stianity itself. The matters
which had so violently agitated the country in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries were now virtually settled. The Church was now at
last 'established.' But other questions arose. It was not now asked, 'Is
this or that mode of Church government most Scriptural?' 'Is this or
that form of worship most in accordance with the mind of Christ?' but,
'What _is_ this Scripture to which all appeal?' 'Who _is_ this Christ
whom all own as Master?' This is really what is meant, so far as
religion is concerned, when it is said that the eighteenth century was
the age of reason--alike in the good and in the bad sense of that term.
The defenders of Christianity, no less than its assailants, had to
prove, above all things, the reasonableness of their position. The
discussion was inevitable, and in the end productive of good, but while
it was going on it could not fail to be to many minds harmful. Reason
and faith, though not really antagonistic, are often in seeming
antagonism. Many might well ask, Can we no longer rest upon a simple,
childlike faith, founded on authority? What is there, human or Divine,
that is left to reverence? The heart of England was still sound at the
core, and she passed through the crisis triumphantly; but the transition
period was a dangerous and a demoralising one, and there is no wonder
that she sank for a time under the wave that was passing over her.

It has been already said that the morbid dread of anything which
savoured either of Romanism or Puritanism tended to reduce the Church to
a dead level of uniform dulness. The same dread affected the nation at
large as well as the Church. It practically cut off the laity from
influences which might have elevated them. Anything like the worship of
God in the beauty of holiness, all that is conveyed in the term
symbolism, the due observance of fast and festival--in fact, all those
things which to a certain class of minds are almost essential to raise
devotion--were too much associated in men's minds with that dreaded
enemy from whom the nation had but narrowly escaped in the preceding age
to be able to be turned to any good effect in the eighteenth century.

On the other hand, stirring appeals to the feelings, analyses of
spiritual frames--everything, in short, which was termed in the jargon
of the seventeenth century 'savoury preaching' and 'a painful ministry,'
was too much associated in men's minds with the hated reign of the