THEOPHOBIA: ITS CAUSE 31 



To commence with the Georgian period, it is 

 not too much to say that anything like real 

 religion was scarcely ever at a lower ebb in 

 England. This is not to say that there was an 

 absolute dearth of religion. Law wrote his 

 Serious Call during that period, and there are few 

 books of its kind which have had a greater and 

 more lasting effect. There were others of like 

 but lesser character than Law, but, on the whole, 

 no one will deny that the clergy of the Established 

 Church (Catholics were, of course, in the 

 catacombs) and the religion which they repre- 

 sented were almost beneath contempt. Look, 

 for example, at Esmond, the typical novel of its 

 period. Is there a single clergyman in it who is 

 not an object of contempt, with the sole exception 

 of the Jesuit, who, though a good deal of the 

 stage variety, at least gains a measure of the 

 reader's sympathy and respect ? Thackeray was 

 not himself a Georgian, it may be urged. That 

 of course is true, but no one that knows Thackeray 

 and knows also Georgian literature will deny that 

 he was saturated with it and understood the period 

 with which his book dealt better perhaps than 

 those who lived in it themselves. But examine 

 the novelists of the period ; what about Fielding ? 

 Parson Adams is respectable and lovable, but 

 the general average of parson and religion is 

 certainly about as low as it can be. Fielding was 

 not a religious man. Possibly, but what then of 

 Richardson ? We do not find religion at a very 

 high level there ; can anything well be more 

 degraded than the figure cut by Mr. Williams in 



