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I become as if I were chanting Vedas. I fear that I shall come to think that we don't know that what we do is acceptable, except that we can't find out what else to do than what is actually in man to do.

"For ourselves, I believe the only thing is to throw consciousness into all; to fling up, before each attempt at an elaborate piece of service, before even each change of chant, before each sitting down even to practise at the organ, the thought, 'This is Thine, O Lord of Thee, in Thee: O make it also for Thee.'”

WHAT IS CLAIMED FOR LAUD.

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CHAPTER XV.

IN reviewing shortly the problems suggested by such a life and death, we must first consider what claims are made for him and the value of his work by his most ardent admirers. "The English Church," they say, "is, in its Catholic aspect, a memorial of Laud." This is a considerable claim. When we ask how this is supported, they begin by saying that we owe the retention of Episcopacy in the Church to him. The causal connection, if there be one, is intricate. Episcopacy was abolished in Laud's lifetime, and was resumed as a matter of course when the monarchical and Tory reaction against Puritanism set in. But I venture to maintain that it was not by any means Laud's memory which consecrated the thought of Episcopacy to its restorers, as Charles's memory undoubtedly consecrated monarchy. On the contrary, I believe that it was almost entirely due to Laud's personal unpopularity that Episcopacy was so summarily

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EPISCOPACY-THE PRAYER BOOK.

abolished; I believe it might have continued intact through the Rebellion but for him. Let us press Laud's supporters a little further. We ask if there is anything else that we owe to Laud. They answer, the Prayer Book. That assertion I again conceive to rest on very much the same basis of proof. It cannot be established. Last of all they fall back triumphantly upon the position of the altar in our churches. I confess that, though I should deplore the alteration of that arrangement, I cannot bring myself to be enthusiastic about it; it does not seem to be identical with the Catholic aspect of the English Church. In fact, to attribute to Laud the existence of that aspect, is as absurd as to say that we owe our present monarchy to Charles I. The manner of Charles's death created, I think, a very enthusiastic detestation of the principles which sanctioned it, and so may be said to have had an indirect effect; but I do not believe that even this can be asserted about Laud.

The fact is, we do not like to speak lightly about a man who sealed his principles with his blood. There is an unconscious reverence for devotion that will flinch at nothing, not even the last passage, of which we cannot and would not rid ourselves. And when that devotion is founded on a mistaken conception, such a death becomes one of the most

FAILURE OF LAUD'S IDEAL.

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tragic and pathetic sketches that we can well see, but it is not necessarily inspiring: it arouses sympathy for the sufferer, none for the cause in which he is suffering.

And Laud's cause was not a true one. His ideal of the Church which he upheld falls far short of truth. He did not believe the Church to be an all-embracing society for holy living, the possessor of certain gracious thoughts and Divine influences, which cannot be exactly felt or received outside her bounding line. The freedom of the gospel was lost upon him. him. He chose to regard her as an essentially political organization, sister of the State. Her ecclesiastics were to be courtiers too; she was to have her pageants and her days of observation, her high festivals and solemnities. In these he conceived some essence of her being to lie; he did not look upon them as mere adjuncts of a huge human organization, which in the ideal society would find no place.

"I set upon the repair of the Material and Spiritual Church together," as Laud wrote to Strafford. This was his ideal for the Church. This is the question that keeps pressing itself home upon us as we look at the character of the efforts in which he so ceaselessly engaged. We see lecturers deprived, fonts repaired, altars railed off, surplices

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THE REALITY OF PURITANISM.

enforced; we find immense noisy activity: in the centre there is a bustling eager figure, signing, writing, scolding, confuting;—and all the time a terrible suspicion is creeping on us: "To what purpose?" Clumsy and ugly as the Puritan methods were, forfeiting as they did so much of their due genuine influences by their contempt for externals, yet these grim tiresome figures had conduct at heart. And had Laud? He would have affirmed it, undoubtedly; but, looking at his work, can we feel that his secret aspirations turned in that direction? Not honestly, I think. He worshipped externals; he was a Formalist. The Puritans were weakened by their want of forms, for human nature must have forms; it desires them so eagerly: but a still greater danger is waiting at the other end. It is dangerous to be without them, but it is still more dangerous to depend on them.

Let us hear what Heylyn, Laud's most uncritical friend and admirer, has to say of the progress and ideals of the Church under him.

"If we look," he says, "into the Church as it stood under his Direction, we shall find the Prelates generally more intent upon the work committed to them, the Clergy joining together to advance the work of Uniformity recommended to them, the Liturgy more punctually executed in all the parts