in which the first serious attacks were made on Christianity, so it was also the time in which were produced the first great modern defences of religion, natural and supernatural. Men of inferior philosophical breadth, but of eminent literary power, such as Addison, were also employing their gifts and accomplishments and contributing to what they reckoned the same good end, by writing apologies in behalf of religion, and laboring to make it appear amiable, reasonable, and refined.

These same causes led preachers of the new school to assume a sort of apologetic air in their discourses, to cultivate a refined language, moulded on the French, and not the old English model, to avoid all extravagance of statement and appeal, to decline doctrinal controversy, and to dwell much on truths, such as the immortality of the soul, common to Christianity and to natural religion, and to enlarge on the loveliness of the Bible morality. The manner and spirit were highly pleasing to many in the upper and refined classes; were acceptable to those who disliked earnest religion, as they had nothing of "the offence of the cross;" and were commended by some who valued religion, as it seemed to present piety in so attractive a light to their young men, about whom they were so anxious in those times, and of whom they hoped that they would thus be led to imbibe its elements, and thereby acquire a taste for its higher truths. But all this was powerless on the great body of the people, who were perfectly prepared to believe the preacher when he told them that they were sinners, and that God had provided a Saviour, but felt little interest in refined apologies in behalf of God and Christ and duty; and they gradually slipped away from a religion and a religious worship which had nothing to interest, because they had nothing to move them. All this was offensive in the extreme to those who had been taught to value a deeper doctrine and a warmer piety. They complained that when they needed food they were presented with flowers; and, discontented with the present state of things, they were praying for a better era.

To complete the picture of the times, it should be added. that there was little vital piety among the clergy to counteract the tendency to religious indifference. The appointments to the livings in England and Ireland lay in the hands of the government and the upper classes, who preferred men of refine

ment and prudence, inclined to political moderation or subserviency, to men of spiritual warmth and religious independence. The Nonconformists themselves felt the somnolent influence creeping over them, after the excitement of the battle in which they had been engaged was over. Their pastors were restrained in their ministrations, and consequently in their activities, by laws which were a plain violation of the principles of toleration, but which, as they did not issue in any overt act of bitter persecution, were not resented with keenness by the higher class of Dissenters, who, to tell the truth, after what they had come through in the previous age, were not much inclined to provoke anew the enmity from which they had suffered, but were rather disposed, provided only their individual convictions were not interfered with, to take advantage of what liberty they had, to proclaim peace with others, and to embrace the opportunities thrown open to them in the growing cities and manufactories, of promoting the temporal interests of themselves and their families. In these circumstances, the younger ministers were often allured (as Butler was) to go over to the Established Church; and those who remained were infected with the spirit which prevailed around them, and sought to appear as elegant and as liberal as the clergy of the church, who were beginning to steal from them the more genteel portion of the younger members of their flocks. The design of those who favored this movement was no doubt to make religion attractive and respected. The result did not realize the expectation. The upper classes were certainly not scandalized by a religion which was so inoffensive, but they never thought of heartily embracing what they knew had no earnestness; and, paying only a distant and respectful obeisance to religion in the general, they gave themselves up to the fashionable vices, or, at best, practised only the fashionable moralities of their times. The common people, little cared for by the clergy, and caring nothing for the refined emptiness presented to them instead of a living religion, went through their daily toils with diligence, but in most districts, both of town and country, viewed religion with indifference, and relieved their manual labor with low indulgences. England is rapidly grow ing in wealth and civilization, and even in industry, mainly from the intellectual stimulus imparted by moral causes acting in the

previous ages; but it is fast descending to the most unbelieving condition to which it has ever been reduced. From this state of religious apathy it is roused, so far as the masses of the people are concerned, in the next age, and ere the life had altogether died out, by the trumpet voices of Whitfield and Wesley. It was in a later age, and after the earthquake convulsions of the French Revolution had shaken society to its foundation, that the upper classes were made to know and feel that when the salt has lost its savor," it is good for nothing but to be cast out and trodden under foot of men, and that a dead religion is of no use either to rich or poor, either for political ends or for personal comfort.

An analogous, but by no means identical, process begins and goes on, and is consummated in Scotland about half an age or an age later in point of time. All throughout the seventeenth century, Scotland, like England, had been ploughed by religious contests. But the penetrating observer notices a difference between the shape taken by the struggle in the two countries. In England, the war had been a purely internal one between opposing principles, the prelatic and puritan ; whereas, in Scotland, the battle had been mainly against an external foe, that is, an English power, which sought to impose a prelatic church on the people contrary to their wishes. Again, in England the contest had been against an ecclesiastical power, which sought to crush civil liberty; whereas, in Scotland, the power of the Church of Scotland had been exerted in behalf of the people, and against a foreign domination. This difference in the struggle was followed by a difference in the state of feeling resulting when the contest was terminated by the accession of William and Mary.

The great body of the people, at least in the Lowlands, acquiesced in the Revolution Settlement, and clung round the Government and the Presbyterian Church as by law established. But there soon arose antagonisms, which, though they did not break out into open wars, as in the previous century, did yet range the country into sections and parties with widely differing sympathies and aims. In fact, Scotland was quite as much divided in opinion and sentiment in the eighteenth, as it ever was in the seventeenth century. In saying so, I do not refer to the strong prelatic feeling which existed all over the north

east coast of Scotland, or to the attachment to the house of Stuart which prevailed in the Highlands, for these, though they led to the uprisings of 1715 and 1745, were only the backward beatings of the retreating tide, but to other and stronger currents which have been flowing and coming into more or less violent collision with one another from that day till ours.

At the close of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth century, the Church of Scotland was composed of a somewhat heterogeneous mixture of covenanting ministers, who had lived in the times of persecution; of prelatic clergy whose convictions in favor of Episcopacy were not sufficiently deep to induce them to abandon their livings, and to suffer the annoyances and persecutions to which the more sincere nonjurors were exposed; and of a race of young men zealous for the Presbyterian establishment, but "only half educated and superficially accomplished." The conforming "curates" were commonly indifferent to religion of every kind, and it was hoped that they would soon die out, and that the heritors. and elders, with whom the election of pastors lay, would fill the churches with a learned and zealous ministry. But, in 1711, the Jacobite government of Queen Anne took the power of election from the parish authorities, and vested it in the ancient patrons, being the Crown for above five hundred and fifty livings, and noblemen, gentlemen of landed property, and town-councils, for the remaining four hundred. The effect of this new law became visible in the course of years, in the appointment of persons to the churches who, for good reasons or bad, were acceptable to the government of the day, or were able to secure the favor of the private patrons.

Forced upon the people in the first instance, there was a public feeling ready to gather round this law of patronage. From bad motives and from good-like those which we have traced in England there was a desire among the upper, and a portion of the middle and educated, classes to have a clergy suited to the new age which had come in. As the result, there was formed a type of ministers which has continued till nearly our time in Scotland, called "new light" by the people, and designating themselves "moderates," as claiming the virtue of being moderate in all things, though, as Witherspoon charges. 1 See "Considerations on Patronage, by Francis Hutcheson," 1735.

them, they became very immoderate for moderation, when they rose to be the dominant party. Most of them refrained in their preaching from uttering a very decided sound on disputed doctrinal points; some of them were suspected of Arianism or Socinianism, which, however, they kept to themselves out of respect for, or fear of, the Confession of Faith, which they had sworn to adhere to; the more highly educated of them cultivated a refinement and elegance of diction, and dwelt much on the truths common to both natural and revealed religion; and all of them were fond of depicting the high morality of the New Testament, and of recommending the example of Jesus. It is scarcely necessary to remark, that this style of preaching did not gain, as it did not warm, the hearts of the common people, who either became callous to all religion, without any zealous efforts being made to stir them up, or longed and prayed for a better state of things. The enforcement of the law of patronage, and the settlement of ministers against the wishes of the people, led to the separation of the Erskines and the Secession Body in 1733, and of Gillespie and the Relief Body in 1753. In the Established Church there still remained a number of men of evangelical views and popular sympathies, such as Willison and Boston, who hoped that they might stem and ultimately turn the tide which was for the time against them. The boast of the moderate party was, that they were introducing into Scotland a greater liberality of sentiment on religious topics, and a greater refinement of taste. The charge against them is, that they abandoned the peculiar doctrines of the gospel, that they could not draw towards them the affections of the people who, in rural districts, sank into a stupid ignorance of religious truth, and, in the crowded lanes of the rising cities, into utter ungodliness and criminality, except, indeed, in so far as they were drawn out by the rapidly increasing dissenters, or by the evangelical minority within the Established Church.

The collisions of the century took various forms. After the Union with England, dancing assemblies, theatres, and wandering players (with Allan Ramsay to patronize them), dancing on the tight-rope, cock-fighting, gambling, and horse-racing make their appearance, and receive considerable countenance and patronage from various classes, upper and lower; while