gather up again the historical threads; how, at length, the slowly ripening poetical reaction burst forth from the depths of the nation's soul, victorious and jubilant, in Burns's songs-this is a familiar, almost hackneyed story. At the same time there arose another movement in the bosom of the English Church, which, while it gave new life and power to a half-extinct organization, acted upon it also as a disintegrant.

Leslie Stephen shows very admirably how the imaginative literature of the Eighteenth Century is essentially only the symbolical and emotional expression of the movement of thought in that century, while it necessarily illustrates at the same time the permanent character of the English mind. That combination of paradoxical qualities, so prominent in the English nation-the most unflinching truthfulness and the most downright hypocrisy; cynical egotism and splendid generosity; reckless extravagance and grinding avarice; coarse cruelty and lively pity ;—all these come before us in the literary monuments of the time, and yet side-by-side with them we continually find the description of feelings, habits, and modes of life long since passed away. Pervading all, too, is the tone of thought usually described as theological rationalism, which aroused the reaction of which we have spoken. In saying this we have indicated what was the great want of this literature. A point

of view so cold and mechanical as the deism from which the entire philosophical movement proceeded, could afford but little scope to the imagination. How much richer than the lifeless divinity of this age was the severely Biblical world of Milton, not to speak of the manypeopled romances of Spenser and Shakspeare's time, when the Fairy Queen still ruled the world!

IV.

More beneficial, if not more deep and abiding, was the influence upon the religious life of the philosophical and critical movement of Hobbes and Locke, and the Newtonian natural philosophy. The political calm of Walpole's time was highly favourable to this mental activity. Newton himself had no conception of the influence of his discoveries on rcligious questions, and he applied his powerful mind more and more to the task of solving riddles which he called prophetic interpretation. But Hobbes knew very well what he was doing. It is common to depreciate Hobbes's influence. He had, indeed, but few disciples, and his political theories were practically for ever set aside by the Revolution of 1688. But, as Leslie Stephen well reminds us, an author who produces a reaction, and calls forth a host of opponents, does quite as much for the propagation of ideas as one who diffuses widely his own thoughts. And further: while the consequences which Hobbes deduced from his premises may have been angrily rejected by the generations following, the premises themselves form, nevertheless, the under-current of the whole stream of thought in the last century. If he maintains that the Bible must be tested by the method of his

torical criticism, Bayle admitted the same. What he affirmed as to the difference of morality according to place and time, was the creed of Voltaire, though he may not have gone so far as Hobbes in identifying the positive laws of a land with the moral laws. Rousseau's theory of sovereignty and of the contrat social is substantially the same as that of Hobbes, only the sovereign is different. If Locke denies the existence of innate moral ideas, is he not following in the footsteps of the earlier thinkers?

Practically, in its relation to life, Locke's movement was a reaction against that of Hobbes. He was the ecclesiastical father of constitutionalism, as Hobbes was of absolutism. He was the founder of the utilitarian morality which prevailed throughout the last century, although Bentham was the first to bring it into a complete system. He was above all the prophet of ecclesiastical tolerance, which is the finest feature in the physiognomy of the age. Locke's philosophy was

also a genuine offspring of England, of its sound sense in practical matters, its aversion to systems, its reverence for established institutions and old prejudices, its inclination to make compromises with things as they are. Hence the Englishman, par excellence, Johnson, though politically in the opposite camp to Locke, was quite of his school in his mistrust of speculative and sceptical philosophy. The fact that Locke's philosophy, in its consequences, must necessarily lead to Hume's scepticism should not mislead us. He would have stopped there; he would not have meddled with revelation, nor called in question God and immortality; but the speculative Scotchman (the Scotch, who in so many respects resemble the Germans, seem to have, in common with them also, this taste for speculation), Hume, could not stop. He explained, indeed, that "our most holy religion rests upon faith, not reason; and that it is the surest way to imperil it, to subject it to an examination which it is not able to bear." This, nevertheless, did not prevent him from bringing the philosophical fundamentals of religion before the tribunal of reason, and putting them upon their trial. He completed the victory, begun by Locke, over the philosophical method of the seventeenth century, and prepared the way for the theory of Kant, which, consciously or unconsciously, has been accepted as a basis by all true thinkers.

Locke's influence was no less powerful over Church and State than over the philosophical development of the age. Not only the practical Whigs, but also the Whig theorists, the men of the school of Walpole as well as of Montesquieu, took their starting-point from him; and his defence of ecclesiastical toleration bore at once splendid fruit. Once again, under Queen Anne, High Church fanaticism had rebelled against William III's. broad toleration, of which Locke gave a philosophical exposition, but after that there was no more attempt to dispute it. While Bossuet was arguing, from the endless diversity of religious opinions, for the necessity of the suppression of heresy, and

consequently for a blind submission to authority and the persecution of all who ventured to hold opinions of their own, Locke deduced from this same diversity the need for toleration, and for the recognition of intellectual freedom, that is, of rationalism. For Locke's "Reasonableness of Christianity" was essentially the basis of that whole system of theological rationalism which is known in history under the name of English Deism. Deism was, however, in its essence, simply a sort of natural religion, based on principles analogous to those of Rousseau's contrat social, which aimed also at restoring a so-called state of nature. And, in spite of such talented and scholarly opponents as Butler and Bentley, this Deism soon became not only the creed of all the intelligent Dissenters who, under the name of Unitarians, rejected the doctrine of the Trinity, but also of almost all educated Anglicans, since it did not necessarily imply, in England, any direct opposition to Christianity, as it did in France, where it found itself confronted with the Catholic Church, and urged on by irresistible French logic to its ultimate conclusions.

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Little was left either of the mysticism or the superstition of Christianity. All that remained was a very prosaic system of morals, and a very jejune metaphysical belief in an all-loving Creator. worship of God dwindled more and more into a mere form. sermons were moral essays, such as Addison might have written in the Spectator; indeed, at last, under the influence of Sterne's daringly profane genius, they became short humorous lectures on all possible subjects except Christ and redemption. There was still, however, the outward semblance of reverence for Christianity, which even Hume did not discard. Gibbon was the first to attack religion openly and without any show of respect; but Gibbon was hardly to be called an Englishman any longer, at least with respect to his philosophical stand-point, which had been determined wholly by his residence on the Continent. By the end of the century, however, this rationalism had so far spread that Paine and Priestley could use its language even to the people, because "the faith which had long failed to satisfy the educated classes, was now rejected also by the instincts of rude common sense" (Leslie Stephen). Even the conservative divines, who showed a hostile front both to the orthodox and the free-thinkers, preached a morality which amounted to nothing more than sentimentalism or mere prudence. They did, indeed, retain the theological forms of speech; but they used them with such an uncertain sound that the hearer might put any construction upon them that he pleased. They talked about harmony, oneness, the best of worlds, and so on, and found God in Nature, but said little or nothing about His personality. God had, indeed, once shown Himself to man in a tangible form, but that was long ago, in a remote wonder-world; and since then the Most High had ceased to interfere with the order of nature. In short, God the Father had become a sort of "supernatural overseer,

whose decrees were carried out in an extra-natural world, but who (for this world) was a constitutional monarch who had signed a social contract and had withdrawn from the active government." The argument, therefore, between Christians of this stamp and the Deists was, if we except the pugilistic Warburton, a very tame one. Indeed, it could not well be otherwise, since the Deists did not wish to stamp out religion, and their opponents were by no means intolerant.

Few things could bear less resemblance to the English Church of to-day than the Church of this period. While, in our time, the still very numerous Broad Church party can hardly gain a hearing, between the aristocratic Catholicizing High Church and the Puritanical democratic Low Church, at that time it was almost exclusively dominant, taking the lead on all points; in a word, it was the fashion, for the High and Low Church of to-day are the outgrowth respectively of the Wesleyan movement of the last century and of the Tractarian agitation of our own.

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The English Church was wonderfully adapted to the English mind and character, as well as to the historical conditions of the country. It had the advantage of being a national Church; it was free from the only dangerous rival, and did not extend its toleration to that which never be regarded simply as a religion." (I believe Mr. Lecky is the only living English writer who is able to rise to this unqualified judgment upon Catholicism.) It had, moreover, rejected the dogmas of Catholicism most obnoxious to reason; it was a compromise between two extremes. It had a monarchical and aristocratic constitution; it was closely bound up with society through the marriage of its priests, and yet, as being sure of a following, had not abandoned the historical tradition so dear to Englishmen.

At the same time, however, its political influence, which the laity regarded with mistrustful jealousy, was becoming weaker and weaker, and, even in the Upper House, had considerably diminished. This arose from the fact that from the time of William III. and Burnet, the high ecclesiastical offices had been given more and more to latitudinarians. It was a period which was not unlike the palmy days of German Hermesianism, with this great advantage, that the head of the Church was also the highest dignitary in the State. It reminds us especially of the condition of ecclesiastical affairs in Germany in the good time of Frederick William III., before the artistic revival of interest in the Church. I say the artistic revival, for even then there was always more truth in the lukewarm Church of England than in German ecclesiastical life; while, on the other hand, the religious life in Germany is capable of more depth and reality than that of England. William III.'s attempt to form an evangelical union failed, as it has practically failed in Prussia also; but it brought about a truce between Church and Dissent. After the short contest under Queen Anne, the toleration so opposed by the bishops won the victory. The Synod (or Convocation)

in which the still somewhat intolerant inferior clergy used to turn the scale, practically ceased to exist after 1717, for it was no longer appealed to, and the subordinate clergy soon imitated their superiors, against whom, for the future, they had no appeal. In the middle of the century the indifference had become so great within the Church, that Hume could say, "the nation has settled down into the coolest indifference to religious matters of any nation in the world." This was, indeed, only half true, but the great man who dwelt on the lofty heights of intellectual culture did not notice the movement which had already begun deep down in the valley, among the working-classes. The judgment Hume pronounced referred only to the State Church, and, so far, it was fully justified.

As early as 1740 a reaction of religious sentiment began to make itself felt. The pietism which, fifty years before, had renewed for a century the growth of religious life in Germany, awoke in England also. The Dissenters were still a feeble minority at the beginning of the century-about 1 in 22 to the adherents of the State Church. The Independents, or Congregationalists, who would have been glad to see the State Church broken up into a number of small bodies, independent of the State, and who were strongly Calvinistic in their dogmas, especially in the doctrine of predestination, had, after a great show of resistance, been almost carried away by the religious reaction. The political instincts of the English rebelled against a Church which was to be only an invisible spiritual community of the elect scattered over all the world. The Anabaptists, who were bent on purifying the character of the Church, and who sought to make the initial rite a more rational act, and the Quakers, who believed in the abolition of all outward rites, set themselves against the new movement. They still lived on, and lost but few of their adherents, but they won no new ones. Only the young sect of the Unitarians, so entirely a creation of the last century, grew and flourished; this was, however, of necessity, only a creed for the cultured, and could not become a national religion even in this century of enlightenment. For it required, as an essential feature, the complete emancipation of the Church from all obligations which could in any way limit the doctrinal liberty of the clergy; and religion, a national religion, cannot exist under such conditions. It was otherwise with Wesleyanism, which did not at first identify itself with Dissent, but, like pietism in Germany, made it its aim to renovate the national Church through the feelings and by a spiritual regeneration. It therefore formed lay societies and associations within the Church, and required manifest conversion and the personal reception of revealed truth by every individual; it even introduced Moravian institutions, and Wesley himself was in direct connection with the Moravian body. He wished, however, to remain in the communion of the Established Church. Such a compromise could not, of course, be lasting, but he had, so to speak, to be turned out by the