ver Neo-Anglicanism may have failed
as an Ecclesiastical or Theological system; how much soever it may
have proved itself, both by the national dislike of it, and by the
defection of all its master-minds, to be radically un-English, it
has at least awakened hundreds, perhaps thousands, of cultivated men
and women to ask themselves whether God sent them into the world
merely to eat, drink, and be merry, and to have 'their souls saved'
upon the Spurgeon method, after they die; and has taught them an
answer to that question not unworthy of English Christians.

The Anglican movement, when it dies out, will leave behind at least
a legacy of grand old authors disinterred, of art, of music; of
churches too, schools, cottages, and charitable institutions, which
will form so many centres of future civilisation, and will entitle
it to the respect, if not to the allegiance, of the future
generation. And more than this; it has sown in the hearts of young
gentlemen and young ladies seed which will not perish; which, though
it may develop into forms little expected by those who sowed it,
will develop at least into a virtue more stately and reverent, more
chivalrous and self-sacrificing, more genial and human, than can be
learnt from that religion of the Stock Exchange, which reigned
triumphant--for a year and a day--in the popular pulpits.

I have said, that Neo-Anglicanism has proved a failure, as
seventeenth-century Anglicanism did. The causes of that failure
this book has tried to point out: and not one word which is spoken
of it therein, but has been drawn from personal and too-intimate
experience. But now--peace to its ashes. Is it so great a sin, to
have been dazzled by the splendour of an impossible ideal? Is it so
great a sin, to have had courage and conduct enough to attempt the
enforcing of that ideal, in the face of the prejudices of a whole
nation? And if that ideal was too narrow for the English nation,
and for the modern needs of mankind, is that either so great a sin?
Are other extant ideals, then, so very comprehensive? Does Mr.
Spurgeon, then, take so much broader or nobler views of the
capacities and destinies of his race, than that great genius, John
Henry Newman? If the world cannot answer that question now, it will
answer it promptly enough in another five-and-twenty years. And
meanwhile let not the party and the system which has conquered boast
itself too loudly.