f those gracious men, those gracious women, did not shew forth the
Spirit and grace of God with power, then there is either no Spirit of
God, no grace of God; or those who deny to them the name of saints forget
the words of Him Who said: By their fruits ye shall know them; of Him Who
said, too: That the unpardonable sin, the sin which shewed complete moral
perversion, the sin against the Holy Spirit of God, was to attribute good
deeds to bad motives, and say: He casteth out devils by Beelzebub, the
prince of the devils.

Yes, that old Evangelical School may now have passed its prime. It may
now be verging toward old age; and other schools, younger and stronger,
with broader and clearer knowledge of dogma, of history, civil and
ecclesiastical, of the value of ceremonial, of the needs of the human
intellect and emotions, may have passed it in a noble rivalry, and
snatched, as it were, from the hands of the old Evangelical School the
lamp of truth, to bear it further forward in the race. But God forbid
that the spiritual children should be ungrateful to their spiritual
parents, though God may have taught them things which their parents did
not know.

And they were our spiritual parents, those old Evangelicals. No just and
well-informed man who has passed middle age, but must confess, that to
them we owe whatsoever vital religion exists at this moment in any school
or party of the Church of England; that to them we owe the germs at
least, and in many cases the full organization and the final success, of
a hundred schemes of practical benevolence and practical justice, without
which this country, in its haste to grow rich at all risks and by all
means, might have plunged itself ere now into anarchy and revolution. And
he must confess, too, if he is one who has seen much of his
fellow-creatures and their characters, that that school numbered among
its disciples--and, thank God, they are not all yet gone home to their
rest--some of the loveliest human souls, whose converse has chastened and
ennobled his own soul. Ah, well--

The old order changeth, giving place to the new;
And God fulfils Himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.

And new methods and new institutions have arisen, and will yet arise, for
seeking and saving that which is lost. God's blessing on them all, to
whatsoever party, church, or sect they may belong! Whosoever cast out
devils in Christ's name, Christ has forb