sregard of
all forms and rites, and, not content with the ordinary doctrine of
instantaneous conversion, preached the absolute sinlessness of the
believer. The movement which, in 1874, he set on foot was marked by
disasters, of which the nature can best be inferred from a
characteristic saying, "The believer's conflict with Sin is all stuff."
This teaching had its natural consequences, and the movement issued in
spiritual tragedy.

In the following year we were touched by the much more wholesome
enterprise of Messrs. Moody and Sankey. Their teaching was wholly free
from the perilous stuff which had defiled the previous mission; and
though it shook the faith of some who had cultivated the husk rather
than the kernel of ritualism, still all could join in the generous
tribute paid by Dr. Liddon on Whitsun Day, 1876:

"Last year two American preachers visited this country, to whom God had
given, together with earnest belief in some portions of the gospel, a
corresponding spirit of fearless enterprise. Certainly they had no such
credentials of an Apostolic Ministry as a well-instructed and believing
Churchman would require.... And yet, acting according to the light which
God had given them, they threw themselves on our great cities with the
ardour of Apostles; spoke of a higher world to thousands who pass the
greater part of life in dreaming only of this; and made many of us feel
that we owe them at least the debt of an example, which He Who breatheth
where He listeth must surely have inspired them to give us."[67]

When I came up to London after leaving Oxford, "the world was all before
me where to choose," and I made a pretty wide survey before deciding on
my habitual place of worship. St. Paul's Cathedral had lately awoke from
its long sleep, and, under the wise guidance of Church, Gregory, and
Liddon, was beginning to show the perfection of worship on the strict
line of the English Prayer-Book.

Being by temperament profoundly Gothic, I hold (with Sir William
Richmond) that Westminster Abbey is the most beautiful church in the
world. But it had nothing to offer in the way of seemly worship; and,
while Liddon was preaching the Gospel at St. Paul's, Dean Stanley at
Westminster was delivering the fine rhetoric and dubious history which
were his substitutes for theology, and with reference to which a Jewish
lady said to me, "I have heard the Dean preach for eighteen years, and I
have never heard a word from him which I c