medium of praise. The few hymns which in some incomprehensible manner have been appended to the metrical versions of the Psalms might be used; and many can recollect the increased interest which even then was felt when the recurrence of Easter or Christmas gave the signal for turning to the special hymns assigned to these festivals. Yet, those who confessed the pleasure derived from this meagre collection shrunk from the notion of enlarging it. All this is changed. High Church and Low Church are now at one upon this point. The last mentioned school have indeed had a great triumph here, for they have seen their opponents, after declaiming against their use of unauthorized selections of hymns, rivalling them in the number and variety of their own compilations. But indeed the subject is, and has been felt to be, one of too important a character to be made the boast of a party triumph. It is impossible to overrate the importance of the "hymn" as a means of religious teaching. Wesley's hymnal has done more than his preaching to perpetuate his doctrine. It is not only that the hymn-book is a manual of instruction, it is also a bond of union. Here perhaps is to be found the philosophy of the rubric, which permits the chanting the creeds of the church. It was felt that the doctrines of Christianity would obtain a firmer hold upon the mind if they were summed up not so much in Articles to be subscribed, as in hymns to be sung.

We have a few observations to offer upon this subject, which is in our judgment of vast importance. And first we would say a word upon the multiplicity of hymn-books now in use. We do not regard this as an unmixed evil. The objections made to it on the score of the uncertainty as to what hymns will be sung at any given church, and the consequent inconvenience to strangers are, we think, more plausible than real. Nearly every cathedral possesses a different collection of anthems, and the congregation at a cathedral is perhaps more variable than in any other church; but although it is of course as desirable to be able to follow the words of the anthem as of the hymn, we have never heard it proposed to forbid the continual introduction of new anthems for the sake of uniformity. At any rate the inconvenience complained of might be to a great extent removed by the simple precaution of leaving a moderate number of copies in the charge of the sexton or pewopeners, to be lent to any strangers who might be present. We are indeed disposed to argue that a diversity of hymnbooks is not without its advantage. In a large National Church there will always exist a variety of thought and feeling upon many points of Christian faith and practice. It would be an evil day which should see the effort made to compress all into one uniform type. A certain measure of agreement is essential, but it cannot be pushed with safety beyond a fair limit. Uniformity carried to excess is a sign, not of health, but of disease. It can only be so enforced in a body where independence of thought is crushed by authority or prevented by general apathy and indifference. Assuming, then, that in a Church where vitality is vigorous there will always be found sundry modes of expressing feelings and opinions radically the same, we look upon the hymn-book as a safety-valve by which different schools may give utterance to their own peculiar tone of thought, and we do not wish the liberty to be restricted. It is further to be considered, by those who are anxious for one national hymnal, whether there is any practicable mode of obtaining it, which is not sure to end in the dissatisfaction of all parties. Any hymnal set forth by authority must be a compromise; and when every school of theology at present included within the pale of the National Church had eliminated the verses and phrases which might be obnoxious to itself, what would be left but a cold and vapid residuum, expressing heartily the mind of none, and therefore only just tolerated by all."

Recurring to the hymn-books in general use, we find them to consist of what is in fact the title of one collection, "Hymns ancient and modern." With regard to modern hymns, we have heard doubts raised as to the legitimacy of adopting into the Church Service the composi

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tions of Dissenters. We have no sympathy with this scruple, and are very glad to find the more liberal spirit generally prevailing. However much we deplore the evils of a broken unity, we cannot deny the existence of a high degree of piety and learning in many Nonconformists both of the present and a former age. Nor can we see any reason why the Church should not thankfully avail itself of their labours. If the censers of even Korah and his company were to be converted into broad plates for the covering of the altar, it must we think be a very narrow fanaticism which would regard as unworthy of our sanctuaries the contributions made to God's worship by men whose individual piety none can gainsay, whatever may be urged as to the untenable character of their ecclesiastical position.

With regard to ancient hymns, we may pursue one of two courses. We may translate them, or we may take them as a foundation of new compositions. Now, we believe that if the old songs of the Church are ever to become popular, it will be through the latter process. It is rarely that any translation preserves the freedom and vigour of the original, you get verses, not poetry, when you translate. We would suggest also that many of the Latin hymns are, as they stand, disqualified for modern use by the archaism not so much of the language as of the thought. The fact is that they were not written for the use of a general congregation, but for clerks and religious communities. Even at the time when they were composed many of the allusions could have been appreciated only by a few. Translate, therefore, as cleverly as you will, it will still be found requisite to modify and to omit, in order to present the hymn in a shape fit for the use of a modern parochial congregation. But while this is undoubtedly the case, and whilst for this and other reasons we hold that translations of Latin hymns will generally fail to win the sympathies of the people, yet we conceive that a vast majority of those old strains, in which are gathered up the devout aspirations of centuries, afford a noble basis upon which to construct spiritual songs, which, whilst not wholly losing their link with the dead, shall thoroughly carry along with them the hearts of the living. The ancient hymns are especially rich in the expression of the objective verities of Christianity, the very point in which the modern hymn is for the most part defective. On this ground alone we should desire to see in any compilation a good proportion of hymns founded upon the ancient; but we protest against a slavish adherence to the original: such an adherence can, we are persuaded, give us neither a vigorous poem nor a useful hymn.

Poverty of the Clergy.

IDDLE-AGED men will doubtless well remember the agitation stirred in the public mind a quarter of a century since by multiplied representations and misrepresentations of clerical wealth and cupidity. The riches of the Church at that juncture formed the staple of the town's gossip: they were criticised mercilessly by the press they pointed the mob-orator's tale: they furnished political capital for parliamentary demagogues. Relentless enemies printed and circulated a Black Book, professing to give startling revelations of ministerial greed, and with a view, no doubt, to precipitate the confiscation of ecclesiastical property. The nepotism of bishops, and the jobberies of cathedral dignitaries, and the accumulated savings of pluralists, were rated and over-rated, discussed and exaggerated, with the usual proportion of some truth and much falsehood, in every circle and through every channel, until, to the apprehension of many, the days of the National Church Establishment were numbered.

Thirty years have passed away, and the same topic, ecclesiastical finance, still attracts public attention, but from a precisely opposite point of view. It is no longer

the affluence, but the poverty of the clergy which weighs upon the mind, and evokes the sympathies, of the nation. It is one of the recognized social problems of the day, How is the ministry of the Church to be supported ? How are the hungry claims of spiritual destitution to be confronted? How are funds to be provided for the longexpected augmentation of the episcopate? How are the incomes of deaneries to be adjusted, so that they shall not be virtually removed from the reach of men without private fortunes? How are rectors and vicars to bear the strain upon their narrow means of a Dilapidation Bill? or to enlarge the stipends of their curates? How are curates to live? How do they live? How do they pay How do they pay their Christmas bills, or keep a decent coat upon their backs? Such as these are the anxious questions of the time, and the causes of this revulsion of feeling are obvious.

Between the years 1835 and 1840 were passed those several Acts of Parliament which limited episcopal incomes, restricted episcopal translation, commuted tithes for rentcharge, called the clergy into residence, provided for the extinction of pluralities, reorganized, whether for good or evil, the whole cathedral system, and, with a due regard to vested interests, may be said to have begun, if not to have completed, the great fiscal reformation of the Reformed Church.

The object of these enactments was to remove existing scandals; and we have lived to see-so time steals on the wisdom of their authors thus far at least justified, that their most sanguine anticipations are on the verge of an absolute fulfilment. A bishop may still seem to have an ample rent-roll, but we suspect that, when all the demands ever recurring, and all the deductions upon it ever increasing, are calculated, the margin of profit will be small enough. Deans and canons are notoriously unable to live in their residentiary houses, and to support the conventional hospitalities of their condition, without some extraneous or additional sources of revenue. The country parsons may not be men of business, but they must be wonderful domestic managers to maintain the proprieties of their position, to meet the tax-gatherer and the overseer and the surveyor with a ready cheque, to satisfy the many calls upon their charity, and to bring up their proverbially large families even upon the four or five hundred a-year which are accounted the windfalls of their profession. town parsons are, as a class, about the worst-paid functionaries in the land; and every heart is said to bleed for the poor curates, although, if we may judge from the balance-sheets of the societies instituted to aid and supply them, the sympathy largely evaporates in sentiment.

The

But it is not by legislative interference alone that the poverty of the clergy has become an accomplished fact. The population of the country has been increasing of late at the rate of 250,000 per annum. Every unit in this sum has a soul to be saved, and a new race of clergy, with new districts, new parishes, new churches, new schools, has been lavishly called into existence to meet the exigency. But "who planteth a vineyard and eateth hot of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock and eateth not of the milk of the flock?" To the liberal old endowments of the Church local and occasional additions have of necessity been made, but with such a careful regard to economy, that they can hardly be regarded as more than shifts and expedients to set the new machinery in motion. The milk is in no proportion to the flock. The elder has no "double honour;"

"Si dives pecoris, nivei non lactis abundans." In 1835 the Ecclesiastical Commissioners reported 3,629 benefices in England and Wales with incomes under 150l. Of these 377 were under 50l. But since that date there have been created 2,000 fresh cures, with churches to be regularly served, and incomes still ranging from 50l. to 150l. We have 4,000 assistant curates, with stipends seldom reaching, never exceeding, the latter sum: so that we have a total of something like 10,000 clergymen earning from one to not quite three pounds per week, and many of them

subject to the extraordinary direct taxation under which their profession suffers, beyond all others in the land, simply because their receipts are from a lien on real property. Now, it is no answer to this statement to say that it has given birth to much exaggeration. We can quite admit that the appeals to our compassion are often overcharged : that the startling facts," if true in themselves, yet will often convey a false impression from the omission of circumstances which might serve to qualify and explain them. We know that there must in every vocation be a vast amount of individual suffering resulting from incapacity, or indolence, or improvidence, or vice; and that too frequently the case of clerical destitution, paraded in some public print, which taps the springs of indiscriminate benevolence, and suddenly enriches the astonished insolvent, is referable to one of these causes. But, notwithstanding, the fact remains, as we have represented it-there are 10,000 men, most of them well-born and highly educated; with rare exceptions earnest, honest, pains-taking, devoted servants of Jesus Christ, doing their allotted work quietly and without ostentation; faithful to the discharge of their ordination vows, giving all their time and their thoughts to the diligent observance of duty-most of them in retired nooks and corners of the land-in their ancient village sanctuaries, in the cottages of their poor, by the bedside of the sick and dying, in their schools by day and by night, in all the varied employments of their sacred mission, making full proof of their ministry—and for these services, illimitable in aim, incalculable in consequences, only just maintained, if maintained at all, above starvation point.

The effect of such a condition of things would naturally be to check the supply of well-qualified men for Holy Orders; and to this issue we have actually come. It is a frightful contingency to contemplate; but from this and other causes the supply of clergy is not equal to the demand; the quantum and the quale are both in defect: the bishops are even now unable to maintain the salutary restrictions imposed from time immemorial upon the candidates: not the University test only, but even that of the Theological College, it is every year more difficult to insist upon. Examining chaplains tell us that the standard of proficiency is rather declining than otherwise, and in the dearth of curates it becomes a grave responsibility for any cause short of moral or physical unfitness to refuse those who willingly offer themselves. If any ask for a sign, no greater sign can be given them than this-parents will not bring up their sons to the work; and of Oxford especially it is commonly asserted, that the preparation for Holy Orders is now regarded-in that ancient nursery of the Church-as something ultra-chivalrous, quixotic, obsolete.

Such is the disorder: and many a thoughtful mind is anxiously seeking to devise the remedies. Of these the first which commends itself to the traditional instincts of an Englishman is the aid and operation of societies. The religious society is the religious Englishman's great resource. It is the element in which he lives and moves and works for his Master's kingdom. And it cannot be said that societies are wanting for the relief of the present distress. Some there are confined in their agency to the support of widows and orphans. Others, again, apply themselves zealously to the wants of poor acting and superannuated clergymen. There are, especially, two institutions, of comparatively recent origin, representing the two schools of divinity in the Church, chartered for the single purpose of supplementing the efforts of incumbents to provide curates for populous and poorly-endowed parishes. But all the united instrumentality of these charitable guilds of almoners falls far short of the desired object. They act usefully as palliatives, but do not reach the root

of the disease.

The next suggestion, therefore, is that an herculean effort shall be made to raise the required funds by boldly putting forth the doctrine, that no sincere Christian can give less than a tenth of his revenue to God: that the Divine expostulation, "Ye have robbed Me... in tithes and offerings," shall be pressed upon the conviction of the

nation. This is the gist of Mr. Ramsbotham's published Letter to a Colonial Bishop, of which the appendix is particularly interesting. This is the principle which underlies Mr. Markland's valuable argument for the Offertory. This shapes the vision which Mr. Jervis conjures up-to cheer and to encourage the hearts of the Cambridge Church Congress of the redemption of alienated tithes, and of a colossal Church Endowment Society to overspread the land, to be "a strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat."

We have great respect for Mr. Jervis. He has done his poor brethren good service, and if he could only carry out a portion of his benevolent schemes, the "good day' would soon be upon us. He thinks it not impossible that we may yet live to see the grey cloisters of Tintern, and the sculptured aisles of Fountains Abbey re-occupied and re-paced by holy men of God, aged and worn-out servants of the Church, who should there be gathered, as into a common home, and close their troublous days in peace, and mingle their dust with that of the saintly fathers of olden time. But he has more practical proposals to advance than this. He argues that if the revenues derived from Queen Anne's Bounty, added to the Parliamentary grants made in favour of the National Establishment since 1809, had been applied to the redemption of tithes, seeing that tithes can be bought at twenty-five years' purchase, all the misappropriation of sacred property, over which we make our lament, might ere this have been recovered for the original owners: and, pointing to the success of certain local Church Endowment Associations, he urges that even now it is quite feasible by hearty, vigorous, and united action, slowly perhaps, but surely, to retrieve the losses and disasters of the past.

It is well, at all events, that all such imaginations, even the most airy and fanciful, should take a bodily shape, and be presented to the public view. Much every way is to be gained by free ventilation and full discussion of the subject. There are thousands, both of clergy and laity, ready at this moment to respond to any well-considered appeal. Convocation has taken the question of "inadequate endowments" into its most careful consideration; and it is hardly credible that the people of this rich country will long endure the scandal and the stigma of being themselves taught in the Word, and yet refusing to minister to them that teach in all good and necessary things.

The Scottish Communion Office.

OTH friends and foes will admit that the contemplated abolition of the National Communion Office of the Church of Scotland is a very serious and a very radical change; a change, therefore, that ought not to be made without good and sufficient reasons. The Office, as our readers are aware, has been more or less in use ever since the Church in the north was dis-established at the Revolution of 1688. It is founded on that which was drawn up by Archbishop Laud, though its present form, and the form that it has taken since its last revision, about 150 years ago, by the Scottish contemporaries of our English nonjurors, is more in accordance with the liturgies of the East. Its chiefliturgical characteristic is that there is an invocation to the Holy Ghost to make the bread and wine the body and blood of Christ after the recitation of the ordinary words of consecration, a feature common to other liturgies of the Catholic Church, but not found in that now known as the Roman. As regards its language generally, it is far richer and deeper, and more in accordance with the Office of the English Church, which may be found in King Edward the Sixth's first Prayer-book. It is also almost identical with the Communion Office of the American Church, which Bishops Seabury and White were the means of introducing, when, as first bishops of our communion, they were sent

It is also a distinct link be

to the Western Continent. tween East and West. Three times has this Scottish Office been solemnly approved in Synod of the whole Scotch Church, and every prelate and clergyman holding office therein has been called upon to sign a canon in which, while the use of the English Office is permitted, the National Office is declared to be of "primary authority." So that it is used at consecrations, ordinations, and general and diocesan Synods. Those of our readers who desire to become thoroughly acquainted with its distinguishing characteristics should obtain Dr. Neale's Life of Bishop Torry, of St. Andrew's, which is a treatise upon the merits and scope of the National Communion Service by one of our most accomplished liturgical scholars of the present day. It is this Office, then, that it is contemplated to abolish, and a special general Synod has been summoned mainly for this particular purpose, which will be held in July.

There are two sections of opponents to the Office. The first are those who evidently dislike its deep ecclesiastical teaching, of which the Dean of Edinburgh may be regarded as the leader, since he has quite recently elaborated an argument against it which needs no addition whatsoever to make it a categorical exposition of pure Zwinglianism (pp. 12, 13, The Present Position of the Episcopal Church of Scotland.) The second section consists of a small but active band who have very hastily jumped at the Bishop of Oxford's proposition that the Scotch Church should throw their National Office overboard before any demand is made to Parliament for the removal of certain civil disabilities under which the Scottish clergy suffer. Then there is the general Scottish public, which, being essentially Presbyterian, are ready to swell the cry of " Popery" against any system or service which carries on its forefront the unmistakable stamp of genuine antiquity and catholicity. So that our readers will easily imagine the great danger existing at the present crisis.

Some at least, however, of our northern brethren, both clerics and laymen, are alive to the difficulty, and have not hesitated to step forward boldly to prevent so radical and impolitic a change being effected as appears to be in contemplation. A layman, whose appeal has recently been issued and circulated by the Messrs. Blackwood, of Edinburgh, has many powerful arguments and earnest words. The following passage is so remarkably to the point that we venture to give it in its entirety :

"I wish, as a man of the world, to press on your consideration, whether, in a worldly view, you are likely to promote the repeal of the disability by abandoning that Communion Office which you have hitherto declared of primary authority. If, as I believe, and great part of the Church believe, the Scottish Office and the English Office are virtually the same,-diversity of words and diversity of arrangement, yet teaching the same belief,-there seems no reason why the one Office should be of greater authority than the other. If it could be done without disturbing men's minds, I for one would rejoice to see perfect conformity between the Churches of England and Scotland, in ritual as in doctrine. But men's conscience rises with abhorrence at the proposition to enter on such questions with a bribe,—a miserable, mean, worldly bribe,-held up before us. I ask you, then, whether, if you attempt in present circumstances to throw over and disown what you have hitherto taught your people to look to as of primary authority, you do not so place yourselves and place your laity that you and they become objects of disrespect in the eyes of all thinking men?

"Is it likely that, after you have done the deed, you will obtain the price? Your fellow Bishops do not promise it. They have not the power of giving you relief, even if they were inclined. It is not from them the relief has to come. Even their consent is not necessary. It is to the Queen, Lords, and Commons, you have to look. They may grant things the Bishops refuse to grant. And do you think your communion will rise in the estimation of the noblemen and gentlemen of England, after the perpetration of so despicable an act? Do you think that our brethren, the English Dissenters, so consistent, so

uniform in the resistance of all encroachment on their liberties, civil and religious, will join hands with a communion which sells its birthright; buys its relief from oppression at the price of sacrifice of religious principle? No-no-no. We will not sink in the estimation of all good and all honourable men. Let us hold by the truth. Let us have no mixture of our secular with our holy things. Bend our neck to the oppressor so long as God permits the oppression to continue. But maintain the faith, not doubting."-(Pp. 20, 21.)

We venture thus briefly to conclude, then, that there is no true and valid reason either for abolishing the Scottish Office, or for altering the position it at present occupies. To abolish it now would be to condemn those who gave it its original position,-the Rattrays, the Gadderers, the Jollys, and the Skinners of a former generation. To alter it would be to affirm that they held and taught that which was erroneous, and to declare that the whole Oriental Church has corrupted the faith. While to do so in the hope of obtaining some temporal advantage-such, for example, as the removal of the civil disabilities-would be to adopt a policy which all honest men would utterly repudiate and condemn. That the Church of England and the Church of Scotland are in full communion either with other is a patent fact which none can deny. The civil disabilities under which the clergy of the latter communion lie is a simple question for the legislature, and for the legislature alone, to consider. Let their removal be sought, therefore, in the proper way and from the proper quarter. The exact identity of Services has nothing whatever to do with the question. Nor ought the two distinct points ever to have been mixed up. Then as to the abolition of local influences in the Church, and the cutting off of national peculiarities, what is this but a carrying out of that dangerous principle of centralization which Rome has recently acted upon, and which Anglicans so generally and properly condemn? A dead uniformity in the types of worship is not unity. Nor is the destruction of local traditions and a contempt for national feelings a policy to be commended. The Church of Scotland has had its day of trial and persecution, and still lives. Her foes did their worst, but failed. The banner of the Cross is still floating and the ancient faith still retained. She was one and united when her foes were external to her. Let care be taken that in no haste or impetuosity-under the guidance of those who, may be, lack the calm judgment and sterling sagacity of her confessors of a past century-she discover her most cruel enemies to be those of her own household. Let not the constant sapping and mining of the present day effect that which the open assault of a former generation was utterly unable to accomplish.

Bigotry.

IGOTRY is a name of exceeding bad odour, and is most commonly used as a stigma to brand the stern virtue of a jealous maintenance of unpopular opinions in religion. It is indeed by no means an easy matter to define the exact line of border land where the virtue so indicated passes from the golden mean of religious faith into either of the opposite vicious extremes of superstition and infidelity. Not that superstition is a convertible synonym of bigotry. We are not sure whether, according to the norma loquendi of ordinary usage, any one who simply stuck to his religious principles, be they what they may, and refused to surrender them on persuasion, with a mere passive doggedness, would be called a bigot. He might be so by the disappointed zealot who had failed to convert him. But we fancy that something like an obtrusive assertion of one's private judgment upon others, if not an active persecution of opponents, is generally considered necessary to provoke and justify the reproachful epithet. Dean Trench, in the early editions of his Study of Words, (though the suggestion was dropped

without notice, as if untenable, in the latter ones,) favours the derivation of the word from the Spanish bigotes, moustachios; the bearded Spaniard, with his moral atmosphere of inquisition and auto-da-fes, being a sort of standing vignette illustrative of religious persecution. Others have derived it, unreasonably, from the least bigoted of religionists, the Beguines, Latinè Beguttæ. Others, with more ingenuity, from the Anglo-Norman pronunciation of a national oath passing into a nickname; an opprobrium of which their descendants at this day travelling on the Continent have been deemed not altogether undeserving. A friend, standing at our elbow as we write, jocosely suggests that a "bigoted man" is simply a Cymric or Gaelic corruption of a "pig-headed man ;" and his etymology, perhaps, as we shall presently show, comes nearest to the true idea so signified. Lastly, the good lady chronicled by Punch who bought her bigotry at Storr and Mortimer's, and her virtue in Wardour-street, has introduced a spice of humour into the associations of the word, which wellnigh neutralizes its bitterness.

Setting aside our own early associations, and the mythical impersonations of bigotry derived from the nursery and schoolroom-among whom the hombres de bigotes, above alluded to, and our "Bloody Mary," figure as the most terrible examples—and striving to reduce the vague and hidden meanings of the vile opprobrium to something like definite proportions, our notion of the true bigot amounts to this-a man who does not realize his opinions; who cannot distinguish between principles and matters of indifference; is readily entrapped into some blundering compromise of the former, while eager to lead a forlorn hope, or suffer martyrdom, or wage a war of extermination in the defence and assertion of the latter.

Certainly there is no more provoking being in the world than this, whether to his friends or foes. To call such an one a bigot is a mild form of obloquy by which lips that shrink from uttering an oath may swear out their honest indignation and disgust. Not to know where to concede and where to stand out upon a point at issue is a most fatal defect of character in every relation of life. In religious and public matters it is a perpetual fret and exasperation. And this almost equally, whether the bigotry be in error par défaut d'intelligence, par défaut de sentiment, ou par défaut de connaissances. But it by no means follows, if the above definition be a sound one, that the party charged with bigotry is always guilty of the thing. On the contrary, the failure to distinguish principles and indifferentials, in which the essence of bigotry is supposed by us to consist, may well be on the side of the accusers. Popular opinion in religious matters is the most common form of bigotry, as none certainly is more rampant in active persecution. Never was the reproach bigot more rife in people's mouths than at the beginning of the religious movement thirty years ago; but the success of that movement appears to be mainly due to the authors having limited their first efforts to the recovery and maintenance of fundamental principles. Afterwards, no doubt, a good deal of discord has been occasioned by their followers in various places ignoring or evading the necessary principles while insisting on immaterial practices and forms which accompanied the movement. Wherever principles and details have consistently gone together, they have generally prevailed in the long run. But the gift of seeing clearly to the bottom of questions, and realizing essentials, is a rare wisdom; and they who in any degree are deficient in this quality are in the same proportion in danger of becoming bigots. Zeal without knowledge was bigotry in the great Apostle before his conversion to Christianity; but afterwards his singular characteristic sympathy, willing to be all things to all men, and even to incur anathema for the sake of winning some, was consistent with an uncompromising severity in the proscription of schismatics. Nay, it was the very Apostle and prime pattern of brotherly love and charity who rushed half-naked out of the bath lest the atmosphere might be tainted with the breath of heresy.

There is no more anxious period of a great religious movement, such as we have mentioned, than the stage