THEOPHOBIA: ITS CAUSE 37 



quarter on services in church ; one, sometimes 

 two, hours of Sunday School ; no books but those 

 of a religious character ; no amusements of any 

 kind even for the very young, unless the putting 

 together of a dissected map of Palestine could be 

 called an amusement ; what a method of render- 

 ing Sunday attractive to the young ! 



Is it any wonder that those brought up on such 

 a plan abandoned, with a sigh of relief, all religious 

 exercises when at last they were able to do so ? 

 I notice that Mr. Belfort Bax, in his Reminiscences 

 of a Mid and Late Victorian^ alludes to this matter, 

 saying that, " The most cruel of all the results of 

 mid-Victorian religion was, perhaps, the rigid 

 enforcement of the most drastic Sabbatarianism. 

 The horror of the tedium of Sunday infected 

 more or less the whole of the latter portion of the 

 week." Experto crede ! He says further, deal- 

 ing with the 'fifties, that " the intellectual possi- 

 bilities of the English people were then stunted 

 and cramped by the influence of the dogmatic 

 Calvinistic theology which was the basis of its 

 traditional sentiment ; " it is exactly the point 

 which I am trying to make. 



We may now examine two instances of the 

 kind of teaching with which I am dealing and 

 its results. The first is that of the poet Cowper, 

 and anyone who takes the trouble to read his 

 life as written by Southey will find the whole 

 piteous tale fully drawn out. Southey hated the 

 Catholic Church, of which, by the way, he 

 knew absolutely nothing, but he had sufficient 

 sense to reject the teachings of Calvinism, 



