e grew anxious or fearful; and finally, she began to find
herself invaded or modified from within, by influences springing up from
Methodism. This last effect became more conspicuously evident after the
French Revolution. The church of Scotland, which, as a whole, had
exhibited, with much unobtrusive piety, the same outward torpor as the
church of England during the eighteenth century, betrayed a corresponding
resuscitation about the same time. At the opening of this present century,
both of these national churches began to show a marked rekindling of
religious fervour. In what extent this change in the Scottish church had
been due, mediately or immediately, to Methodism, we do not pretend to
calculate; that is, we do not pretend to settle the proportions. But
_mediately_ the Scottish church must have been affected, because she was
greatly affected by her intercourse with the English church, (as, e.g., in
Bible Societies, Missionary Societies, &c.;) and the English church had
been previously affected by Methodism. _Immediately_ she must also have
been affected by Methodism, because Whitfield had been invited to preach
in Scotland, and _did_ preach in Scotland. But, whatever may have been the
cause of this awakening from slumber in the two established churches of
this island, the fact is so little to be denied, that, in both its aspects,
it is acknowledged by those most interested in denying it. The two
churches slept the sleep of torpor through the eighteenth century; so much
of the fact is acknowledged by their own members. The two churches awoke,
as from a trance, in or just before the dawning of the nineteenth century;
this second half of the fact is acknowledged by their opponents. The
Wesleyan Methodists, that formidable power in England and Wales, who once
reviled the Establishment as the dormitory of spiritual drones, have for
many years hailed a very large section in that establishment--viz., the
section technically known by the name of the Evangelical clergy--as
brothers after their own hearts, and corresponding to their own strictest
model of a spiritual clergy. That section again, the Evangelical section,
in the English church, as men more highly educated, took a direct interest
in the Scottish clergy, upon general principles of liberal interest in all
that could affect religion, beyond what could be expected from the
Methodists. And in this way grew up a considerable action and reaction
between the two classica