on evil-doers, and, one was obliged to think,
apparently almost pleased at the opportunity of catching them. It need
not be said that no disrespect is intended in this. It is a simple and
truthful statement of the kind of impression made upon one person by the
teachings of that age and school. Is it any wonder that persons brought
up in such a creed should experience a feeling of relief on learning
that there was no God, no sin, no punishment? Add to this the terrors of
the exaggerated Sabbatarianism of the period. What was the Sunday
programme? Two lengthy sessions of Family Prayers; two attendances--each
lasting at least an hour and a quarter--on services in church; one,
sometimes two, hours of Sunday School; no books but those of a religious
character; no amusements of any kind even for the very young, unless the
putting together of a dissected map of Palestine could be called an
amusement; what a method of rendering Sunday attractive to the young!

Is it any wonder that those brought up on such a plan abandoned, with a
sigh of relief, all religious exercises when at last they were able to
do so? I notice that Mr. Belfort Bax, in his _Reminiscences of a Mid and
Late Victorian_, alludes to this matter, saying that, "The most cruel of
all the results of mid-Victorian religion was, perhaps, the rigid
enforcement of the most drastic Sabbatarianism. The horror of the tedium
of Sunday infected more or less the whole of the latter portion of the
week." _Experto crede!_ He says further, dealing with the 'fifties, that
"the intellectual possibilities of the English people were then stunted
and cramped by the influence of the dogmatic Calvinistic theology which
was the basis of its traditional sentiment;"--it is exactly the point
which I am trying to make.

We may now examine two instances of the kind of teaching with which I am
dealing and its results. The first is that of the poet Cowper, and
anyone who takes the trouble to read his life as written by Southey will
find the whole piteous tale fully drawn out. Southey hated the Catholic
Church, of which, by the way, he knew absolutely nothing, but he had
sufficient sense to reject the teachings of Calvinism. Cowper was at
times insane and at other times of anything but a well-balanced mind,
and he was just the kind of man who never ought to have been brought
under the influences to which he was subjected. His principal adviser
was the Rev. John Newton, a well-known Calvinisti