alian waters. Meanwhile Mackenzie descended the
river which bears his name to the Arctic ocean, and in 1770 Bruce, the
Abyssinian traveller, reached the sources of the Blue Nile.

Between 1760 and 1801 the national Church, the proper instrument of
national reformation, was passing through a period of transition. Its
vitality was somewhat injured by its controversy with the deists, and
still more by the action of the state. It was a powerful political
engine and as such it was used by statesmen. Convocations remained
silenced, and Church preferments were made to serve political ends and
were regarded both by clergy and laity as little more than desirable
offices. Clergymen begged bishoprics and deaneries of Newcastle with
unblushing importunity, sometimes even before the men they aspired to
succeed had breathed their last. Neither they, nor the ministers who
treated Church patronage as a means of strengthening their party, were
necessarily careless about religion. Newcastle and Hardwicke, for
example, were religious men, and the personal piety of some
preferment-seeking bishops is unquestioned. It was a matter in which the
Church was neither better nor worse than the age. The ecclesiastical
system was disorganised by plurality and non-residence; the dignified
clergy as a whole were worldly minded, and the greater number of the
rest were wretchedly poor. The Church was roused to a sense of its duty
to society by methodism and evangelicalism, two movements for a time
closely connected, though after 1784 methodism became a force outside
the church. By 1760 the persecution to which John Wesley and his
fellow-workers had sometimes been exposed was over, and methodism was
gaining ground. It very slightly touched aristocratic society, chiefly
through the efforts of the Countess of Huntingdon, who, in spite of her
quarrel with Wesley's party, must be regarded as one of the leaders of
the movement; its influence on the labouring class, specially in large
towns and in the mining districts, was strong, and it gained a
considerable hold on people of the middle class.

[Sidenote: _THE EVANGELICALS._]

Within the Church rapid progress was made by the evangelical movement.
Many of the earlier evangelical clergy were methodists, some workers
with Wesley, others preachers of Lady Huntingdon's "connexion" before
her secession in 1781. During the last two decades of the century the
evangelicals became distinct from the methodists and for