actions of a nature so corrupt as that of man. Among Protestants, the
Church of England is the worst, for she is not wholly Protestant. In the
utterness of the self-abnegation of the genuine Protestant there is
something approaching the heroic. But she, ambitious of being Catholic
as well as Protestant, like that old Church of evil memory which would
be neither hot nor cold, will neither wholly abandon merit, nor wholly
claim it; but halts on between two opinions, claiming and disclaiming,
saying and in the next breath again unsaying. The Oxford student being
asked for the doctrine of the Anglican Church on good works, knew the
rocks and whirlpools among which an unwary answer might involve him, and
steering midway between Scylla and Charybdis, replied, with laudable
caution, 'a few of them would not do a man any harm.' It is scarcely a
caricature of the prudence of the Articles. And so at last it has come
to this with us. The soldier can raise a column to his successful
general; the halls of the law courts are hung round with portraits of
the ermined sages; Newton has his statue, and Harvey and Watt, in the
academies of the sciences; and each young aspirant after fame, entering
for the first time upon the calling which he has chosen, sees high
excellence highly honoured; sees the high career, and sees its noble
ending, marked out each step of it in golden letters. But the Church's
aisles are desolate, and desolate they must remain. There is no statue
for the Christian. The empty niches stare out like hollow eye-sockets
from the walls. Good men live in the Church and die in her, whose story
written out or told would be of inestimable benefit, but she may not
write it. She may speak of goodness, but not of the good man; as she may
speak of sin, but may not censure the sinner. Her position is critical;
the Dissenters would lay hold of it. She may not do it, but she will do
what she can. She cannot tolerate an image indeed, or a picture of her
own raising; she has no praise to utter at her children's graves, when
their lives have witnessed to her teaching. But if others will bear the
expense and will risk the sin, she will offer no objection. Her walls
are naked. The wealthy ones among her congregation may adorn them as
they please; the splendour of a dead man's memorial shall be, not as his
virtues were, but as his purse; and his epitaph may be brilliant
according as there are means to pay for it. They manage things better