"movement" seemed better than
lifeless "high and dry" conformity. Herein consisted the secret of their
early success. Their subsequent failure was inevitable when they were
fairly confronted with protestant sentiment and with the independent
spirit of the age. How their aims were taken up and partially realised
in a new form by new leaders and through new methods, is an inquiry
which must be reserved for a later chapter in the history of the English
Church.

The strange religious movement which resulted in the foundation of the
so-called Catholic Apostolic Church was of somewhat earlier date, and
its author had already been disavowed as a minister by the presbyterian
Church before the _Tracts for the Times_ began to startle the religious
world. The most brilliant part of Edward Irving's career falls within
the reign of George IV., when his chapel in London was crowded by the
fashionable world, and even attended occasionally by statesmen like
Canning. According to all contemporary testimony he was among the most
remarkable of modern preachers, and his visionary speculations in the
field of biblical prophecy failed to repel hearers attracted by his
wonderful religious enthusiasm. Compared with the adherents of the
methodist or of the neo-catholic revival, his followers were a mere
handful, and his name would scarcely merit a place in history but for
the impression which he made upon men of high ability and position. What
brought him into discredit with his own communion and with the public
was his introduction into his services of fanatics professing the gift
of speaking with "unknown tongues". These extravagances led to his
deposition in 1832, and probably hastened his early death in 1834. But
his creed did not die with him, and a small body of earnest believers
has carried on into the twentieth century a definite tradition of the
gospel which he taught.

Far deeper and more lasting in its effects was the change wrought in
current ideas by the almost unseen but steady advance of science in all
its branches. During this epoch perhaps the most formidable enemy of
orthodoxy was the rising study of geology, challenging, as it did, the
traditional theories of creation. The discoveries of astronomy--the law
of gravitation, the rotation of the earth, its place in the solar
system, and, above all, the infinite compass of the universe--were in
themselves of a nature to revolutionise theological beliefs more
radically than any c