better enabled to decide how we ought to behave towards those who are thus estranged

from us.

We saw that from several causes the Reformation in England differed from the contemporary religious movements in other countries. Having its origin here rather with the monarch than with the people the Church of the Reformation was from its outset necessarily connected with the State, and from the capricious temper of the king under whom the Reformation commenced, added to the vicissitudes in the times of his two immediate successors, the changes in the English Ritual and Services progressed neither so fast nor so far as did similar alterations elsewhere. We noticed how a desire to emulate the thoroughness (as it was deemed) of the foreign Reformers was the beginning of a conflict in which, under the name of religion, extravagant excesses were indulged in by both sides. How afterwards one party, inclining to the monarch for the sake of the support which he could afford them, mixed up Church government and statecraft in such a close union that King's-man and Church-man became convertible terms. And while looking with sorrow on that

D

coalition, which could not fail to sap the foundations of true godliness, we were aware that on the other hand there was a like alliance formed between the Parliament and the Puritans, and that sentiments were propounded on their part which would have proved as intolerant had they obtained prevalence, as did those against which they were directed. When they did for a time prevail, the nation beheld the unedifying spectacle of a multitude of conflicting sects calling themselves Christian, yet actuated by such unchristian animus that their proceedings have rendered the Commonwealth period one of the most lamentable in the religious history of our land. We watched through the days which followed the Restoration how enactment after enactment was put forth to enforce conformity to the Establishment, and we saw how enforced conformity resulted in almost national infidelity. So that when the times of wiser dealing came round, the vitality of the people's faith had well-nigh perished, and after a feeble essay at revival both the Church and the sects sank down side by side content to slumber after their long strife.

While regretting for religion's sake the excesses of one party as much as the severities

of the other, we did not deem the men who instigated these severities deserving of all the blame that has been heaped upon them. The terrible lengths to which foreign Churches (the avowed models of their opponents) had proceeded might well excuse the leaders of the English Reformed Church for endeavouring to suppress by the strong hand advances in the same direction among themselves. But our chief source of regret in reviewing this history was one from which we strove to draw warning for ourselves. It was this. While legislation for professedly religious ends grew apace, first in the shape of Tests and then in measures of Toleration, the evidence that religion had any vital hold upon the nation became daily weaker and weaker.

The next division of our subject brings us to consider shortly the more modern religious history which dates from the middle of last century. It commences at that time when, as we have seen, spiritual life was well-nigh extinct, and it presents us with features so strange and a revival so wonderful that it can be paralleled only by the times of the Reformation.

On looking back at the commencement of

the labours of Wesley and the body of men who laboured with him, which in its progress has gradually developed into Dissent, the first point that strikes us is that its originators did not intend it so to develop. They commenced their work in the spirit of missionaries. Seeing around them an ever-increasing amount of religious ignorance and consequent depravity, their great desire was to dispel the one, since by that means they believed they would abate the other. Their first efforts were directed towards those whom no existing religious agency appeared to reach; and though their services were, from the very nature of the case, irregular, and often differing entirely from the appointed order of the Church, the earlier preachers were constant in their professions of attachment both to her doctrines and discipline. To have appealed to the unlettered crowds to whom they first addressed themselves with the services of the Common Prayer-book would have been to appeal in vain. These hearers were in a state of the densest ignorance, unacquainted with simple gospel truths, needing more the plainest words than many a child does now. Recognizing this need, and believing that they could, by God's help, do some

thing to supply it, they went forth into the wide unoccupied field to reap for their Master by whatever means they found effectual. Yet the founder of the society which has now so widely spread charged his followers from time to time with the utmost solemnity never to forsake the Church of England, and seized every occasion to express in the most forcible terms his own affection for her. These sentiments continued unchanged to the last. Writing late in life to one who had not esteemed the Church as much as he did, he says: "You have need to be thankful that your prejudices against the Church of England are removing. Having had opportunity of seeing several of the Churches abroad, and having deeply considered the several sorts of dissenters at home, I am fully convinced that our own Church, with all her blemishes, is nearer the scriptural plan than any other in Europe.”* And only a few months before his death he expresses himself thus: "I never had any design of separating from the Church. I have no such design now. I declare, once more, that I live and die a member of the Church of England,

* Moore's Life of Wesley, ii. 282.