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 classical churches of the British
soil. Such was the varying condition, when sketched in outline, of the
Scottish and English churches. Two centuries ago, and for half a century
beyond that, we find both churches in a state of trial, of turbulent
agitation, and of sacrifices for conscience, which involved every fifth
or sixth beneficiary. Then came a century of languor and the
carelessness which belongs to settled prosperity. And finally, for
both has arisen a half century of new light--new zeal--and, spiritually
speaking, of new prosperity. This deduction it was necessary to bring
down, in order to explain the new power which arose to the Scottish
church, during the last generation of suppose thirty years.

When two powerful establishments, each separately fitted to the genius
and needs of its several people, are pulling together powerfully towards
one great spiritual object, vast must be the results. Our ancestors
would have stood aghast as at some fabulous legend or some mighty