the Whigs of the Revolution, and were rather political than religious. The principal cause for distinction disappeared with the Jacobite danger, though before that High Churchmen had become Georgian, and Low Churchmen had become orthodox. Of 'vital religion' there was not much on either side. It must be acknowledged, and Mr. Stock, the historian of the Church Missionary Society, does not scruple to avow it, that the Clapham sect was not dominant in the Church of - England. 'It represented a small minority; it was either hated or despised by most Churchmen.' One of the Venn family was excluded, merely on account of his name, from Trinity College, Cambridge; Henry Martyn was kept out of orthodox pulpits; when Hannah More was taken to Clapham in the carriage of Bishop Porteus, with whom she was staying, to call upon John Venn, the coachman was ordered to set her down at the Bull's Head, not at the Rector's door. 'Evangelical' clergy, as they called themselves, few in number but noisy and inconvenient, were looked upon as dangerous innovators and bad subjects. No high promotion for such men was dreamed of, either by themselves or by their supporters. It was with difficulty that they could be provided with humble livings, curacies or preacherships; the universities rejected 'serious' candidates, Unpopularity of serious and bishops scrupled at ordaining them and attacked Churchmen. ‹Church-Methodism' in their charges. Even as late as 1810 the lists of subscribers to the Church Missionary Society contain no names of peers or bishops, no support from the cathedrals, nor from the universities, except so far as Simeon's friends may be reckoned. The clergy refused to let its missionaries preach in their churches, the older religious societies frowned upon them, the magistrates were slow to enforce the law in their favour.

But the shouting of preachers, the noise of hymn-singing in the fields, the secession to Methodism of many among the poor and the middle classes, the general shock to established institutions which was sent through the world by the French Revolution, could not but startle the slumbering Philanthropic Church. The instinct of defence was roused; the movement. disturbers of quiet became more unpopular than

ever, but more attention was drawn to their doctrines.

The

I

THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION

9

evangelical school became identified with the philanthropic movements which mark the latter part of the century, unquestionably the result of Rousseau's influence.

Eminent

A tradition of holy friendship gives fragrance to the 'Evangelical Succession' of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Newton and Cowper, the Wesleys and Whitefield, the Hills, Venns, Bickersteths, Evangelicals. Thorntons, and Milners, Scott, Cecil, Hannah More, and in the later generation Wilberforce and the Clapham circle, Simeon and the Cambridge circle, were friends and friends' friends, walking in the House of God. They held the same doctrines of moderate Calvinism, read the same books, used the same devotions and religious observances, maintained and suffered for the same causes, made the same protest against worldliness both by precept and example; in all they were supported by the strength of brotherhood. There was wisdom as well as piety in their course of life, for consistency always wins respect. They rescued the old

tradition of Puritan seriousness and strictness of life from the Pharisaism of respectability into which it had sunk, warmed it into life by what their opponents called 'enthusiasm,' and set an example of unobtrusive godliness which, however open to ridicule and censure, raised the level of family life in England, and did noble service in the cause of philanthropy. It was this, more than their influence as religious teachers, that put easy-going religion to shame. Judged by their fruits, they could claim to have revived personal religion in the nation, and stimulated associated and corporate action. To a sensitive judgment they might seem even to incur the imputation of dependence upon works, so freely cast upon the Roman Church at the time of the Reformation. Reliance upon works was indeed one of the errors against which they chiefly preached; the doctrine of the hymn 'Rock of Ages' was their doctrine, and the vanity of secular learning and charitable works their theme, nor were they ever untrue to their principles; yet they owed their prominence in the early years of the century principally to their activity in philanthropic movements, headed by leaders who showed that strictness in religion could be combined with efficiency in business.

In doctrine, these 'enthusiasts' were more fervent than

Their doctrine.

those who called themselves 'orthodox,' the official Protestant party in possession and secure. Though they were not 'Catholic-minded,' they gloried in the Prayer Book, into the origins of which they had no mind to inquire. Being a compact and militant body, they made themselves felt within the Church. Influence came to them by degrees, from the sincerity of their profession and the honesty of their conduct; they made their way with the world, and established themselves as a power by unity and perseverance, not unaided by wealth and respectability, which took the line of good works; and where simple piety might have failed, they commanded attention, and took the kingdom of the world by force. Evangelicalism had no philosophy of religion but Christ crucified, no Church system theology. beyond that of the Church of England, with a general benevolence towards all Protestant sects, no learning to meet the attacks of deism and liberalism. It did not hold such doctrines as that of the ultimate salvation of all mankind, partly because it had never conceived them; it kept aloof from all rationalising of sacrificial substitution in the Atonement, or reconciliation of the natural with the supernatural in daily life. It was uninterested in ecclesiastical history, took no account of the beginnings of historical criticism, no part in Church organisation.

Evangelical

It may be objected to the evangelical school that its sense of brotherhood to other Churches was founded on a common dislike to Rome, a legacy from the Reformation. To base brotherhood on a position not negative but of agreement was the ancient Catholic way, which came in again with High Church teaching, and also re-introduced the ancient Catholic intolerance. To accept Lutherans and Calvinists as fellowworkmen in Christ seemed to the Oxford school almost as profane as it would have been for Athanasius to call Arius brother. The theology of the Evangelicals was suspected of unsoundness; they were accused of 'enthusiasm because they revered Wesley, Whitefield, and Grimshaw; of revolutionary opinions because they threatened the vested interests of planters and nabobs in their zeal for abolition of the slave trade and for Indian Missions; and of Jacobin opinions because they favoured popular education. These were the objections

=/

of laymen: the clergy, both dignitaries and rank and file, disliked their toleration of dissent and their willingness to work with nonconformists of the Three Denominations. Bishop Jebb, a moderate and benevolent man, denounced the 'premature and spurious unity of a theologico-political compact' with these as 'an unity of pretence rather than of reality.' The best Dissenters, he thought, like the best Churchmen, were those who kept most strongly to their own doctrines. Thus the same men were accused of fanaticism and indifferentism. They condemned dissent, and held fast to the Church of England, but they admired Rowland Hill and Robert Hall, and looked upon the religious revival of the eighteenth century as the work of God.

Another religious revival was in preparation. Part of its motive power was to be found in the revival of the eighteenth | century, which had kindled a flame on High Church altars, and had put lukewarmness and worldliness to shame. Yet those

clergy.

who felt the new warmth did not acknowledge the boon; and
indeed no class of men, lay or clerical, welcomes the sting which
disturbs their quiet. The evangelical body disturbed comfort-
able conventions. It condemned things which those who con-
doned them were beginning to wish altered; and when people
are contemplating reforms, it is irritating to see them taken
up by zealots who do not appreciate the rights of property
and convention. There was among the High Church
section of the Established Church, besides the High Church
merely conservative and obstructive element, much
piety and sincere observance of the old-fashioned order. Many
of the opponents of the evangelical doctrines and methods were
good Christians nursed on traditional and sacramentarian
doctrine, believers in good works after the teaching of St.
James, with high views of Church authority, better read in
Church history and theology than their opponents, and inclined
to despise their unlettered vehemence. The progress in
religious activity which marks the nineteenth century would
not have taken place without the evangelical revival of the
eighteenth century. But having been begun on evangelical
lines, it was better continued, at least for a time, by a body
of men of a higher intellectual type, who grounded the thought
of their school upon philosophy and history, as well as upon

religious emotion, and whose action was corporate as well as individual, and speculative as well as practical.

Among the forces which constituted the later evangelical movement one of the most powerful was that notable brother

hood of Christian neighbours which is commonly Clapham known as the 'Clapham Sect,' a name given by sect. Sydney Smith and perpetuated by the title of a

well-known essay by Sir James Stephen the elder, and of which some account has been given in a former volume of this series.

Wilberforce and Stephen in Parliament and society, the Thorntons in the City, Lord Teignmouth and Grant in official life, took away the reproach of obscurity from the party; the friendship of Hannah More and Bishop Porteus adorned it. This knot of friends and philanthropists was bound together by the holy cause of Abolition, and interest in the temporal welfare of the miserable negro race quickened the zeal for its conversion to Christianity. We must admire their independence and courage, their zealous philanthropy, and their sincere and carefully cultivated type of religion; we cannot ignore their shortcomings in theology and Church history, their upholding personal religion to the neglect of united Church action and authority, which subjected them too much to leaders whom they idolised and flattered.

It is an idle question whether the bond which held together this circle of friends was primarily a bond of faith or of works, for the two were inseparable; the faith animated the works, the works were evidence of the faith. They were not men of conspicuous ability, with the exception of Wilberforce, nor scholars, nor even theologians: they were Christian men and women, working out the Christian life according to a common conception, and endeared to each other by common objects, associations, and occupations, and by the tie of friendship and neighbourhood. To Clapham, as to a Protestant Mecca, the evangelical world looked, partly, no doubt, because the Clapham coterie was wealthy and influential, but more because of the beauty of holiness which dwelt there. The Clapham community held aloof from political parties, which nevertheless they could move to their purposes, and from court and society. These saints converted the world to their views, not by poverty, but by the right use of riches. They lived in hand