1855-1856.] ENGLISH PRESBYTERIANS. 



149 



the frying-pan into the fire ; " while she had to allow that, from 

 the length of his morning sermon, he was a " spoil-pudding." 

 It was not surprising, however, that his preaching was not 

 always acceptable to his usual congregation. His feeling of 

 weariness sometimes could not be concealed in the pulpit. 

 There were many depressing influences in that mouldering old 

 chapel; and when he roused all his powers, and gave way to his 

 feelings, his hearers could not be satisfied both with them- 

 selves and with him. 



In the winter of 1855-56 he wrote a series of eighteen 

 lectures on the work and teachings of Christ, and their relation 

 to human nature ; ending with one on the Presbyterian Societies. 

 He observed that the name Presbyterian, as applied to their body, 

 had come to be of no more significance than a man's family 

 name, and was therefore preferable to any name which might 

 bind their congregations to any form of doctrine. " This 

 society was at first, I presume, Trinitarian and Calvinistic like 

 the rest, then gradually became Arian, then Unitarian, and 

 then proceeded to that extreme form of materialistic rationalism 

 which was represented in the hymn-book which their minister 

 compiled for their own use, in which the authors congratulated 

 themselves that they had at last framed a collection of hymns 

 in which all Christians could agree ; because the principal part 

 of what most persons consider Christian was scrupulously left out 

 of it, to the exclusion of angels and even (except in one appa- 

 rently overlooked passage) the very word ' soul ' itself. It is 

 manifest that the same principle of freedom which led to all 

 these changes will lead to many more. . . . With regard to the 

 Unitarians, it is natural to conclude that as their form of faith 

 was created by antagonism, and was doubtless a necessary re- 

 action against the then prevalent dogmatism ; and as reactions 

 always tend to counter-reactions, and so truth goes on (not in a 

 direct line, but in a series of oscillations like the tacking of a 

 ship, struggling against adverse winds in the great ocean of life) ; 

 those among them who do not go on to an entirely human 

 and self-working religion will revert to those great spiritual 



