ack for more than a century, which
tended not only to demoralise the nation, but also to cut it off from
many influences for good which under happier circumstances the Church
might have exercised. The turbulent and unsettled condition of both
Church and State in the seventeenth century was bearing its fruit in the
eighteenth. As in the life of an individual, so also in the life of a
nation, there are certain crises which are terribly perilous to the
character. In the eighteenth century England as a nation was going
through such a crisis. She was passing from the old order to the new.
The early part of the century was a period of many controversies--the
Deistic controversy, the Nonjuring controversy, the Bangorian
controversy, the Trinitarian controversy, the various ethical
controversies, and all these following close upon the Puritan
controversy and the Papal controversy, both of which had shaken the
Constitution to its very foundation. How was it possible that a country
could pass through such stormy scenes without having its faith
unsettled, and the basis of its morals weakened? How could some help
asking, What is truth? where is it to be found among all these
conflicting elements? The Revolution itself was in its immediate effects
attended with evil. England submitted to be governed by foreigners, but
she had to sacrifice much and stoop low before she could submit to the
necessity. All the romantic halo which had hung about royalty was rudely
swept away. Queen Anne was the last sovereign of these realms round whom
still lingered something of the 'divinity that doth hedge a king.'
Under the Georges loyalty assumed a different form from that which it
had taken before. The sentiment which had attached their subjects to the
Tudors and the Stuarts was exchanged for a colder and less enthusiastic
feeling; mere policy took the place of chivalry.

Nor was it only in her outward affairs that the nation was passing
through a great and fundamental change. In her inner and spiritual life
she was also in a period of transition. The problem which was started in
the early part of the sixteenth century had never yet been fairly worked
out. The nation had been for more than a century and a half so busy in
dealing with the pressing questions of the hour that it had never yet
had time to face the far deeper questions which lay behind
these--questions which concerned not the different modes of
Christianity, but the very essence of Chri