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religion, was certain to stimulate a Catholic revival. Ritualism and medievalism were the natural offspring of the Romantic movement. Its influence on psychology, through the sympathetic study of "religious experience," was perhaps even more important, though less in evidence, and slower to take effect. The scientific observation of human nature, its beliefs and joys and sufferings, in its inner spiritual life, was quite alien to the mind of the eighteenth century, and became possible only under the influence of the Romantic movement. Connected with this attention to the inner life was the revival of interest in mysticism, which during the last thirty years has been studied far more thoroughly than ever before. It is now generally recognised that the centre of gravity in religion has changed from authority to experience, and that in consequence the testimonies of the saints have acquired a new evidential importance. The old arguments from miracle and prophecy are now seldom adduced, since it is felt that not only are the proofs lacking in cogency, but that it is impossible to build a spiritual faith on such a basis, even if the evidence were conclusive.

The success of the Tractarians was further facilitated by the break-up of the Evangelical party. The Evangelicals had never been very strong intellectually, and they had embarked all their fortunes on a dogma which has no essential connection with Protestantism, and which could not survive any attempt to criticise the Bible"like any other book "-the doctrine of the verbal inspiration and consequent inerrancy of Holy Scripture. Another heavy blow was struck at the theology of this school by the discoveries of Darwin, which were almost as destructive to the scheme of redemption as taught by the old Evangelicals-resting on the drama of a ruined perfection and a lost Paradise-as the Copernican astronomy is to belief in a geographical heaven and hell. The party was also handicapped by its tendency to Millenarianism-a doctrine which in an acutely secularised form has passed to the Socialists, with their dreams of a good time which is coming soon, though nobody is able to say how; but which in its original shape of a belief in the approaching end of the world, is quite dead, except among persons of very low intellectual cultivation. Again, the party had appealed very much to fear, and had not shrunk from horrible pictures of the torments of hell. This appeal also lost its force in the nineteenth century.

In a word, the whole spirit of the age, the advance of science and of criticism, the Romantic movement and the new emphasis on the idea of the Church and of corporate unity, combined to shatter the old Evangelical party. Its surviving supporters are either old people, or those who have isolated themselves from all the currents of modern thought.

The collapse of their rivals gave the Anglo-Catholics an easy victory. Very many sons and daughters of prominent Evangelicals joined the High Church camp; some ended by seceding to Rome. I hope to show before the end of this article that a new Evangelical school is arising, which has sacrificed nothing of what is really essential to Protestantism, while it has gained enormously in strength by shedding a mass of extraneous and untenable theories and beliefs. The eclipse of the party which has so much to do with the success of Anglo-Catholic propaganda is now, I believe, nearly at an end.

Canon Storr says, truly no doubt, that the influence of Tractarianism has been felt less in the sphere of thought than in that of practical Church life. Its theological, as opposed to its ecclesiastical, significance has, he thinks, been greatly overestimated. An able article, which appeared in one of the leading quarterlies three months ago, went further, and spoke of the Anglo-Catholics as intellectually a feeble folk. This statement, which is somewhat uncourteous, does not accord with the facts. If we except the professors of divinity and other professional scholars, who are seldom attracted by Anglo-Catholicism, and consider only those clergymen who are engaged in administrative or pastoral work, we shall have to admit that this party has at present more than its share of the brains of the clerical profession. It would be easy to draw up a list of a dozen names of living Anglo-Catholics which could not be mentioned except with respect -men of the highest academical distinction and unquestionable ability. But the movement has from the first been intensely insular. The very idea of a schismatical Catholicism, which divides all other Christians into those who unchurch it and those whom it unchurches, is unintelligible to continental Christians, whether Catholic or Protestant; and the apologetic theology of the school, so much esteemed at home, is very little read abroad.

The generation after the Napoleonic War, when the Oxford Movement began, was perhaps the period when England was

most isolated from the main current of European ideas. It was a time of great men, but our learning and scholarship lagged far behind those of Germany. This insularity is emphasised both by Canon Storr and by Mr. Fawkes. "The distinctive note of the unreformed Oxford in which the movement arose," says the latter, was provincialism; the University stood outside the current of European mind. Newman's genius, though great, was spasmodic and incidental; the theology to which it lent a glamour was below the level even of the average theology of the age." Newman was fond of denouncing " Reason "as officious, captious, forward, usurping, or rebellious. His pulpit commentary on the massacres of the Canaanites is memorable. "Doubtless as they slew those (the little children of the people of the land) who suffered for the sins of their fathers, their thoughts turned first to the fall of Adam, and next to the unseen state where all inequalities are righted." "Kill them all--God will know his own," as was said at the massacre of St. Bartholomew. But what must have been the intellectual and moral state of the University, when this teaching was regarded as the utterance of an almost inspired prophet and saint? It is only fair to say that Newman, as a Roman Catholic, was far saner and less fanatical.

There was, even then, a Liberal or "Noetic " movement at Oxford, but Newman and his friends declared war against it, though they were even more alarmed by the political Liberalism which threatened to abolish some of the more flagrant abuses in the Church of England. The proposal to suppress certain Irish bishoprics in 1833 was the occasion of Keble's sermon on "National Apostasy," which is regarded as the beginning of Tractarianism. The alliance between Romanticism, which stands for individual freedom, and Tractarianism, which stood for sacrosanct authority, was precarious. Nor were the Oxford leaders enamoured of the Middle Ages, like most of the Romantics. They looked back to the " undivided Church," and to the Anglican divines (not the Cambridge School) of the seventeenth century. Their whole ideal was reactionary, while the Romantics, in spite of their idealisation of Gothic architecture and feudal chivalry, looked forward. Both were ignorant and uncritical, but their very ignorance helped them to construct golden ages in the past for the imitation of the present. A successful revival is always an attempt to restore something that never existed. The Tractarians

were driven to formulate a theory of the Church, or rather of the ministry, which should justify the exclusive claim of Anglicanism to be the Church of Christ in these islands, while rebutting the arguments of Rome. The doctrine of Apostolical Succession, which is not held in this form by any other Church in Christendom, gave them the weapon which they wanted, vindicating against Rome their title to be Catholic priests, while denying the validity of all other Protestant Orders. The essence of Tractarianism lies in this peculiar doctrine.

The growth of ritualism came later, and was not encouraged by the Oxford leaders, who were very conservative in these matters. When Tractarianism went out into the streets and lanes of the city, the necessity of appeals to the eye became obvious, and the inner logic of Catholicism gradually broke down all the barriers which the Tractarians had honestly meant to keep between High Anglicanism and Popery. The Roman doctrine of Transubstantiation could not be preached in an English church, but it could be implied, and imparted more effectually, by symbolism borrowed from the Latin rite. The extreme Romanising faction, dragging the main body of High Churchmen reluctantly after it, has now established a purely Latin sect within the Church of England. This sect is especially strong in the districts served by the London Brighton and South Coast Railway; but it exists sporadically in most other parts of England.

The Anglo-Catholic party has thus wandered far since the days of Keble and Pusey. Perhaps a not less remarkable change than that which has been just mentioned is the complete political volte face which it has made since the Oxford divines tried to put new life into the old "Church and King" school of High Churchmen. In those days it was the Broad Churchmen, under Maurice and Kingsley, who interested themselves in social reforms. The change came with the advent of the " Lux Mundi " school, and at present a compound of sacerdotalism and socialism is characteristic of Anglo-Catholics. Several causes have contributed to this new development. Many ritualists have been honourably distinguished by their devoted work among the poor, and it is natural that they should tend to look at social questions from the point of view of the people with whom they work. They find that in these quarters the Church is suspected of being an ally of "capitalism," and that their influence is lessened in

consequence. Having for the most part no knowledge of political economy, and a considerable command of rhetoric, they indulge in vague declamations against the existing social order, which only serve to spread discontent and darken counsel, but which are none the less sincere. There have been two or three notorious instances of ambitious and bitter fanatics who have deliberately fanned the flame of class hatred; but this cannot be laid to the charge of the majority.

There are, however, other reasons which have detached the party from its former political conservatism. The change in the social position of the clergy since the palmy days of Anthony Trollope has been enormous. The younger clergy are now mostly drawn from the lower middle class, and are desperately poor. Their social status, like that of the national schoolmaster and mistress, is not well defined; they have to bear snubs which they resent, and the prospects of their children, if they have any, are black indeed. In fact, the clergy are becoming an educated proletariat—always a dangerous class. This, of course, does not apply to the well-born and well endowed leaders; but in their case it is possible to trace an aristocratic disdain and dislike of the bourgeoisie, whose virtues and shortcomings are alike displeasing to both the upper and the lower classes. The bourgeois is despised by the aristocrat and by the working man for his thrift and industry; and besides these vices he is apt to be a dissenter, or at least a strong Protestant. So it has come about that the new type of ecclesiastic has no sympathy with Toryism or Liberalism, but woos the favour of the Labour party.

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This is hardly a legitimate development of the Catholic movement. Catholicism has always been an anti-revolutionary force. The Gospel views economic disputes with lofty detachment. The only answer Christ deigned to give to the appeal, Speak to my brother that he divide the inheritance with me was" Take heed and beware of all covetousness, for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things that he possesseth." The avaricious man is stigmatised as " Thou fool," not as " Thou thief." The Church looked to charity, not to legislation, to redress social wrongs; legislation might be necessary, but it was not the Church's business. Private property was said to be in accordance with the Law of Nature, not, perhaps, the original Law of Nature, but the Law of Nature as adapted to man's fallen

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