howed that a stir
and movement had begun, which might be slow to make any great advance,
but which was at all events promising for the future. Agitation against
slavery had been in great part a result of quickened Christian feeling,
and, in a still greater degree, a promoting cause of it. And when the
French Revolution broke out, it quickly appeared how resolutely bent the
vast majority of the people were to hold all the more firmly to their
Christianity and their Church. Some of the influences which in the early
part of the century had done so much to counteract the religious promise
of the time, were no longer, or no longer in the same degree, actively
at work. There was cause, therefore, for confident hope that the good
work which had begun might go on increasing. How far this was the case,
and what agencies contributed to hinder or advance religious life in the
Church of England and elsewhere, belongs to the history of a time yet
nearer to our own.

Bishops, both as fathers of the Church and as holding high places, and
living therefore in the presence of the public, cannot, without grave
injury not to themselves only, but to the body over which they preside,
suffer their names to be in any way mixed up with the cabals of
self-interest and faction. At the beginning of the eighteenth century,
the Episcopal bench numbered among its occupants many men, both of High
and Low Church views, who were distinctly eminent for piety, activity,
and learning. And throughout the century there were always some bishops
who were thoroughly worthy of their high post. But towards the middle of
it, and on to its very close, there was an undoubted lowering in the
general tone of the Episcopal order. Average men, who had succeeded in
making themselves agreeable at Court, or who had shown that they could
be of political service to the administration of the time, too often
received a mitre for their reward. Amid the general relaxation of
principle which by the universal confession of all contemporary writers
had pervaded society, even worthy and good men seem to have condescended
at times to a discreditable fulsomeness of manner, and to an immoderate
thirst for preferments. There were many scandals in the Church which
greatly needed reform, but none which were so keenly watched, or which
did so much to lower its reputation, as unworthy acts of subserviency
on the part of certain bishops. The evil belonged to the individuals
and to the period