This reverence for the abuses, and even superstitions, which paled before the purer and more spiritual inspirations of the early reformers of our Church, is only another development of the argument here attempted to be enforced,— the enthusiastic tendency to carry to extremes any new fantasy that the mind embraces.

Thus, we see men, of great taste and high attainments, captivated by their researches and discoveries in the rich mines of architectural antiquity, in their enthusiastic veneration for everything that is old, carried away by the impulsive desire to reproduce the material beauties of a bygone age; but, not satisfied with the restoration of their beau ideal of the material, they deem their work incomplete until they have repeopled the temples of the medieval period with the devotees of superstition, and clothed them with all the pageantry of ceremonial worship, so congenial to the visionary spirit of a benighted period,—a period when the Bible was a sealed book to the unlettered world.

Upon this principle we might, with equal consistency, restore, with the ruined temples of the Cæsars, the heathenish rites and orgies of their pagan founders, or reconstruct the still more ancient remains of Stonehenge, and inaugurate a fraternity of Druids on Salisbury Plain, with all the revolting accessories of human sacrifice and heathenish idolatries.

CHAPTER II.

PREVALENCE OF THE REVIVAL OF ROMANISM AND ITS PERNICIOUS INFLUENCE EVIDENCED BY FACTS.

FACTS have a logic and an eloquence of their own more potent than a thousand arguments. With facts we have now to deal. Ample as are the resources for such a purpose, the recital of a wearying catalogue of illustrations is not necessary. Apart from the striking demonstration which the well-authenticated case of Stoke Newington affords of the abstract evil of Tractarianism, it abounds with important lessons. It exemplifies the perverting influence which misguided fanaticism exercises over the minds of its victims,the moral blindness it produces,-the disregard for truth it engenders, the destruction of Christian charity it causes, and the secular teaching to which it leads.

A more appropriate narrative of facts could not be selected than one, which, ranging over twenty years, exhibits in a single parish having two churches the various phases of Romish propagandism-retrospective, present, and progressive; shewing its origin, rise, and progress, to its permitted climax in one Church, and the actual process towards the same result in the other. It will also undoubtedly be found, that in some respects, at least, the case of Stoke Newington has many striking parallels in other parishes and districts of the country at large. Reverting, therefore, to the axiom advanced at the outset, that "all great reformations take their rise from apparently insignificant causes,” a sufficient apology is here afforded for this humble appeal, and especially for the more circumstantial statement of the comparatively" insignificant cause," by which it has been evoked. Should it only arouse the attention of earnest men

in other localities, where similar "causes," insignificant only from their isolation, exist, to the grave necessity for energetic co-operation, a great good will have been attained. Such a combination of "small beginnings" would constitute an aggregate of momentous importance. It is only by making common cause and by pursuing an object with energy and unity of purpose, that success can be achieved. About a quarter of a century ago, Mr. Tayler, the late Rector of the then comparatively small and retired suburban village of Stoke Newington, attempted, in opposition to the wishes of his congregation, to introduce certain Puseyite practices into the service of his primitive little Church. He was, however, surrounded by men of sound religious principles and earnest zeal for the purity of divine worship, men who valued their Christian privileges, and were actuated by true Protestant motives. Amongst them were some of large experience and great observation, who had witnessed, with much concern, the gradual advances of this Puseyite mania in other places, and who, with a prophetic eye, foresaw the evils which would ensue. These men rose and protested, but with no immediate success. They at length appealed to the Bishop of St. Asaph, in whose charge Stoke Newington then was, and he interposed with effect. Mr. Tayler bowed to the injunctions of his Bishop; the services were restored to their former simplicity, and peace was re-established, but not until many of the parishioners had been driven to dissent some of them never to return; but, as will presently appear, the baneful influence of his teaching and example was not paralysed by an outward conformity to the injunctions of the Bishop. Matters, however, progressed quietly for a few years, when a new curate, Mr. Pope, was introduced into the parish, and to a familiar intimacy with the Rector's family, which led to his marriage with the daughter. In the earlier days of his curacy he exhibited no taint of Romanism, and was neither suspected of such tendencies nor conscious of them himself. Many persons, however, have subsequently recalled indications, which began to

manifest themselves in his teaching, but to which little importance at the time was attached. He shewed, for example, a growing fondness for expatiating on the spiritual influences of saints and angels. This was regarded merely as idiosyncratic, without connecting it with the workings of a mind already unconsciously yielding to dangerous theories, which were too soon fully developed in practice.

About this time the erection of a new church in the parish was projected and in due course completed. A district was assigned to it, which is known as that of St. Matthias. Mr. Pope was inducted into the living. Having imbibed the Tractarian opinions of his father-in-law, and being master of the situation, he introduced into the new Church those practices which Mr. Tayler had been compelled to abandon in the old. The love of these novelties grew upon him. Warning after warning was given to him by his friends, but he, with a fatal self-sufficiency, set them at nought. With an earnest but misguided zeal, whilst imagining and asserting that there was an impassable abyss between him and the Church of Rome, he indulged in those gradually assimilating practices, until the craving for their full fruition bridged over the fatal gulf, and carried him—and not himself alone, but many of his flock-into the arms of Popery. "Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall!" Nevertheless, Mr. Pope surrendered the wages of the Protestant vineyard on becoming a convert to the Church of Rome, and is entitled to some respect for having acted on honest conviction, however much we may deplore the seductive means by which, through too much self-confidence, he was carried away; and the same may, perhaps, be said of his brother-in-law, also a clergyman of the Church of England, who, together with his mother, Mrs. Tayler, embraced the Roman Catholic faith. Many others of the congregation of St. Matthias followed their example, only to be succeeded by others--that Church still continuing to be the foster-mother of Romanism. Indeed the priest of a neighbouring Roman Catholic chapel openly admits, that

a large number of his converts are derived from St. Matthias and another Church of the same character in the adjacent parish of Haggerstone. Nor is this to be wondered at, taking into account the fact, that St. Matthias has run the gauntlet through all the various stages enumerated in the preceding Chapter, and any one who doubts, has only to pay a visit on any Sunday to that semblance of a Roman Catholic chapel, where he may witness the whole programme, commencing with its musical procession from the vestry to the altar, in which the priest is preceded by an acolyte in robes, bearing aloft a gilded crucifix, and followed by his alb-clad quire, singing to the measured tread of their solemn march, and surfeit himself with anti-protestant ceremonials, monotonous mouthing, musical accessories, blazing tapers, fanciful decorations, genuflections and gesticulations, and, should it happen to be the Sunday before Easter, or "Palm Sunday," he may carry away, as a sanctified trophy, a willow sprig, supposed to represent the palm distributed to the faithful in the Church of Rome.

On the death of Mr. Tayler, the present Rector, Mr. Thomas Jackson, was presented to the incumbency of Stoke Newington. The number of inhabitants was greatly on the increase, and the old Church, to which many were attracted by the novelty of his peculiar style of preaching and fondness for oratorical display, was found to be inadequate to the accommodation of the people. Mr. Jackson, who lost no opportunity of speaking of the modest edifice with contempt, conceived the idea of erecting a magnificent Basilica. He invited the co-operation of the leaders of the parish, propounded a scheme for raising £10,000 by voluntary donations and subscriptions, and called a meeting of the élite of the parish at his own house for the purpose; but he was met on the threshold by the assurance of those who had experienced the evils of the late Rector's innovations, that no proposition for the extension of church accommodation would be responded to if there

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