d exclusively by religion and politics. The small knowledge which
they possessed of other things was tinctured by their speculative
opinions on the relations of heaven and earth; and, down to the
sixteenth century, art, science, scarcely even literature, existed in
this country, except as, in some way or other, subordinate to theology.
Philosophers--such philosophers as there were--obtained and half
deserved the reputation of quacks and conjurors. Astronomy was confused
with astrology. The physician's medicines were supposed to be powerless,
unless the priests said prayers over them. The great lawyers, the
ambassadors, the chief ministers of state, were generally bishops; even
the fighting business was not entirely secular. Half-a-dozen Scotch
prelates were killed at Flodden; and, late in the reign of Henry the
Eighth, no fitter person could be found than Rowland Lee, Bishop of
Coventry, to take command of the Welsh Marches, and harry the
freebooters of Llangollen.

Every single department of intellectual or practical life was penetrated
with the beliefs, or was interwoven with the interests, of the clergy;
and thus it was that, when differences of religious opinion arose, they
split society to its foundations. The lines of cleavage penetrated
everywhere, and there were no subjects whatever in which those who
disagreed in theology possessed any common concern. When men
quarrelled, they quarrelled altogether. The disturbers of settled
beliefs were regarded as public enemies who had placed themselves beyond
the pale of humanity, and were considered fit only to be destroyed like
wild beasts, or trampled out like the seed of a contagion.

Three centuries have passed over our heads since the time of which I am
speaking, and the world is so changed that we can hardly recognise it as
the same.

The secrets of nature have been opened out to us on a thousand lines;
and men of science of all creeds can pursue side by side their common
investigations. Catholics, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Lutherans,
Calvinists, contend with each other in honourable rivalry in arts, and
literature, and commerce, and industry. They read the same books. They
study at the same academies. They have seats in the same senates. They
preside together on the judicial bench, and carry on, without jar or
difference, the ordinary business of the country.

Those who share the same pursuits are drawn in spite of themselves into
sympathy and good-will. When th