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compare with the present. Our leading daily and weekly 
journals, our most influential monthly and quarterly vehicles 
of opinion and discussion, are distinguished by a standard of 
moral principle, by a sense of moral responsibility, by a gene- 
rosity in the construction of conduct, by a tenderness in 
dealing with motives, by a reverence of tone in regard to 
religious subjects, which can only be properly described as 
Christian, and the beauty of which can only be appreciated 
by reverting to the journalism of former generations, or by 
reference to that of other countries even at the present time. 
In these results we see the Christian progress, the Christian 
culture and influence of England compendiously represented. 
There are, of course, journals more or less disreputable; 
but then they are disreputable, they have comparatively little 
influence, they in no way lead the country. In a sense, there- 
fore, they may be referred to as exceptions which prove the 
point on which I am insisting. There may also in one or two 
journals of considerable pretensions, and of influence among 
an important though limited class, be a strong taint of unbe- 
lief; but as yet this is mostly disguised, and the journals 
are not very widely read. 
Some, indeed, there probably are who, passing over more 
than two centuries at a bound, would take us back to the 
earlier part of the Carolan age, whilst others would take us 
to the Commonwealth, for a time when Christianity, as they 
believe, held a far superior position in this country to that 
which it holds to-day. Doubtless, there may at first appear 
to be some plausibility in such a view, but it certainly 
will not bear investigation. If a high form of Christianity 
had really taken a strong hold of England as a whole in 
the first half of the seventeenth century, England could never 
have become what we know it to have been for thirty years 
before the close of that century. Doubtless, there were great 
divines, and noble Christians, heroic men and heroic women, 
brave, pure, and gentle, both among Anglicans and Puritans, 
among Cavaliers and Commonwealthmen. The names of 
Jeremy Taylor and John Howe, of Bishop Hall and Richard 
Baxter, of Lucy Hutchinson and Mrs. Evelyn, of Eliot and 
Fairfax and Falkland, are sufficient to bring this truth home 
to our recollection and appreciation. But what of the ordi- 
nary parish priest, the ordinary squire, the ordinary farmer 
or yeoman, the ordinary peasant of those times ? It is certain 
and most evident that the elaborate sermons which remain to 
us from that age, ponderous with abstruse theology and 
lavishly brocaded with learned allusions and Greek and Latin 
quotations, could never have been prepared with the thought 
