ion, the
more minute our inquiry, the stronger must be the conviction in all minds
that religion has been for good or bad the great moving power, and, in
spite of the teachings of Secularism or of Positivism, it is clear that
as much as ever the questions which are daily and hourly coming to the
front have in them more or less of a religious element. It is not often
foreigners perceive this. Take Louis Blanc as an illustration. As much
as any foreigner he has mastered our habits and ways--all that we call
our inner life; yet, to him, the English pulpit is a piece of
wood--nothing more. According to him, the oracles are dumb, the sacred
fire has ceased to burn, the veil of the temple is rent in twain; church
attendance, he tells us, in England, besides custom, has little to
recommend it. There is beauty in desolation--in life changing into
death--

"Before Decay's effacing fingers
Have swept the lines where beauty lingers;"

but not even of this beauty can the Church of England boast. Dr.
Dollinger--a more thoughtful, a more learned, a more laborious writer--is
not more flattering. The Church of England, he tells us, is "the Church
only of a fragment of the nation," of "the rich, cultivated, and
fashionable classes." It teaches "the religion of deportment, of
gentility, of clerical reserve." "In its stiff and narrow organization,
and all want of pastoral elasticity, it feels itself powerless against
the masses." The patronage is mostly in the hands of the nobility and
gentry, who regard it as a means of provision for their younger sons,
sons-in-law, and cousins. Our latest critic, M. Esquiros, writes in a
more favourable strain, yet even he confesses how the city operative
shuns what he deems the Church of Mammon, and draws a picture of the
English clergyman, by no means suggestive of zeal in the Master's service
or readiness to bear His yoke. Dissent foreigners generally ignore, yet
Dissent is as active, as energetic as the State Church, and may claim
that it has practically realized the question of our time--the Free
Church in the Free State. In thus attempting to describe the Religious
Life of London, I touch on a question of which I may briefly say that it
concerns the welfare of the community at large.

IVY COTTAGE, BALLARD'S LANE, FINCHLEY,
_April_ 4_th_, 1870.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.
PAGE
ON HERESY AN