substitute propositions is to preach another gospel. The tendency of the human mind is either to embrace any supernatural or indiscriminate system of faith or to dismiss the subject as totally unworthy of attention. The gospel is the moral image of Christ, which if presented to the ignorant or even to savages in whom the seeds of morality are beginning to be developed, will be received. It is not creeds and propositions, not hard doctrines to be believed, but a life to be lived in imitation of Christ. When dying he said 'God to me is Jesus and remains God but not in the sense of the divines.'1

Cardinal Wiseman ought to be noticed if only as the instrument of Newman's conversion and for the influence he had on the Roman Catholic community in England. As an Ultramontane and an advocate of the Church of Rome we know beforehand what kind of theology to expect. He had no arguments beyond those with which we are familiar. In his discourses on religion in relation to science he was not advanced, but followed the general track of orthodox Protestants. The Mosaic account of the dispersion he found to be confirmed by comparative philology. The native Americans had vivid traditions of man's early history, in which the records of the flood and the dispersion agreed with those of the old world, and these were such as must overcome all hesitation as to their origin. The mystery of Redemption rests on the belief that all have sinned in their common father. If this be not the case the Christian doctrines of sin and redemption fall to the ground. But as far as philology is concerned, the evidence is complete that, in the words of the sacred penman, all were of one lip and one speech.' As to geology, many things taken as facts that seemed to conflict with the record in Genesis are now found not to be facts. There is a pause between the first fiat of creation and the production of light. But more than this the participial form of the verb by which the Spirit of God is represented as brooding over the abyss, naturally expresses a continuous not a passing action. The very order of creation shows that the divine power loved to manifest itself by gradual development. Many of the Fathers interpreted the days as indefinite periods, but this is not absolutely required. Recent discoveries tend to confirm the truth of the sacred record. Geology points to a deluge such as the Scriptures describe. It is added that mythology points to unity of race, and that profane chronology does not go higher than that of the Scriptures.

Harriet Martineau was educated in the Unitarian faith but finally developed into the pure antithesis of a Theist. At an early age she gained prizes offered by the Unitarian Association for Essays to present Unitarianism to the notice of Roman Catholics, Jews and Mahommedans. These were written from the old stand-point of Unitarian orthodoxy, that the Unity of God as opposed to the Trinity is revealed in Scripture, and that Revelation is confirmed by miracle and prophecy.

For some years she was confined to a sick-room when she wrote 'Essays by an Invalid.' These were full of devout Christian sentiments, seeing in all that happened a God who cares and works for man, that good is eternal, evil transient, and that pain is the chastening of a Father in heaven.

After attaining some reputation as a writer on social and moral questions, Harriet Martineau bounded from old Unitarianism to what she called free Christianity, and described the Unitarians as people whose 'natural sense revolted against the essential points of Christian doctrine, while they had not learning enough, biblical, ecclesiastical, historical or philosophical to discover that what they gave up was truly essential, and that the name of Christian was a mere sham when applied to what was retained.'2 The Unitarians described as 'nonsense' the doctrine of the Trinity, or Three in One, but it did seem strange that of the whole Christian world, only these few people saw the 'nonsense.' The Unitarians believe they have a revelation from God, and yet take any liberty with it they like. They had even an 'Improved Bible in which large portions of the received Bible were set aside as spurious. Every Unitarian was at liberty to make the Scriptures mean what suited his own views.2 To make the Epistles of St Paul teach Unitarian theology required the 'ingenuity of a Belsham.'

From free Christianity, Harriet Martineau passed by rapid strides to the final goal. She wrote that in what she had said in her Essays by an Invalid,' she had not dealt truly with her reason but was unconsciously trying to give strength of conviction by vigour of assertion. An appeal to the example of God for principles of justice and mercy was useless. The cruelty and injustice of divine government' were everywhere apparent. It might be that man did not understand the scheme of the universe, but no revelation could set us right on these matters for we have no faculty to understand anything 'beyond human ken.'

1 Autobiography, vol. i., p. 37.

This Agnosticism increased till all faith disappeared. In conjunction with a friend of the name of George Henry Atkinson, she published a book on the 'Laws of Man's Nature and Development.' It consisted of Letters which had passed between the writers in which they each expressed their opinions on such subjects as God and Nature. Atkinson was not only a materialist but a believer in Mesmerism and phrenology, which he regarded as sciences that confirmed the doctrines of materialism, in other words, proved absolutely that mind is merely a product of matter and will vanish with the dissolution of the organic body. Atkinson said that he was not an Atheist. He did not know enough to be able to say there was no God. A Cause of causes is an unfathomable mystery, and to imagine such a Cause to be a person is both 'extravagant and irreverent."

The book was reviewed by James Martineau, who treated it with sarcasm and ridicule. The review is entitled 'Mesmeric Atheism,' and Harriet Martineau was recommended to teach George Henry Atkinson grammar in return for his lessons in science. The doctrine of the book is summed up as teaching that organisation must be before intelligence, and that all things are governed by a blind inscrutable fate, that free will is delusion, and that all distinction between right and wrong disappear. 'With grief,' the reviewer wrote, 'we must say that we remember nothing more melancholy in literary history than that Harriet Martineau should prostrate at the feet of such a master, and should lay down at his bidding her early faith in moral obligation, in the living God, in the immortal sanctities.' 2

The criticism did not convince. Harriet Martineau dying, said, 'I neither wish to live longer here nor to find life elsewhere. It seems to me simply absurd to expect it. There is not only a total absence of evidence of a renewed life for human beings but so clear a way of accounting for the conception that I myself utterly disbelieve in a future life.'

SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER III

THE STATE OF RELIGION

THE Church in the beginning of the century does not seem to have been in a very prosperous condition. This is witnessed by the lamentations of friends and the exultations, it may be, the exaggerations of enemies. The services were ill attended and the fabrics were fast falling to decay.1 One who wrote in defence of the Church said that he remembered a time when heads of families with their children and servants appeared in Church occupying whole pews, now it was common to see only a few members of the family present, it might be mothers, daughters and younger children, but fathers and sons were invariably absent. In St Paul's Cathedral where the clergy were numerous, efforts were made to render the services attractive. There was exquisite music by professional singers, but the seats were rarely half occupied. The population of London was reckoned at nearly a million, but of the working people not one in a thousand attended either church or meeting. A writer in the Evangelical Magazine said that he believed all the magnificent churches in London did not habitually contain a number equal to that which assembled in Methodist and Dissenting meeting houses, and in Wales he understood that the disproportion was immense. The morality of the people corresponded to their neglect of religion. The Archdeacon of Ely, speaking of that diocese described the villagers as remarkably stupid, perverse and ignorant, the mechanics in the towns as debased and ill

1 See British Critic, vol. x, 319, and a pamphlet

Considerations on the

Present State of Religion, 1801.'

2 Zeal without Innovation,' M. B. M. Cat, ascribed to J. Bean.

mannered, and the children of both as brought up in ignorance, rudeness and irreligion. In London the working people spent Sunday in idleness, appearing in the streets in their working clothes and with the haggard look that debauch had left on their features. The higher class were much in the same condition, allowing for the different circumstances. There were fashionable parts where the Sunday did not begin till the morning service was nearly over. The noon was spent in the parks, and the rest of the day in pleasure. The middle class were no better than the others. The Sunday was a day of conviviality, generally spent in the country. The servants who imitated their employers generally return home just in time to open the doors.3 Sir Richard Hill in his place in Parliament proposed a double toll at turnpikes on Sunday with a view to checking Sunday travelling, which equalled if it did not exceed that on other days. Bishop Horsley in a sermon on the Sabbath probably recording his experiences when Rector of Newington said: 'In the country the roads are crowded on Sunday as on any other day with travellers of every sort. The devotion of the villagers is interrupted by the noise of the carriages passing through or stopping at the inns for refreshment. In the metropolis instead of the solemn stillness of the vacant streets, which might suit, as in our fathers' days, with the sanctity of the day, the mingled racket of worldly business or pleasure is going on with little abatement, and in the churches and chapels which adjoin the public streets, the sharp rattle of the whirling phaeton and the graver rumbling of the loaded waggon mixed with the oaths and imprecations of the drivers, distract the congregation and stem the voice of the preacher.'

Church reformers, both those who were friends and those who were enemies did not fail to set forth the deficiencies of the clergy and the anomalies in the ecclesiastical constitution. It is to be hoped that the pictures were often overdrawn. The clergy are spoken of as indolent, as following secular pursuits and as devoted to pleasure, taking more delight in a horse race, a fox chase or a boxing-match than in the services of religion. One clergyman generally served two or three parishes, galloped on Sunday from one to another, and sometimes accomplished the feat of compressing the whole service, sermon and all, into three-quarters of an hour.4

'Charge of Richard Watson, afterwards Bishop of Llandaff. 2 SeeZeal without Innovation. 3 See Life by Sydney, 354. 'See 'Letters to Percival' on the state of the Church, 1812. In the parish of which the writer of this is Vicar there are traditions to the same