alvin, or
the "platform of discipline" of John Knox and the Puritans. It had to
deal with a society which laid stress on what was "reasonable," or
"polite," or "ingenious," or "genteel," and unconsciously it had come to
have respect to these requirements. The one thing by which its preachers
carried disciples with them was their undoubted and serious piety, and
their brave, though often fantastic and inconsistent, protest against
the world. They won consideration and belief by the mild persecution
which this protest brought on them--by being proscribed as enthusiasts
by comfortable dignitaries, and mocked as "Methodists" and "Saints" by
wits and worldlings. But the austere spirit of Newton and Thomas Scott
had, between 1820 and 1830, given way a good deal to the influence of
increasing popularity. The profession of Evangelical religion had been
made more than respectable by the adhesion of men of position and
weight. Preached in the pulpits of fashionable chapels, this religion
proved to be no more exacting than its "High and Dry" rival. It gave a
gentle stimulus to tempers which required to be excited by novelty. It
recommended itself by gifts of flowing words or high-pitched rhetoric to
those who expected _some_ demands to be made on them, so that these
demands were not too strict. Yet Evangelical religion had not been
unfruitful, especially in public results. It had led Howard and
Elizabeth Fry to assail the brutalities of the prisons. It had led
Clarkson and Wilberforce to overthrow the slave trade, and ultimately
slavery itself. It had created great Missionary Societies. It had given
motive and impetus to countless philanthropic schemes. What it failed in
was the education and development of character; and this was the result
of the increasing meagreness of its writing and preaching. There were
still Evangelical preachers of force and eloquence--Robert Hall, Edward
Irving, Chalmers, Jay of Bath--but they were not Churchmen. The circle
of themes dwelt on by this school in the Church was a contracted one,
and no one had found the way of enlarging it. It shrank, in its fear of
mere moralising, in its horror of the idea of merit or of the value of
good works, from coming into contact with the manifold realities of the
spirit of man: it never seemed to get beyond the "first beginnings" of
Christian teaching, the call to repent, the assurance of forgiveness: it
had nothing to say to the long and varied process of building