60 
influences and operations, and to the work respectively of the 
national Church, as such, and of the various great Dissenting 
bodies. All these may be said, with insignificant exceptions, 
to agree as Christians on the common basis of the Apostles' 
Creed ; all recognize as their common foe that infidelity which 
it is one of the special objects of this Institute to resist and 
refute ; in their combined operations they represent the total 
Christianity of our land as organized for aggression against 
sin and evil, and for defence of the Divine revelation of truth 
and life in Christ Jesus. 
And what a marvellous contrast does the Christianity of 
England as thus regarded present to the condition of this 
country at the period to which I have referred ! What the 
moral and religious state of England was in the early part of 
the last century may be learnt from Mr. Leckie’s “ History of 
the Eighteenth Century" better even than from the reports of 
the Society for the Reformation of Manners, as published 
during the very period. We complain to-day of the wicked 
rudeness of our street boys in certain pai’ts of London, insult- 
ing passengers, and especially women, as they move to and 
fro. But what are the worst excesses of our street scum 
to-day compared to the daring and customary outrages of the 
fashionable Mohocks of London, in the most frequented west- 
end thoroughfares, during the first third of the last century ? 
To have put down with a strong hand those gentlemen 
Mohocks was counted one of the high merits of England's 
greatest Minister of that age. Those were days in which 
famous highwaymen were favourites in fashionable society, 
kept their lodgings publicly in St. James'-street and Jermyn- 
street, were privileged to fight duels with military officers, and 
openly played bowls on the best-frequented greens and in tho 
company of the most highly titled of the nobility. Intem- 
perance — the intemperance of the masses of the people — is 
often spoken of as one of the special curses and disgraces of 
our time ; and curse indeed it is, beyond power of words to 
describe its shame and its horrors. Gin-drinking, in parti- 
cular, is tho peculiar disgrace and ruin of London and of our 
larger cities. Nevertheless, the gin-drinking of to-day is 
positively inconsiderable in proportion when compared with 
the gin-drinking of 1750. Even our lowest classes accord- 
ingly, tho classes which wo sometimes think have defied so 
obstinately and so hopelessly the ameliorating influences of 
our Christianity during tho present century, have notwith- 
standing shared, more or loss, in tho general improvement. 
It cannot be doubted that the language, tho morals, tho 
manners to-day of tho Seven Dials or Ratcliff-kighway aro 
