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O gentle Church of England! let nothing persuade you that it is better to preach frightful and foolish ideas of God from your pulpits, than loving-kindness to all men, and peace above all things.
Yet within a few years afterwards travellers reported that same free use of snuff in Romish worship which still astonishes spectators. To see a priest, during the momentous ceremonial of High Mass, enliven the occasion by a voluptuous pinch, is a sight even more astonishing, though perhaps less disagreeable, than the well-used spittoon which decorates so many Protestant pulpits.
Then, though our Scottish king be, God bless him, a true Protestant, yet he is but a boy; and here is his mother that was our queen I trust there is no harm to say, God bless her too and she is a Catholic; and many begin to think she has had but hard measure, such as the Hamiltons in the west, and some of our Border clans here, and the Gordons in the north, who are all wishing to see a new world; and if such a new world should chance to come up, it is like that the Queen will take back her own crown, and that the mass and the cross will come up, and then down go pulpits, Geneva-gowns, and black silk skull-caps."
Nowhere in the churches was their opposition to the Abolition movement more persistent and illiberal than in the theological seminaries, whence the pulpits drew their supplies of preachers. Like master, like servant, these institutions were indentured to the public, and reflected as in a mirror the body and pressure of its life and sentiment.
When they talked in their libraries, they admitted that they had no faith in the old forms of religion; but when they appeared in public they made broad their phylacteries, and enlarged the borders of their garments; and when they preached in their pulpits, they laid heavy burdens on men's shoulders, and grievous to be borne.
In July, 1817, he passed the last examination with the greatest distinction, receiving the "very good," rarely bestowed; and a brilliant career lay before him. Directly after this success three pulpits were offered to him, but he accepted neither, because he longed for rest and quiet occupation.
The correspondence in due time, however, naturally ceased, as it was chiefly controversial, and nothing can be more irksome than for two people who have made up their minds, and whom nothing can change, to be arguing continually, and the friendship between them in some sense ceased as the one remained firm to, and the other wandered farther and farther from, the modified Calvinism of the Wrentham Church and pulpit, where, as in all orthodox pulpits at that time, it was taught that men were villains by necessity, and fools, as it were, by a Divine thrusting on; that for some a Saviour had been crucified, that there might be a way of escape from the wrath of an angry and unforgiving God; whilst for the vast mass—to whom the name of Christ had never been made known, to whom the Bible had never been sent—there was an impending doom, the awful horror of which no tongue could tell, no imagination conceive.
They are the living words upon the lips of men from generation to generation; the real winged words; the matter of the unceasing reiteration of families, schools, pulpits, libraries; the tradition of mankind.
But you will never get such a condition as that unless your pulpits are filled by personalities, instead of puppets who are all cast in one mould, and who profess to be there by divine right." "I am glad to see at least that you are taking an interest in religious matters," her father observed, meaningly. Alison coloured. But she retorted with spirit.
Here the services were, to some extent, independent of books; earnest preaching of the truth was often heard from the pulpits, and some degree of real concern for the spiritual advancement of the people was manifested by the preachers. Under this preaching and these influences, and the singing of Wesley's hymns, the lad was deeply moved.
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