VIII.

[October 22, 1871.]

"That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel

after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us for in him we live, and move, and have our being.”—ACTS xvii. 27, 28.

It cannot have escaped the notice of any one who is ever so slightly acquainted with the current religious literature and preaching of our day that the evidences of religion are no longer a subject of general interest.

This characteristic of popular teaching comes into stronger relief when we contrast this century with that which immediately preceded it. In the eighteenth century, or during the larger part of it, no religious teacher could find access to the minds of a congregation unless he started from the platform of rational religion.

All the text-books and handbooks which

were employed in education, which were recommended by Bishops to candidates for orders, either consisted of proof, or their contents, whatever they were, were thrown into an array of argument against some imaginary objector. The natural sciences were treated as instrumental to the same theme. Natural philosophy and anatomy, the habits and instincts of animals, all were turned into forms of exhibiting the wisdom and goodness of the Creator.

All this has completely died out. Scarce a vestige of this once popular mode of thought can be traced in the language of religious teachers of our day.

This is a phenomenon which, even if it stood as an isolated fact in the history of our Church, would be worth examination. But, if we find that it is not a detached trait of manners, not a mere change of the fashion of pulpit address, or the discarding of a worn-out topic, but that it can be traced to causes which lie deep in the religious consciousness of the age, it may not unfitly be propounded in this place for your consideration, though the few minutes allotted

me will barely suffice to indicate some of the bearings of the inquiry.

About the middle of the last century there came over England-Church and Dissent alike

-a wave of religious fervour. It is matter of history how about that time the rational teacher was superseded in the ordinary way of reaction by a more impassioned and energetic but less cultivated teacher. There went forth over the land a band of preachers who started from entirely new premisses. Instead of virtue, they undertook to preach Christ. Instead of inculcating the moral law they dwelt on faith. Instead of proving the being of a God they offered the gospel. They desisted from establishing the possibility of miracles, but warned sinners to flee from the wrath to come. Slighted by the educated for their ignorance, despised by the man of the world for their importunity, these teachers, whether under the name of Methodist or Evangelical, were received with eagerness by the uneducated and unsophisticated populations. Their success was not a little favoured by the unmeasured contempt which

they poured upon their predecessors. Warmth was their criterion, and they denounced with vehemence the cold reasoners who continued to offer their demonstrations of revealed religion to still unconvinced audiences. They scoffed at, or pitied these blind leaders of the blind who, though ordained ministers of the establishment, were themselves still unconverted men.

This form of religious sentiment gradually conquered its way, first to tolerance, then to respect, and finally to preponderance in the Church of England. It is now already matter of history, though it has occurred within the experience of the older among us, how, after the triumph had been achieved, this has had in turn to yield the platform to a new tone of religious sentiment. The new phase which began amid confusion and alarm, and even cries of treason to the church, and which has established itself in quiet acceptance in the short space of one generation over the face of England-this phase is the antithesis of its predecessors. It has its germ in the grand idea of the univer

sality of the Church Catholic in its two sections, the Church triumphant and the Church militant, the intimate union between Christ and His people, and our incorporation by the sacraments into this eternal and indestructible society. This system is in its germ as well as its development the antithesis of that which it has supplanted. The evangelical system of the eighteenth century had its point of departure in the subjective consciousness of the individual. Its criterion was in an awakened sensitiveness of the ego. The revived catholicism of the nineteenth century has its point of departure in the Christian society. Its criterion is citizenship or incorporation, which ipso facto conveys all spiritual privilege. The two systems originated too in different strata of English life. While the gospel of methodism was preached to the poor, and gradually made its way upwards in social consideration, the catholic system originated with a few academic students who read the Fathers in the original, and is only now finding the machinery by which it can descend within the sphere of the apprehension of the less educated.