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but as yet the conditions of such an adjustment have baffled the sagacity of statesmen.

the end of

While these various contentions were raging between the church and other religious bodies, important State of the changes were in progress in the church and in the church to religious condition of the people. The church last century. was growing in spiritual influence and temporal resources. Dissent was making advances still more remarkable.

For many years after the accession of George III. the church continued her even course, with little change of condition or circumstances.1 She was enjoying a tranquil, and apparently prosperous, existence. Favored by the state and society; threatened by no visible dangers; dominant over Catholics and dissenters; and fearing no assaults upon her power or privileges, she was contented with the dignified security of a national establishment. The more learned churchmen devoted themselves to classical erudition and scholastic theology: the parochial clergy to an easy but decorous performance of their accustomed duties. The discipline of the church was facile and indulgent. Pluralities and nonresidence were freely permitted, the ease of the clergy being more regarded than the spiritual welfare of the people. The parson farmed, hunted, shot to squire's par tridges, drank his port-wine, joined in the friendly rubber, and frankly entered into all the enjoyments of a country-life He was a kind and hearty man; and if he had the means, his charity was open-handed. Ready at the call of those who sought religious consolation, he was not earnest ir. searching out the spiritual needs of his fluck. Zeal was not expected of him: society was not yet prepared to exact it. While ease and inaction characterized the church, a great change was coming over the religious and social Changes in condition of the people. The religious movement, the condition commenced by Wesley and Whitefield, 2 was spreading widely among the middle and humbler classes An age of spiritual lethargy was passing away; and a period 2 Supra, p. 311.

1 Supra, 310.

of the people.

Sudden growth of population.

of religious emotion, zeal, and activity commencing. At the same time, the population of the country was attaining an extraordinary and unprecedented development. The church was ill prepared to meet these new conditions of society. Her clergy were slow to perceive them; and when pressed by the exigencies of the time, they could not suddenly assume the character of missionaries. It was a new calling, for which their training and habits unfitted them; and they had to cope with unexampled difficulties. A new society was growing up around them, with startling suddenness. A country-village often rose, as if by magic, into a populous town: a town was swollen into a huge city. Artisans from the loom, the forge, and the mine were peopling the lone valley and the moor. How was the church at once to embrace a populous and strange community in her ministrations? The parish church would not hold them, if they were willing to come: the parochial clergy were unequal, in number and in means, to visit them in their own homes. Spoliation and neglect had doomed a large proportion of the clergy to poverty; and neither the state nor society had yet come to their aid. If there were shortcomings on their part, they were shared by the state and the laity. There was no organization to meet the pressure of local wants, while population was outgrowing the ordinary agencies of the church. The field which was becoming too wide for her, was entered upon by dissent; and hitherto it has proved too wide for both.1

In dealing with rude and industrial populations, the clergy labored under many disadvantages compared with

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other sects, particularly the Methodists, by whom they were environed. However earnest in

1 It is computed that on the census Sunday, 1851, 5,288,294 persons able to attend religious worship once at least, were wholly absent. And it has been reckoned that in Southwark 68 per cent. of the population attend no place of worship whatever; in Sheffield, 62; in Oldham, 61. In thirtyfour great towns, embracing a population of 3,993,467, no less than 2,197,388, or 524 per cent, are said to attend no places of worship. - Dr. Hume's Ev. before Lords Co. on Church Rates, 1859, Q. 1290–1800.

their calling, they were too much above workingmen in rank and education, to gain their easy confidence. They were gentlemen, generally allied to county families, trained at the universities, and mingling in refined society. They read the services of the church with grave propriety, and preached scholarlike discourses without emphasis or passion. Their well-bred calmness and good taste ministered little to religious excitement. But hard by the village-church, a Methodist carpenter or blacksmith would address his humble flock with passionate devotion. He was one of themselves, spoke their rough dialect, used their wonted phrases; and having been himself converted to Methodism, described his own experience and consolations. Who can wonder that numbers forsook the decorous monotony of the church-service for the fervid prayers and moving exhortations of the Methodist ? Among the more enlightened population of towns, the clergy had formidable rivals in a higher class of nonconformist ministers, who attracted congregations, not only by doctrines congenial to their faith and sentiments, but by a more impassioned eloquence, greater warmth and earnestness, a plainer language, and closer relations with their flocks. Again, in the visitation of the sick, dissent had greater resources than the church. Its ministers were more familiar with their habits and religious feelings; were admitted with greater freedom to their homes; and were assisted by an active lay agency, which the church was slow to imitate.

Social causes further contributed to the progress of dissent. Many were not unwilling to escape from the pres- Social causes ence of their superiors in station. Farmers and of dissent. shopkeepers were greater men in the meeting-house, than under the shadow of the pulpit and the squire's pew. Workingmen were glad to be free, for one day in the week, from the eye of the master. It was a comfort to be conscious of independence, and to enjoy their devotions, like their - among themselves, without restraint or embarrassEven their homely dress tempted them from the

sports, ment.

church; as rags shut out a lower grade from public worship altogether.

Dissent in

Wales.

In Wales, there was yet another inducement to dissent. Like the Irish at the Reformation, the people were ignorant of the language in which the services of the church were too often performed. In many parishes, the English liturgy was read and English sermons preached to Welshmen. Even religious consolations were ministered with difficulty, in the only language familiar to the people. Addressed by nonconformist teachers in their own tongue, numbers were soon won over. Doctrines and ceremonies were as nothing compared with an intelligible devotion. They followed Welshmen, rather than dissenters: but found themselves out of communion with the church.

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From these combined causes, — religious and social, — dissent marched onwards. The church lost numbers from her fold; and failed to embrace multitudes among the growing population, beyond her minisBut she was never forsaken by the rank, wealth, intellect, and influence of the country; and the poor remained her uncontested heritage. Nobles, and proprietors of the soil, were her zealous disciples and champions; the professions, the first merchants and employers of labor, continued faithful. English society held fast to her. Aspirants to respectability frequented her services. The less opulent of the middle classes, and the industrial population, thronged the meeting-house; men who grew rich and prosperous forsook it for the church.

It was not until early in the present century, that the rulers Regeneration and clergy of the church were awakened to a sense of the charch of their responsibilities, under these new conditions of society and religious feeling. Startled by the outburst of infidelity in France, and disquieted by the encroachments of dissent, they at length discovered that the church had a new mission before her. More zeal was needed in her ministers: better discipline and organization in her government:

new resources in her establishment. The means she had must be developed; and the coöperation of the state and laity must be invoked, to combat the difficulties by which she was surrounded. The church of the sixteenth century must be adapted to the population and needs of the nineteenth.

The first efforts made for the regeneration of the church were not very vigorous, but they were in the right direction. In 1803, measures were passed to restrain clerical farming, to enforce the residence of incumbents, and to encourage the building of churches.1

1818.

Fifteen years later, a comprehensive scheme was devised for the building and endowment of churches in Church populous places. The disproportion between the Building Act, means of the church and the growing population was becoming more and more evident; and in 1818 provision was made by Parliament for a systematic extension of church accommodation. Relying mainly upon local liberality, Parliament added contributions from the public revenue, in aid of the building and endowment of additional churches. Further encouragement was also given by the remission of duties upon building materials.*

Church ex

The work of church extension was undertaken with exemplary zeal. The piety of our ancestors, who had raised churches in every village throughout tension, the land, was emulated by the laity, in the present century, who provided for the spiritual needs of their own time. New churches arose everywhere among a growing

England.

1 43 Geo. III. c. 84, 108; and see Stephen's Ecclesiastical Statutes, 892, 985.

2 Lord Sidmouth's Life, iii. 138; Returns laid before the House of Lords, 1811.

8 58 Geo. III. c. 45; 3 Geo. IV. c. 72, &c. One million was voted in 1813, and 500,000 in 1824. Exchequer bill loans to about the same amount were also made. - Porter's Progress, 619.

4 In 1837 these remissions had amounted to 170,5612.; and from 1837 to 1845, to 165,778. — Parl. Papers, 1838, No. 325; 1845, No. 322.

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