THE REV. JOHN RUSSELL. 335 



time ; for never was the sectarian spirit more 

 rampant in the Church of England than it now 

 is within her pale ; and, unless a larger element 

 of secular ways and principles be infused into 

 the clerical mind, woe awaits her at no very 

 distant date. 



The very union of Church and State 

 depends mainly on men who, like Russell, are 

 holding fast to English habits of thought and 

 the text of the Reformation, guarding against 

 divergence towards either extreme — that of the 

 " self-willed " formalist on one side, and that of the 

 shallow fanatic on the other. The narrow and. ex- 

 clusive grooves in which the latter move, Russell 

 would have denounced as not only opposed to 

 St. Paul's view" of being "all things to all men," 

 and hence anti-Catholic, but absolutely incon- 

 sistent with the simple and comprehensive 

 religion of the New Testament. 



"Our grand old Church," as a gentleman 

 writing to Russell remarks, " like other old 

 houses, will last a good many years yet, if it 

 be left in the hands of its original architects ; 

 but it will not bear an incursion of amateur 

 builders. ... If then," he adds, " it has 

 been the business of your life to maintain and 

 exhibit sound and not ephemeral principles, and 

 you have helped to sustain the reputation and 

 power of the English character by simply culti- 

 vating the gifts (which we in our blindness call 



