I

DECLINE OF EVANGELICALISM

33

word than 'Protestant.' High Churchmen have borne witness to the exalted piety of the Evangelicals of half a century ago, among whom 'everything, down to the minutest details of action and speech, was considered with reference to eternity' but their form of piety was growing out of fashion, and it was not the theology but the good works of Clapham and Islington that commanded the respect of Englishmen.

:

The Evangelicals laid great stress on individual religion, as opposed to corporate religion, and encouraged an undenominational temper. They cared little for the outward framework of the Church; they had little idea of the Church or of the State as a Divine institution, their business was with personal salvation; 'their ethical ideal of the individual Christian was wanting in wealth and variety'; they did not, like the ancient Church, seek to conquer the world in its science and politics and literature. They had little zeal or enterprise even in the search for truth; they regarded whatever truth was important as already discovered, and loved truth less for its own sake than as an engine of salvation. The love of souls was their motive, and separation from the world their method; for they held the sternest doctrine as to the wicked- Evangelical religion indiness of the world and the imminent danger of eternal vidual, not perdition. 'Save, Lord, by love or fear,' was no mere form of words with them, but the expression of their constant thought. Such severity of teaching and life required the presence of living teachers and an untiring organisation to keep it from decline; and in fact after Simeon's generation it did decline. Inelastic and unenlightened, and not curious of anything which lay to right and left of the strait path of salvation, Evangelicalism cannot be said to have failed, but it was little capable of development, and what development it has attained has come, at any rate in some degree, by reflection from without.

corporate.

The question which continually recurs is whether the more enlightened Evangelicals of to-day, within and without the Church, have the same love for souls which inspired Simeon; whether zeal is chilled by the weakening of the motive of fear, so strong in the early Evangelicals, by whom the mediaval doctrine of hell was held as strongly as any part of their creed; whether the Puritan tradition of belief and manners

PART I

D

toleration.

has lost its savour by being diluted with laxer views of the importance of a rigid scheme of doctrine, and a sharply-drawn line distinguishing worldly custom and learning from the simplicity of Gospel truth and walking with God. These questions do not affect the descendants of the evangelical school only: they affect all schools of religion, since Christians Dangers of first began to question the truth of the proposition that 'the devil would for his purpose rather have a toleration than any other form of falsehood'; for if Christians may meet non-Christians and Dissenters on neutral platforms, and work with them in a spirit of brotherhood, indifferentism is at the door, and 'zeal and quick-eyed sanctity' are endangered by seeking to 'halve the Gospel of God's grace.' Newman's conflict with Liberalism was conducted in the same spirit as that which made Simeon refuse to vote for his friend's son who was pledged to Catholic Emancipation, the spirit of dogma, which is essentially intolerant. The good-natured relegation of all troublesome personal doubts to the twilight region of invincible ignorance' is disturbing even the rigidity of Roman Catholic orthodoxy; it is thus that the common sense of the world breaks down the strongholds of superstition. Lady Huntingdon would be as impossible in these days as Bishop Bonner; here and there in a Scotch manse or a Lincolnshire village there may be found a rigid Calvinist uplifted in heart by the doctrine of predestination to eternal death; but for the rest of the world this doctrine is practically though not theoretically obsolete.

AUTHORITIES: GENERAL. -Overton, Engl. Church in XIX. Cent. ; Hore, The Church in England from Will. III. to Victoria; Hunt, Religious Thought in England in XIX. Cent.; Perry, Student's Engl. Church Hist., vol. iii. BIOGRAPHIES : Wm. Wilberforce, by S. Wilberforce; Charles Simeon, by Moule, Carey, Brown; Hannah More, by Miss Yonge; Annals of a Clerical Family, by Venn; Sir Thos. Foxwell Buxton, by Buxton; Edw. Bickersteth, by Birks; Autobiography, by Bp. Watson; Essays in Eccles. Biography, by Stephen,

CHAPTER II

RELIGIOUS SOCIETIES

IN the formation of religious societies, such as the Bible Society and the Church Missionary Society, the evangelical party took up a new relation to the needs of the

societies.

time, and a new and permanent position as the Religious promoters of philanthropic and missionary work, and gained in public opinion in consequence. Few religious leaders of the time are worthy to be compared with the friends who promoted the dispersion of the Bible, the growth of Sunday schools, abolition and emancipation, whether Churchmen or Nonconformists, for they now began to work side by side. Two centuries earlier, correctness of dogma was the first requirement of religion; and the comprehension which distinguishes the Church of England, though designed to include in practice different ways of thinking, in formal terms excludes divergence. The ecclesiastical and philosophical theology of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had given place to the emotional theology of the evangelical school. The barriers of religious difference were weakened, and the rising school of politicians were philanthropists as well as Christian believers.

The evangelical philanthropists were not inattentive to the needs of the unenlightened and ignorant at home; and another Society which owed its existence to them was the Religious Religious Tract Society, founded in 1799. Though Tract Society, the Church of England Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge had been at work for a century, and the undenominational Society for Diffusing Religious

1799.

Knowledge among the Poor for fifty years, they perceived that the movement for general Christian education needed further development. Wilberforce initiated a Society for the Reformation of Manners in 1787, which distributed tracts. As the number of readers grew larger it was desirable to supply them with pure literature. The example had been set long ago by John Wesley, who gave away 'some thousands' of tracts; Hannah More began the publication of Village Politics, by Will Chip, in 1793, and issued from 1795 to 1798 the Cheap Repository Tracts, some of which bore titles which are still familiar, such as the Shepherd of Salisbury Plain, Black Giles the Poacher, and Tawny Rachel; these were sold in immense numbers; Wilberforce's Practical View was published in 1797; Magazines were set up, the Gospel Magazine, the Spiritual, the Evangelical; and in 1799, on the occasion of the London Missionary Society's anniversary, a meeting was held to consider the best means of preparing and circulating evangelical tracts. The anniversary sermon was preached by Rowland Hill on May 8, 1799, and after the service he and the Rev. George Burder of Coventry asked a few friends to meet and discuss a plan for the publication of evangelical tracts which had been already prepared by Burder. According to the fashion of those days, it was agreed to meet at St. Paul's coffee-house at breakfast the next morning at seven o'clock. A meeting was held after breakfast, and in two days more the preliminaries were completed, and the Religious Tract Society formed and named.

The Religious Tract Society was established on an unsectarian and evangelical basis. The first Committee, like all

promoters.

subsequent Committees, contained clergymen of Its first the Church of England and other denominations. Joseph Hughes, a Welsh Baptist, minister of a chapel in Battersea, and five years later the founder of the Bible Society, was the first secretary. Among the first helpers were Zachary Macaulay, Edward Bickersteth (1788-1850), Legh Richmond (1772-1827), Dr. Steinkopff, and others whose names are familiar. The Religious Tract Society was only another aspect of their manifold religious and charitable activity. The tracts were to treat of Gospel truth and the salvation of sinners, and exhorta

II

BRITISH AND FOREIGN BIBLE SOCIETY

37

tion was their main subject; but they were not to be merely sermons in type. They were to be plain, striking, entertaining, full of ideas and variety. When the first writers. found that there was a danger of tedium, they published tracts of a more popular form, after the pattern of Hannah More's compositions. Such writings as Legh Richmond's Dairyman's Daughter and Young Cottager were printed and sold by tens of thousands. A 'Hawkers' Series' of tracts, both entertaining and instructive, was begun, and had an immediate success. In two years' time more than a million had been sold. The Society's tracts were translated into many foreign languages; for the missionary zeal of these enthusiasts included foreign countries. Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, Russia, and even India and China, were visited by purveyors of tracts. Auxiliary societies in the United States and Canada and at home sprang up and increased; the methods of the Religious Tract Society were the same which had conspicuous success in the Bible Society, of which this Society was the parent.

Bible

Societies.

A Society had long existed for the supply of Bibles to the army and navy, and the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge also distributed Bibles; but the supply fell short of the demand, and no enterprising publisher came in to help. As early as 1787 an unsuccessful attempt was made to get a number of Welsh Bibles printed for distribution in the Principality. Not only was the number offered too small, since the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge refused to part with more than 500 copies, but the price, 5s. 6d., was prohibitive. There was great complaining amongst the poor for want of Bibles; Welsh Bibles could not be had even for money. The bishops do not seem to have troubled themselves about the business. In 1791 the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge undertook to publish 10,000 Welsh Bibles on condition that the price of 4000 copies was guaranteed. So languid was the bookselling trade, or so faint the interest felt in the affairs of Wales, that the plan was dropped, the necessary number of subscribers not being obtained. It was not till 1799, twelve years after the question was first raised, that the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge issued editions of the Bible, New Testament, Prayer Book, and