 
 It is a conceivable theory that Cranmer and his associates 
 were inclined to entirely decatholicize the English Church, but 
 that they were afraid of outraging the people by revolutionary 
 treatment of the Prayer Book. In Sweden Gustavus Vasa com- 
 pletely protestantized the Church in his dominions, but he allowed 
 the shell to remain almost intact, archbishops, bishops, altars, 
 crucifixes, lights, vestments, wafer bread. In Denmark and 
 Norway it was the same. The kernel was extracted, and the 
 husk allowed to remain, so as to deceive the people. 
 
 The Nile after a while splits into branches : one diverges to 
 the right, and is swallowed up in unfathomable morasses ; another 
 takes its course to the left, is strong and voluminous, and it 
 sweeps along with it the sad, but it does not represent the whole 
 river, and between the two flows a current steadily to the sea, 
 and that is the midway of the river. The idea of a via media 
 did not enter the heads of the Reformers. All that they desired 
 to do was to clear their own branch of the stream of the mass 
 of weeds that obstructed its course and provoked divergencies. 
 If as a result of their labours the Church of England found herself, 
 or was found by others, to occupy an intermediate position, 
 that had not been consciously aimed at, it was rather accidental 
 than otherwise. 
 
 Actually and unequivocally the Anglican Church is far nearer 
 to the Church of Rome than to the Lutheran and Evangelical 
 sects abroad. She has retained her Apostolic Succession and 
 Episcopal rule. In the Early Church and in the Oriental Church 
 to this day the Constitution is and was one of a federation of 
 bishops. In Latin Christianity this federation has been sub- 
 verted, and changed into a domination by one man. We re- 
 verted to primitive usage. Our liturgical Offices are closely allied 
 to the Mass and the Breviary services, and bear no resemblance 
 whatever to those of Calvinists, Zwinglians, and the Prussian 
 Evangelical Establishment. 
 
 It may not be amiss to compare them. I will take (i) the 
 Sarum Missal, (2) the Prayer Book of 1662, (3) the Puritan 
 Directory of 1644, (4) the Communion Service of the Evan- 
 gelische Kirche, from the Wiirtemberg book of 1908. I will 
 
400 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 show how that in our Liturgy there has been little other than 
 displacement of parts. 
 
 Sarum Missal. 
 
 I. Preparation of 
 the Priest. 
 
 II. Confession and 
 Absolution. 
 
 III. Kyrie, 9 times. 
 
 IV. Gloria in Ex- 
 celsis. 
 
 V. Collects, Epistle, 
 and Gospel. 
 
 VI. Nicene Creed. 
 
 VII. Oblation at the 
 altar of Bread 
 and Wine. 
 
 VIII. Secreta for 
 acceptance of Ob- 
 lation. 
 
 IX. Sursum Corda. 
 
 X. Preface. 
 
 XI. Sanctus. 
 
 XII. Commemora- 
 tion of Living. 
 
 XIII. Consecration 
 Prayer with the 
 manual acts. 
 
 XIV. Commemora- 
 tion of Departed. 
 
 XV. Prayer of 
 Humble Access 
 (for Priest alone) . 
 
 XVI. Communion 
 of Priest. 
 
 XVII. Communion 
 of people, kneel- 
 ing. 
 
 XVIII. Post-Com- 
 munion Prayers. 
 
 XIX. Blessing and 
 Dismissal. 
 
 Prayer Book of 1662. 
 
 Preparation of the 
 Priest (S.M. I.). 
 
 Commandmen t s 
 and Kyrie, 10 
 times (S.M. III.). 
 
 Gloria transferred 
 
 {S.M. IV.). 
 Collects, Epistle, 
 
 and Gospel {S.M. 
 
 V. ). 
 
 Nicene Creed (S.M. 
 
 VI. ). 
 
 Oblation at the 
 altar of Bread 
 and Wine (S.M. 
 
 VII. ). 
 Church Militant 
 
 prayer of Obla- 
 tion, and Com- 
 memoration of 
 the Living and 
 Dead(S.M.VIIL, 
 XII.. XIV.). 
 
 Confession and Ab- 
 solution (S.M. 
 II.). 
 
 Sursum Corda 
 
 (S.M. IX.). 
 
 Preface (S.M. X.). 
 
 Sanctus (S.M. XL). 
 
 Prayer of Humble 
 Access (S.M. 
 XV.). 
 
 Consecration Prayer 
 (S.M. XIII.) with 
 the manual acts. 
 
 Communion of 
 Priest (S.M. 
 XVI.). 
 
 Communion of 
 people, kneeling 
 (S.M. XVII.). 
 
 Post- Communion 
 Prayers (S.M. 
 XVIIL). 
 
 Blessing and Dis- 
 missal (S.M. 
 XIX.). 
 
 Puritan Directory of 
 1644. 
 
 1. Exhortation and 
 Invitation. 
 
 2. Seating Commu- 
 nicants round the 
 Table. 
 
 3. Reading of the 
 words of Institu- 
 tion as a lesson, 
 and not as a 
 prayer. 
 
 4. Extempore 
 
 Prayer. 
 
 5. Joint Commun- 
 ion of minister 
 and people, all 
 seated. No pre- 
 scribed words of 
 Administration. 
 
 6. Exhortation 
 after Communion. 
 
 7. Thanksgiving. 
 
 Evangelische Kirchen 
 Buch, three forms. 
 
 I 
 
 1. Exhortation and 
 Invitation. 
 
 2. Prayer with 
 reading the words 
 of Institution (no 
 manual acts). 
 
 3. Communion of 
 pastors andpeople 
 standing. 
 
 4. Thanksgiving. 
 
 5. Blessing and Dis- 
 missal. 
 
 II 
 
 1. Exhortation. 
 
 2. Words of In- 
 stitution read as 
 a Lesson. 
 
 3. Communion, 
 
 standing. 
 
 4. Thanksgiving. 
 
 Ill 
 
 1. Exhortation. 
 
 2. Prayer. 
 
 3. Recitation of 
 Institution (no 
 manual acts). 
 
 4. Communion, 
 
 standing. 
 
 5. Thanksgiving. 
 
 6. Blessing and Dis- 
 missal. 
 
 Every Liturgiologist knows what dislocation and unintelligent 
 patching together have taken place in the Roman Mass. As it 
 
VIA MEDIA 
 
 401 
 
 happens, there are thirty-one items common, literally or sub- 
 stantially, to the Ordinary and Canon of the Sarum Missal and 
 the Communion Service of 1662. The only one direct point of 
 contact between these two rites and the Middleburgh Puritan 
 Prayer Book of 1586, the Directory of 1644, or the Scottish 
 Presbyterian Liturgy of the same date, is the recitation of the 
 words of institution ; which, however, are entirely detached 
 from any prayer said over the bread and wine. 
 
 Dr. Lushington cannot have known much when he said of the 
 English Prayer Book : " The Mass is gone, root and branch.' ' 
 
 The term via media has for some time been restricted to a body 
 of men in the English Church who occupy the middle rungs of the 
 ladder of opinion and practice ; men who stand aloof equally 
 from a Romanizing party, and from that, the breath of which 
 smells of Geneva. These men wisely deprecate violent changes. 
 They consider, and justly, the effect produced on the national 
 mind and temperament by the convulsions of the past, the degra- 
 dation caused by the Latitudinarians, the deadness, the spiritual 
 numbness of the Georgian period, the lop-sided presentation of 
 the Faith by the Evangelicals — and all this has to be overcome. 
 Little by little, line upon line, precept upon precept, must be 
 the rule. This is perfectly true ; but it should never content a 
 moderate man to stand still. A middle way must not become 
 immobility. There must be movement and advance, the pace 
 of progress regulated by circumstances and well considered. No 
 man should complacently practise the Goose-step all his life 
 long, and natter himself that he is making way. 
 
 The temptation exists quieta non movere, so as to save trouble 
 and inconvenience, and this is precisely the temptation that 
 besets the via-media man, and too often masters him. 
 
 A man inclined to the via media should well consider, in a place 
 where the bulk of the population consists of artisans and labourers, 
 that these are men who are impatient of the via media. 
 
 In one of iEsop's fables is the story of a traveller who came for 
 shelter to a satyr's cave, numbed by frost, and he blew on his 
 fingers. The satyr asks his reason for so doing. He replies : 
 " To warm my chilled members." Presently the host produces 
 a bowl of hot porridge. The traveller blows on that. 11 Why 
 so ? " "To cool the porridge." " I will not harbour under 
 my roof one who blows hot and cold with the same breath," said 
 the satyr, and kicked him out. 
 
 But the traveller was right and the satyr was wrong. The 
 26 
 
402 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 circumstances differed, and that the satyr could not understand. 
 The satyr represents the vast majority of our population, which 
 likes a man to be thorough. 
 
 The Rev. Conrad Noel, in his essay on " Organized Labour " 
 in Facing the Facts (1911), says of the working men : " It is im- 
 portant to notice with some accuracy the kind of church they 
 do not go to. Anglicanism in the mind of the general public, 
 the Anglicanism to whose services the working man does not go, 
 is represented by monotoned matins and evensong, the surpliced 
 choir, hymns Ancient and Modern, and a sermon on domestic 
 morality and the joys of the world to come." This is true whether 
 of the town or the country. 
 
 That surpliced choir, so dear to the Anglican heart, is like two 
 ridges of snow in the chancel, freezing the voices and devotion 
 of the congregation in the nave. 
 
 Go into a German Roman Catholic church for the Volksmesse, 
 and you will find it crammed to the door, and the whole congre- 
 gation, mostly made up of men, singing the vernacular hymns — 
 accompanied by the organ, but with no surpliced choir. Go 
 into a Calvinist church in Holland, or an Evangelical church in 
 Germany, and you will hear in the same manner the whole 
 congregation singing — and no surpliced choir. If we want to get 
 the men to church, and the working men above all, we must give 
 them services in which they will take the principal part as far 
 as the music goes : no anthems, no " Services " for Magnificat 
 and Nunc dimittis, but plain and popular chants, 1 and for a 
 hymnal something robust and free from mawkish sentiment. 
 
 In the German Volksmesse the priest is either inaudible in a 
 cathedral or but faintly heard. It is the people's and not the 
 priest's mass, and they crowd to it. But very few attend the 
 High Mass, at which elaborate music is performed by orchestra 
 and choir. 
 
 Stand outside any little wayside dissenting chapel, and listen 
 to the singing. There is no organ, no choir — the congregation 
 are choir and organ in one, and for heartiness they shame the 
 service in the parish church. I felt this very strongly when 
 Sankey and Moody came over to England, with their hymns set 
 to popular music full of melody. The hymns went everywhere, 
 were sung everywhere, were whistled by the ploughboy behind 
 his team, and hummed by the seamstress over her sewing machine. 
 
 1 Where a church has a surpliced choir, that choir might sing alternate 
 verses with the congregation. 
 
VIA MEDIA 
 
 403 
 
 I compiled a little collection of Church Songs which is published 
 by the S.P.C.K. to give to Church people, some hymns 
 with definite teaching and with choruses, and set to melodious 
 airs. It did not take. The clergy were too apathetic, too 
 wedded to the routine of the approved hymnals to venture on 
 so bold an innovation. For twenty-eight years I have in my 
 little parish of about 200 people used these Church Songs along 
 with Ancient and Modern, and it would be worth hearing 
 how the congregation shout in them. We must study the 
 cravings of the people — adapt our services to them. 
 
 The position of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer as a 
 lay manual of devotion is unprecedented and unparalleled. The 
 authorized public formularies of other Churches are intended for 
 the clergy alone. In vain in Ulm, a town of 52,000 inhabitants, 
 nearly all Protestant, did I seek in the five booksellers' shops for 
 the authorized Gebetbuch. 1 In the three greatest ancient 
 Christian communities — Latin, Greek, and Russian — the service- 
 books are not even in the vernacular tongue, nor are they ob- 
 tainable at a cheap rate. Roman Catholic laics can indeed have 
 their " Missal for the Laity," " Paroissien," etc., but these do 
 not profess to contain the whole service which the priest is 
 reciting, and provide private devotions which the worshippers 
 may employ simultaneously with the orisons of the Church. 
 But the English Prayer Book was designed to serve both priest 
 and laics alike, and to weld the devotions of one with those of 
 the other. It has not been as successful as was desired, and to 
 the uneducated and untrained in its use it is a bewildering book. 
 What we must strive to do is to popularize it by a simplifying 
 process in mission chapels. 
 
 At the present day, I suppose that the majority of the English 
 clergy belong to the via media, and in towns where satyrs do not 
 dwell — that is to say, in those portions of the towns where the 
 respectable class lives, there they are in the right place ; but 
 they are quite out of their element in the slums and back lanes of 
 the city and in agricultural villages not dominated by the squire. 
 
 It is one thing for an incumbent to refrain from too decided 
 teaching or practice till his congregation are in a condition 
 to assimilate and understand, and another thing altogether to 
 take the middle road because he is timorous or lethargic. 
 
 Unfortunately too many take the middle road merely because 
 
 1 When I did get a copy at last, from Stuttgart, it cost 10s. — the cheapest 
 edition, I believe the only one. 
 
404 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 it is safest and most convenient, and not out of principle. It 
 is from this class that so many of our dignitaries are chosen, 
 and for whom patrons of livings are on the look-out. " Is he 
 a safe man ? " is the question which public opinion invariably 
 asks when the name of a candidate for a vacant ecclesiastical 
 office comes before the world. Is he a man who blows both hot 
 and cold ? No — not blows, only breathes warm and cool. These 
 moderate men naturally seek for like-minded colleagues, hence 
 the condition added to advertisements for curates : " No extremist 
 — moderate views," " No party man." In every case one may 
 be pretty sure the advertiser is a mediocrity, and he is on the 
 search for one more mediocre than himself. It is not learning 
 and piety, or zeal, that is required, but colourlessness, indefinite- 
 ness, something about as relishable as a moderately fresh egg. 
 
 So we get indefinite teaching, lukewarm ministrations, and 
 feeble examples set before us. Where there is energy it is spent 
 in organization, a complex set of machinery is set up, and clergy 
 and devout women are on the run all day winding up these 
 various mechanisms, and spiritually the results are nil. 
 
 If the Church is ever to regain the place it once held in this 
 country, we may rest assured that it will be by means of definite 
 teaching and firm discipline. King Demos, who rules now, 
 cannot understand well-balanced expositions of truth, kid-glove 
 handling of topics of vital importance, and he looks on with 
 amused contempt at the prelate or the parson trying to seat 
 and balance himself between two stools. But, as already said, 
 the via media finds favour with the upper ten and with the 
 prosperous tradesmen, because it makes no great demands on 
 their faith, their devotion, their time, and their pockets ; but 
 it will not win acceptance with the sons of toil, or gain the hearts 
 of the young. It is worth remembering that Mr. (now Sir) Charles 
 Booth, in his work on the conditions of social life in the East 
 End of London, says that the two religious bodies which have 
 the strongest hold on the working population of that district 
 are the Baptists and the Roman Catholics — just the two which 
 are most dogmatic in their teaching and strict in their discipline ; 
 and that undenominationalism is utterly sterile in mission work. 
 
 Monsignor Benson, in his Confessions of a Convert, tells us what 
 the motive was which led him to take Holy Orders. " I decided," 
 says he, "to become a clergyman. I think the death of one 
 of my sisters about this time helped me to the decision. But, 
 for the rest, I suspect that my motives rose largely from the 
 
VIA MEDIA 
 
 405 
 
 fact that a clerical life seemed to offer the line of least resistance. 
 I am sure that I was not calculating enough to argue to myself 
 that being my father's son would bring me emolument or 
 promotion, for, honestly, these were no temptation to me at all; 
 but I think that on the natural side, at any rate, a life spent in 
 an ecclesiastical household, and the absence of any other par- 
 ticular interest, seemed to indicate the following of my father's 
 profession as, on the whole, the simplest solution of the problem 
 of my future " (p. 28). Now, I fancy that the above fairly 
 represents the motives at work in inducing a great number of 
 men to embrace the clerical profession, and such invariably settle 
 into Moderate Churchmen, as they have no enthusiasm and hate 
 disturbance of repose. 
 
 These are men who will not only not set the Thames on fire, 
 but will not kindle a spark of divine flame in any human soul ; 
 they will, however, keep whatever religion they find in their 
 parishes slowly smouldering, without emitting one jet of fervent 
 piety. 
 
 Far higher and nobler motives, thank God, impel many to 
 enter the ministry, and such will prove a force in the Church, 
 but such men will be shunned or coldly regarded by their bishops, 
 and passed over. 
 
 The average candidate is, I take it, on the look-out for a quiet, 
 lazy life. Such men, when ordained, drift about to divers 
 curacies, adapting their teaching to that of the incumbents, 
 making themselves popular by proficiency in lawn-tennis or 
 athletic sports ; or else they settle down with the placens uxor 
 in quiet country parsonages, their highest ambition gratified by 
 appointments as rural deans or election as chairmen of Boards 
 of Guardians. 
 
 Quite apart from the influence which the via-media man 
 exercises in social life, and the various ways in which he pro- 
 motes the welfare of the nation, there is one good end which 
 he serves in the Church, and that is, he acts as ballast, pre- 
 venting dangerous lists to port or starboard. The represen- 
 tatives of the class help to steady both maximizers and 
 minimizers. Their lives are not thrown away. The good they 
 do in their parishes is incalculable, but it is moral and material; 
 in a far less degree is it spiritual. The stomachs rather than 
 the souls of their parishioners are their main solicitude. 
 
 There is another end, and that valuable, which the existence 
 of this body serves, and that is, it keeps alive what is a peculiar 
 
406 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 characteristic of the Church of England — its quiet, unobtrusive 
 phase, its exhibition in nearly every parish of beautiful family 
 life, with the fear of God ever before it, impressed with a sense 
 of duty pervading all its members, full of kindliness and generosity 
 and sympathy. Their example, if not their teaching, has a high 
 moral efficacy. It is from the country parsonages that come 
 most of our best and most upright youths who serve in the Army, 
 in the Navy, or are found in the Colonies ; and the daughters are 
 the finest type of English girl that can be produced, not given 
 over to vanities and frivolities, but quiet, sweet, and modest, 
 and withal intelligent, often well-read, and always ladylike. 
 
 Moreover, the moderate men do keep alive, in a state maybe 
 of not very vigorous and efficient life, the traditions of former 
 generations ; and their teaching, though not very definite, is ortho- 
 dox. As students moreover, as many of them are, they do good 
 service by their writings ; unable from natural temperament 
 and constitutional timidity to throw themselves into the heat of 
 the conflict, they supply the ammunition which keener partisans 
 are able to use with advantage. 
 
 The moderate man has a great fear of enthusiasm. Pas 
 trop de zele is his motto, and he possesses what is a valuable 
 property of being able to look on everything from both sides. 
 He can see good here, but there is an objection to it present in 
 his mind. He is a qualifier of every doctrine and practice. Im- 
 petuous men rush headlong away with an idea without waiting 
 to see whether it has its limitations or its drawbacks. But it 
 is precisely the men of one idea who carry all before them. 
 
 Men of one idea are occasionally dangerous to the Church, and 
 we may be thankful that we have a balance-wheel in the moderate 
 party to keep them from running the machine down. But the 
 via media party must be careful not to mistrust enthusiasm too 
 wholly. The prophet rebuked the Israelites for halting between 
 two opinions. These latter considered that there was a good 
 deal to be said for Baal, and perhaps, on the whole, more for 
 Jehovah, so they maintained a via-media position. It was 
 much the same with the Philadelphians, who were neither hot 
 nor cold, only lukewarm. 
 
 In the service of the State it is the mediocrities who are given 
 places of importance, because they are safe men. And it is 
 doubly so in the Church. The really able man is set aside, 
 because he is able, and has ideas of his own j and what is needed 
 is the man who will trudge along the beaten path and never 
 
VIA MEDIA 
 
 407 
 
 lift his head to look over the wall, or raise his muzzle to snuff 
 the air. Whether it be a premier on the look-out for one to fill 
 an Episcopal throne, or a bishop seeking a man to put into 
 a living of importance, he looks out for a mediocrity. He knows 
 that he can trust him, a man who will cause no trouble, one 
 whose paramount conviction is to retain things as they are. 
 But such men as these the British working man despises. 
 
 A dealer brought a horse to a would-be purchaser. " You 
 will guarantee that he does not run away ? " " Sir, he will 
 stand stock-still in the shafts. You must push him to make him 
 go." " And he does not kick ? " " Kick, sir ! He is so stiff 
 in the back he cannot raise his hindquarters." " And he does 
 not shy ? " " He is stone-blind." " And he is safe ? " " Safe ! 
 Absolutely. Why, he's a wooden horse." " That is the beast 
 for me and my silver-mounted harness. Take him round to 
 the stables and give him the best stall." 
 
INDEX 
 
 Aberdeen (Lord), 179 
 
 Abyssinian Orders, 330 
 
 Acts of Uniformity, 4, 9, 10, 30, 34 
 
 Addison (Joseph), 390 
 
 Address of Clergy, 67 
 
 Laity, 67 
 
 Aguire (Cardinal), 328 
 Alasco (John), 2, 5 
 Albigenses, 329 
 Alfonso Liguori, 331 
 Alms-bags, 216, 217 
 Altars, destroyed, 22 
 
 — replaced, 37 
 
 Altkatholic Congress, 209, 285 
 Amy (Sister), 226-8 
 Ancient and Modern, Hymns, 366, 
 404 
 
 Andrewes (Bp. L.), 55 
 Anne (Queen), 63, 74 
 Anne's Bounty (Queen), 119 
 Antiochus Epiphanes, 76 
 Antonio de Guarras, 4 
 Apostolic Succession, 14, 29, 55, 66, 
 398, 399 
 
 Arnold (Dr. T.), 158, 211, 384, 385, 
 390 
 
 Articles of Religion, 9, 162 
 Ash Wednesday, 38 
 Assurance, Doctrine of, 82, 83, 86 
 Atonement, the, 83, 375 
 Atterbury (Bp. F.), 63 
 Austen (Jane), 120 
 Australian Church, 89, 90, 201 
 
 Bancroft (Archbp. R.), 14, 55 
 Baring (Bp. C), 138, 180-2, 254 
 
 — family, 95 
 
 — Gould (Rev. C), 72 
 Barlow (Bp.), 126 
 
 Barnabas (S.), Pimlico, 229-31, 239 
 Barneveldt (J. van O.), 79 
 Barry (Sir E.), 166 
 Bartholomew (Black), 30, 32 
 
 — (Rev. C), 345 
 Baxter (R.), 33 
 Bazin (Rene), 349, 350 
 Beaconsfield (Lord). See Disraeli 
 Beadles, 145, 146 
 
 Becket (Rev. F.), 276, 285, 287 
 
 — Thomas a (Archbp.), 114 
 Beeby (Rev. C. S.), 187 
 Belford Regis, 69, 129 
 Bell-Cox (Rev. J.), 195, 251-3 
 Bennett (Rev. W. J. E.), 230, 231, 
 
 237 
 
 Benson (Archbp. E. W.), 86, 256 
 
 — (Monseignor), 404 
 
 — (Rev. R. M.), 356 
 Berridge (Bp.), 93 
 Bethoron, Battle of, 370 
 Beza (Th.), 8, 14 
 Bickersteth (Bp. E. H.), 138, 210 
 
 — (Bp. Robert), 192, 193, 204, 205 
 Bilder aus London, 145-7 
 
 Bill of Costs, 224, 239, 240, 253 
 
 1689, 40, 41 
 
 Bishoprics, impoverished, 126, 127 
 Bishops, Elizabethan, 12, 13 
 
 — lack of judgment in, 68, 166 
 
 — of noble family, 171, 172 
 
 — subserviency of, 41 
 
 — surrender of, 245 
 
 — Victorian, 17 1-2 10 
 Black Bartholomew, 30, 32 
 Blomneld (Bp. C. J.), 177-9, 230, 
 
 231 
 
 Body (Rev. G.), 293 
 Boniface VIII, 332 
 Boyne Hill, 297 
 Bradford, 297, 298 
 
 — S. Jude's, 290-6 
 
 — S. Mary Magd., 295 
 Bramhall (Archbp. J.), 63 
 Bratton Clovelly, 344 
 Bray, Vicar of, 16 
 Bridestowe, 341-3 
 
 Bristol, S. Raphael's, 255, 256 
 Broad Church, 368-90 
 Broken Road, The, 350, 351 
 Brougham (Lord), 236, 237 
 Browne (Bp. H.), 182, 345 
 Bucer (Martin), 2, 5, 6, 12, 337 
 Buckeridge (J.), 55 
 Buller (Rev. A.), 343 
 Bullinger (H.), 12, 18 
 Burleigh (Lord), 12, 18 
 
 409 
 
410 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 Burnett (Bp. Gilb.), 38-40 
 
 Cagots, 54 
 Calamy (E.), 33, 36 
 Calvin (J.), 5 
 
 Calvinism, 15, 27, 46, 52, 75, 76, 
 78-80, 84, 87, 88, 105, 392, 397, 
 398 
 
 — moribund, 76, 105 
 
 — restrained, 18 
 
 Cambridge Camden Soc., 168, 169 
 
 — progress in, 346 
 Campbell (Miss), 219, 220 
 Candles on altar, 21, 22, 37, 238, 
 
 239, 246, 346 
 Cantelupe (Bp. Thos.), 114 
 Cartwright (Th.), 18, 19 
 Casaubon (Isaac), 56 
 Case (Rev. E.), 273, 275 
 Cazenove (Rev. E.), 273 
 Chandler (Bp.), 116 
 Channel Islands, 46 
 Charity children, 145 
 Charles II, 63, 70 
 Child (Rev.), 222, 223 
 Cholera, 217-9, 279-81 
 Christian Year, The, 75 
 Church Association, 238, 241, 248, 
 
 256-9 
 
 — building, 140, 359, 360 
 
 — of England Men's Soc, 357, 358 
 
 — Missionary Soc, 167 
 
 — rates, 330 
 Church Songs, 403 
 Church Unions, 67 
 
 — wealth of, 115, 116 
 Clapham, 103, 104 
 Classes, 19 
 
 Claughton (Bp. of Colombo), 208 
 
 — (Bp. T. L.), 139, 207, 208, 292-5 
 Clayton (Rev.), 88 
 Clementines , The, 326 
 
 Close (Dean), 169 
 Cock Robin ? Who killed, 262 
 Colenso (Bp. T. W.), 355. 376 
 Collier (Jeremy), 41 
 Collins (Rev. R.), 204, 288 
 Colombo, 208 
 
 Colonial and Continental Soc, 394, 
 395 
 
 — Bishops, 106-8, 201, 202, 351, 
 352 
 
 Communion Service, choral, 57-61 
 Companion to the Altar, 65 
 Compton (Bp. H.), 39 
 Conceived Prayers, 34 
 Confession, 16, 32, 55, 56, 221-4, 
 
 237, 276, 282, 285, 297-308, 315, 
 
 316 ^ «M 1 
 Confessions^of a\Clergyman, 387 
 
 Confirmations, 130, 131, 138 
 Conformists, 16, 22, 23, 24, 30-36, 
 
 39, 42, 53> 62, 71, 78 
 Congress (Church), 255 
 Constitution, Apostolic, 399 
 Convocation, restored, 353, 354 
 
 — suppressed, 50, 352, 353 
 Copes, 17, 25, 37 
 Cornwall, morals in, 86, 341 
 
 — progress in, 339-41 
 Corruption of man's nature, 83, 84 
 Coryton, 125 
 
 Cosin (Bp. J.), 63 
 Coulevin (Pierre de), 169 
 Courtenay (Vise W.), 124 
 Covenant, 24, 25 
 Coverley, Sir Roger de, 51, 74 
 Cowley Fathers, 308, 350 
 Cox (Bp.), 126 
 
 Cranmer (Archbp.), 2, 4, 5, 61, 399 
 Crawley (Rev. S.), 276, 285 
 Cuddesdon, 175 
 Cumming (Dr.), 147 
 Cunningham (Rev. J. M.), 97-9, 122 
 
 — (Marchioness of), 172 
 Curate, described, 124 
 Curates, 115, 116 
 
 — inhibition of, 181, 182, 190 
 
 Dale (Rev. T. P.), 241, 258 
 Davys (Bp. G.), 173 
 Declaration of Clergy, 66, 67 
 
 Exeter clergy, 67, 68 
 
 Laity, 67 
 
 Decretals, forged, 328 
 Decretum of Gratian, 328 
 Degradation of English Church, 70, 
 77 
 
 Demonstration against Welsh Dis- 
 establishment Bill, 349 
 Denison (Bp. E.), 212 
 
 — (Archd. G. A.), 237 
 Denmark, Church in, 399 
 Depravity of man's nature, 85 
 Deprivations under Charles II, 30, 
 
 31 
 
 Elizabeth, 10, 11, 18 
 
 Mary, 6, 7 
 
 Parliament, 21, 22, 26 
 
 William and Mary, 40 
 
 Dickens (Chas.), 101 
 Dickenson (W.), 114, 115 
 Directory, 22, 30 
 Disraeli, Benj., 177, 193, 209, 260 
 Dodsworth (Rev. W.), 91, 271, 335 
 Dress of clergy, 149-51 
 Dryander, 4, 5 
 
 Dupin's Commonitorinm , 163 
 Durham Letter, 230 
 Duty, 81, 82, 121 
 
INDEX 
 
 411 
 
 Dykes (Rev. Dr.), 254, 255 
 
 Eastward position, 59, 60 , 239, 356 
 Ecdesiologist, The, 168 
 Eddowes (Rev. J.), 292, 295, 296 
 Edward VI, 1-6 
 
 Ejection of clergy. See Deprivation 
 Elford (Rev. W.), 128 
 Elizabeth (Queen), 6, 9, 12, 14, 16, 
 398 
 
 Ellicott (Bp. C. J.), 183, 255, 256 
 Elmhirst (Rev. G.), 267, 268 
 Emmanuel Coll., Cambridge, 13 
 English Church Union, 301, 350, 
 
 358, 359 
 Enraght (Rev. R. W.), 241 
 Enthusiasm, cooling down of, 360, 
 
 36i 
 
 Erasmus, Commentary of, 3 
 Erastianism, 41, 71, 157, 161, 191, 
 
 192, 211, 385 
 Eucharist, position of, 61, 337 
 Evangelical movement, 78-211 
 Evangelicals, 80-1 11, 162, 211, 348 
 
 — debt due to, 103, 105, 106 
 
 — decline of, 108, 109 
 Evangelische Kirche, 313, 381-3, 
 
 39o, 399. 400 
 Evolution, 396 
 Exeter, progress in, 345, 346 
 
 — synod of, 67, 68 
 
 — use of, 60, 61 
 Extempore prayers, 34 
 
 Faber (Rev. F. W.), 91, 322, 335 
 Fagius, 5 
 
 Fasting communion, 72, 7$ 
 Faux Bourdons, 365, 366 
 Felton (Bp.), 55 
 Festing (Bp.), 304 
 Ffoulkes (Rev. E. S.), 321 
 Fletcher of Madeley (G.), 45, 87 
 Forbes (Rev. A. P.), 275 
 Foreigners in the Ministry, 45, 46 
 Forgeries, Papal, 328, 329 
 Fowler (W.), 72, 73 
 Fox-hunting parsons, 136, 137, 361 
 Fraser (Bp. J.), 195-8, 207, 246, 
 248-50 
 
 Friend, Sir John, and Sir W. 
 
 Parkyns, 41 
 Frog barometer, 392 
 Froude (J. A.), 120, 371 
 
 — (J.H.), 160, 163 
 
 Galileo, 330 
 Garrod (H. ML), 389 
 George's-in-the-East (S.), 232-7 
 Germany, Electoral Bishops, 310, 
 3ii 
 
 Germany, Evangelical Church in, 
 
 3i3» 381-3, 39o, 399, 400 
 Gilbert (Bp. A. T.), 176, 224, 225, 
 
 229 
 
 Gladstone's appointments, 194, 207 
 Gorham Judgment, 67, 283, 314, 
 
 315, 353 
 Gospels, 374 
 Gould, Madam, 73, 74 
 Granville (Archd.), 32, 34, 35-7, 
 
 63 
 
 Green (Rev. S. F.), 246-9 
 Greenwell (Rev. N.), 306 
 Gregory VII, 328 
 
 — XVI, 331 
 Grindal (Archbp.), 8 
 Grotius (Hugo), 79 
 Guild of S. Alban, 350 
 Gunning (Peter), 63 
 
 Hackett (Bp. J.), 63 
 Hamilton (Bp. W. K.), 179, 180, 212 
 Hammond (H.), 63 
 Hampden (Bp. R. D.), 211 
 Hanoverian period, 51, 52, 66, 124, 
 127 
 
 Harvest Thanksgivings, 184 
 Hatcham, S. James's, 241-5 
 Hatchard (Rev. J.), 217, 221, 222 
 Hats, prayed into, 140 
 
 — worn in church, 22, 38 
 Henson (Dean H.), 387 
 Herbert (Geo.), 55 
 Herriot, 122 
 
 Heylin (Peter), 17, 55 
 Heywood (Nath.), 32 
 Hinds (Bp. S.), 177 
 Hoadly (Bp. B.), 353 
 Holborn, S. Alban's, 258 
 Hole (Dean), 129 
 Holgate (Archbp.), 2, 5 
 Holy Table, carved, 57 
 
 position of, 13, 17, 21, 22, 37, 
 
 61.62 
 Homilies, Book of, 3 
 Honeyman (Rev. C.), 147, 148 
 Hood (Tom), 100 
 
 Hook (Dr. W. F.), 267-9, 2 7 2 ~4. 276, 
 
 281, 284 
 Hooker (R.), 14, 55 
 Hooper (Bp.), 12 
 Horneck (Ant.), 63 
 Horsley (Bp. S.), 66 
 Howell (Rev. H.), 341-3 
 Hudson (W. H.), 339, 340 
 Huguenots, 42-6, 53, 54, 78 
 Humphry Clmkcr, 169, 170 
 Hurstpierpoint, 138 
 Hymnals, 366 
 Hymns, 106 
 
412 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 Iceland, 16 
 Idolatry, 104 
 Ignatius (Brother), 356 
 Impeccability, 82 
 Imputed righteousness, 83 
 Incarnation, 373-5 
 Incense, 37 
 
 InfaUibihty of the Church, 371, 
 373, 374 
 
 Scriptures, 70, 71, 371, 373, 
 
 374 
 
 Inhibition of curates, 181, 182, 190 
 Innocent III, 329 
 
 — VIII, 330 
 Interdict, 255 
 
 Invasion from Channel Islands, 46 
 
 — from Palatinate, 47-81 
 
 — Irish, 49 
 
 — of foreign heretics, 2, 4, 5, 7, 
 42-8, 49, 78 
 
 — Scottish, 48, 49, 78 
 Irish Church, 364 
 
 — Fever, 275, 277-9 
 Irvingites, 146, 147 
 
 Jackson (Bp. J.), 180, 303 
 James I, 19, 56 
 Jermyn (Bp.), 208 
 Jerusalem Bishopric, 312-4 
 Jeune (Bp. F.), 186 
 Jewel's Apology, 14 
 John's (S.) College, Oxford, 11 
 Julius II, 329 
 
 Keble (Rev. J.), 75, 91, 149, 159, 
 
 163, 271 
 Kelham Fathers, 357 
 Ken (Bp.Thos.),33,38,53 
 Kettlewell, 63 
 Kidder (Bp. R.), 33 
 King (Rev. Bryan), 232-5 
 
 — (Bp. E.), 256, 257 
 Kingsley (Rev. C), 384 
 Knott (Rev. J. W.), 288 
 Knox (John), 2, 8 
 
 Labouchere family, 47 
 Latent heat, 74, 75 
 Latitudinarians, 39-41, 53, 64, 78, 
 
 161, 211, 237, 370, 383, 401 
 Laud (Archbp.), 18, 55, 62 
 Lawlessness, 257, 263-5 
 Lectureships, 17, 18, 35, 232 
 Lee (Bp. P.), 179, 211 
 Leeds, S. Saviour's, 266-89 
 Leo I, 327 
 
 — X, 330, 334 
 
 — XIII, 330 
 
 Liber Pontificalis , 328 
 
 Liberius, Pope, 332 
 
 Liddell (Hon. and Rev. R.), 231, 
 
 239 
 
 Liddon (Rev. Canon), 244, 260 
 Little Bo-Peep, 288, 289 
 Littledale (Rev. Dr.), 176, 177, 303 
 Liturgies compared, 399-401 
 Liverpool, progress in, 347 
 — S. Margaret's, 250-3 
 Lloyd (Bp. C), 159 
 Longley (C. T., Bp. and Archbp.), 
 
 269-71, 276, 281-5, 355 
 Loretto, 329 
 
 Lowder (Rev. C. F.), 231, 233 
 Lumncott, 73 
 Lunn (H. E.), 1 1 1 
 Lydford, 127 
 
 Maccabees, 77 
 
 Mackonochie (Rev. A. H.), 234, 239, 
 
 258, 259, 293 
 Maclagan (Archbp.), 48 
 Macmullen (Rev. R.), 273, 274 
 McNeile (Dean), 49, 301 
 Magee (Bp. and Archbp.), 49, 193, 
 
 194 
 
 Majendie (Bp.), 116 
 
 Malignancy, 21 
 
 Mallet (J. L.), his diary, 95-9 
 
 Manchester, 246-50 
 
 Manning (Card.), 91, 315, 322-35 
 
 Margaret Street Chapel, 229 
 
 Marionette Dancer, The, 200 
 
 Marriott (Rev. C), 271, 287 
 
 Marsh (Bp.), 131 
 
 Mary I (Queen), 4, 6, 7, 14 
 
 Mary Tavy, 343 
 
 Matins and Vespers, 336 
 
 Maurice (Rev. J. F. D.), 384, 385 
 
 Mediocrities, 199-201, 404-7 
 
 Mendoza, 1 1 
 
 Merbecke, 11, 57, 59 
 
 Merueis, 393 
 
 Miles Platting, 196, 245-50 
 Millenary petition, 19 
 Mills (Danl.), 28, 29, 32, 33 
 Minster (Rev. T.), 275-7, 281-6 
 Mirfield Fathers, 308, 357 
 Mitford (Miss), 69, 129 
 Monk (Rev. W. E.), 278 
 Moore (Archbp.), 116 
 More (Hannah), 105, 129 
 Moustaches, 151 
 Musgrove (Archbp.), 179 
 Music (Church), 365, 366, 402, 403 
 Mycronius (M.), 5 
 
 Neale (Rev. J. M.), 224-9, 3°6 
 Nelson (Robt.), 63, 65, 75 
 Nepotism, 116-8, 183, 209 
 
INDEX 
 
 413 
 
 Newman (Card. J. H.), 53, 91, 149, 
 159, 162, 163, 271, 286, 289, 322, 
 
 335. 398 
 Newton (Rev. J.), 88 
 Nicolas I, 328 
 Nigellinus (M.), 5 
 Nile, 399 
 
 Nonconformists, 28, 35 
 Non-communicating attendance, 
 
 337 
 
 Non-jurors, 40 
 
 Non-residence, 113, 116, 117, 128, 
 129 
 
 North side, 61, 62, 139 
 Northumberland, Duke of, 1,2 
 Norway, Church in, 399 
 
 Oakeley (Rev. F.), 91, 165, 229 
 
 Oath of Supremacy, 10 
 
 Ochino (Bern.), 2, 5 
 
 Omphalopsychae, 80 
 
 Orders, Anglican, 7, 330, 366, 367 
 
 Ordination, preparation for, 131, 
 
 203, 204 
 Organs destroyed, 23 
 Ornaments Rubric, 13, 98, 238, 247 
 Orthodox clergy, 51, 53, 66, 71, 75,82 
 Outram (Wm.), 33 
 Overall (Bp.), 58 
 
 Paget (SirW.), 6 
 
 Palmer (Rev. W.), 66, 160 
 
 — (Rev. W. J.), 69, 70 
 
 — (Sir Wm.), 1 59 
 
 Palmerston Bishops, 179, 180-9, 
 
 199, 201, 203 
 Pan- Anglican synods, 355, 356 
 Parish churches, neglect of, 135 
 Parker (Archbp.), 17 
 
 — (Rev. F.), 73 
 
 — (Saml.), 33 
 
 Parsons, hunting, 136, 137, 361 
 
 — Lincolnshire, 177 
 Parsons, Robert, 11, 56 
 Parsons, squires, 1 36 
 Patronage, 50, 51, 120 
 Pearson (Bp. J.), 23, 28 
 Peel Bishops, 174, 176, 199 
 Pelham (Bp. J. T.), 184, 185 
 Penzance (Lord), 241-4, 247-9, 
 
 252, 253, 259, 261 
 Pepys (Saml.), 28, 29, 32, 37 
 Percival (Rev.), 160 
 Percy (Bp.), 117 
 Perowne (Bp. J. E.), 187, 188 
 Peter Martyr, 2, 5, 8 
 Pew-opener, 140, 141, 143 
 Pews, 141 
 
 Phillpotts (Bp. Henry), 123, 209, 
 210, 212-5, 221 
 
 Philpot (Bp.), 187 
 Pius IX, 331 
 
 — X, 330 
 
 Plain Song, 60, 365, 366 
 Plato, 1 10, in 
 
 Pluralism, 113-8, 123, 124, 127-9 
 Plymouth, progress in, 349 
 
 — S. Andrew's, 344 
 
 i — S. Peter's, 216, 224, 244, 245 
 Pocock (Edm.), 26 
 Poitiers, Battle of, 390 
 Pollen (Rev. J. H.), 275, 279, 281-3, 
 286 
 
 Potter (Archbp.), 116 
 Powys (Bp.), 180 
 Poynet (Bp.), 5 
 ■ Praed (W. M.), 122 
 Prayer Book, first of Ed ward j VI, 
 1, 3> 6, 7 
 
 second of Edward \ I, 5, 6, 
 
 8 
 
 revision of 1661, 29, 30 
 
 J Revision Soc, 93, 94 
 
 suppressed, 22 
 
 Preaching, 106, 376 
 
 — forbidden, 4 
 
 Presbyterianism established, 25 
 Presentment of churchwardens, 19, 
 
 20 
 
 Pretyman (Bp.), 117 
 Priest in Absolution, 300, 301 
 Privy Council, Court of, 238, 240-2, 
 247-58 
 
 prosecutions before, 239, 240 
 
 Processions, 138, 139 
 Progress, 338-67 
 Prophesyings, 19 
 
 Proprietary- chapels, 141, 143, 147, 
 148 
 
 Protestantism, decay of abroad, 
 
 52 
 
 Prynne (Rev. G. R.), 216-24 
 Public Worship Regulation Act, 
 
 240-2, 246, 265 
 Pulla:n (Val.), 2 
 Purchas (Rev.), 239, 240, 259 
 Puritan demands, 9, 14 
 
 — grievances, 20, 21, 29, 39, 79 
 Puritanism, 16, 17-19, 20-7 
 Pusey (Rev. Dr. E. P.), 91, 269, 270, 
 
 286-8 
 
 — Lucy, 269, 270 
 
 Queen Anne's Bounty, 119 
 
 Redesdale, Lord, 301, 307 
 Reform Bill, 66, 129, 161 
 Refugee reformers, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8. See 
 Huguenots 
 i from Switzerland, 47 
 
414 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL 
 
 Refugee reformers from the Palati- 
 nate, 47, 48 
 Religious Orders, 356 
 Restoration, the, 28, 30 
 — of churches, 37 
 " Returned empties," 107, 108 
 Revolution, the, 38 
 Reykjahlid, 26, 27 
 Richards (Rev. U.), 271 
 Ritualism, rise of, 238, 260, 272 
 Road murder, 298, 299 
 Romaine (Rev. W.), 80, 86 
 Romanizers, 164, 165, 336 
 Rood, 25 
 
 Rood-screens, 56, 57, 135, 342 
 Rooke (Rev. S), 276, 277, 285 
 Rose (Rev. H. J.), 160 
 Russell, bishops appointed by 
 
 Lord John, 176, 179, 199, 211 
 Ryan (Bp.), 294, 295 
 Ryle (Bp. J. C), 194, 195, 251, 261 
 
 Sackingen, 305 
 Sackville College, 224-6 
 Sale of Livings, 118, 119 
 Sardica, Council of, 326, 327 
 Sargasso Sea, 377 
 Savoy Conference, 29 
 Seamier (Bp.), 126 
 Scobell (Rev. J.), 226-8 
 Scots in the Ministry, 48, 49, 78 
 Secessions, 91, 167, 175, 274, 283, 
 286, 287 
 
 Secularization of the clergy, 361, 
 362 
 
 Selwyn (Bp. G. A.), 186 
 Sermons, 106, 15 1-6 
 Shaftesbury (Lord), 94, 170, 240, 
 300 
 
 Sharp (Archbp.), 63 
 
 Sheepstor, 131, 132 
 
 Sherlock (Bp.), 116 
 
 Sibthorp (Rev. R. W.), 91, 167, 335 
 
 Simcoe (Rev. H. A.), 10 1, 102 
 
 Simeon (Rev. C), 91, 92 
 
 Simeonite Trustees, 92, 104, 394 
 
 Sisterhoods, 356 
 
 Sixtus V, 330, 331 
 
 Slatter (Rev. J.), 267 
 
 Soho, Huguenot chapels in, 46 
 
 Somerset, Protector, 1, 4, 5, 6 
 
 Sowden (Canon), 396 
 
 Sparke (Bp.), 117 
 
 Spider and Fly, The, 253 
 
 Spoliation of Church, 125-7 
 
 Spurious quotations, 229 
 
 Spurrell (Rev. J.), 219 
 
 Stamford, 129 
 
 Stanley (Dean), 237, 385-7 
 
 Stillingfleet](Bp.), 39 
 
 Stoke Newington riots, 237 
 Stoles (coloured), 180, 181, 190, 234 
 Suffragan Bishops, 352 
 Sumner (Bp. C), 172, 173 
 
 — (Archbp. J. B.), 173, 177 
 Sunday Schools, 105 
 Supremacy of Crown, 10 
 Surplice riots, 214, 215 
 Surphced choirs, 402 
 
 Tait (Archbp. A. C), 48, 71, 164, 
 168, 189-92, 202, 209, 234, 235, 
 237, 240, 241, 248, 261, 355, 356 
 
 Tahacotian process, 52 
 
 Tarpeia, 389 
 
 Tavistock, 70 
 
 Taylor (Jeremy), 64, 333 
 
 Teasdale (Rev. J.), 122 
 
 Ten Commandments, 272 
 
 Tenison (Archbp.), 39 
 
 Test Act, 35 
 
 Thackeray (W. M.), 104, 148, 198 
 Thirlwall (Bp. C), 355 
 Thomas (Rev. C), 128 
 Thomson (Archbp. W.), 48, 71, 182, 
 183, 203, 205-7, 248, 250, 259, 261 
 Thorndike, 63 
 
 Thorold (Bp. A. M.), 188, 189 
 Tillotson (Archbp. J.), 33, 39, 41 
 Time of services, 61 
 Tithe Commutation Act, 119, 338 
 Tooth (Rev. A.), 241-5 
 Toplady (Rev. A. M.), 80, 99, 100 
 Toxteth Park, 250-3 
 Tract- writers, 71, 77, 162-4 
 Tracts for the Times, 161-4, 212 
 Tremellius, 4 
 Tryers, The, 26, 30 
 Tully (Thos.), 33 
 
 — (Timothy), 33 
 Tyndale's Bible, 3 
 
 Ugliness, Cult of, 169, 170, 340, 341 
 Ulm, 403 
 
 Undenominationahsm, 40, 41, 80, 
 
 158, 172, 383, 389 
 Unleavened bread, 17, 399 
 
 Valentinian III, 327 
 Valpy (Rev. Dr.), 123 
 Venn (Rev. H.), 87, 92 
 
 — (Rev. J.), 87, 88 
 
 Verbal inspiration, 90, 105, 109, 
 
 no, 369. 37o 
 Via media, 391-407 
 Villiers (Bp. H. M.), 183 
 Virginal Birth, 375, 376 
 Visiting, parochial, 92 
 Volksmesse, 402 
 Vossius (Isaac), 43 
 
INDEX 
 
 415 
 
 Wagner (Rev. A.), 299 
 
 Waldegrave (Bp. S.), 184 
 
 Ward (Rev. R.), 273-5, 283, 286 
 
 Ward's Ideal, 164, 165, 322 
 
 Washneld, 341, 342 
 
 Washington Irving, 124 
 
 Week's Preparation, 64 
 
 Wells (H. G.), 368 
 
 Wesley (Rev. John), 78, 87 
 
 West (Jane), 65 
 
 Whately (Archbp. R.), 158 
 
 Whitefield (Rev. Geo.), 80, 85, 86 
 
 Whole Duty of Man, 64 
 
 Wigram (Bp ; J. C), 188 
 
 Wilberforce (Bp. S.), 174-6, 182, 
 
 183, 297, 298, 354, 386, 387, 397 
 — (Wm.), 87 
 
 William III, 33, 38-42, 50, 63, 70, 
 74, 77 
 
 Williams (Rev. Isaac), 91, 162, 163, 
 271 
 
 Wilson (Bp. D.), 63-5 
 Witchcraft, 330 
 Wordsworth (Bp. C), 209, 352 
 Worldliness, 85, 86 
 Wrangham (Archd.), 66 
 Wren (Bp. M.), 55, 63 
 
 Year of stress, 259, 260, 261 
 Young (Rev. P.), 172 
 
 Zosimus (Pope), 326 
 Zurich Letters, 8 
 Zwinglianism, 3, 5, 75, 398 
 
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