the demeanour and temper of unmarried and seminary-trained priests. Perhaps no influence has been so powerful in the developement of this special type of piety as the gracious and delicate verse of the Christian Year.' A certain want of vigour may seem to go with its quietness: the climate commends itself rather to those who navigate inland waters than to the more adventurous mariners who tempt the high seas. Yet, if such are drawn to stronger remedies, it is possible that experience may show that the old are better; that now, as of old, the 'still small voice' is more penetrating than the earthquake or the fire. A distinctive mark of the Church of England is that, in an age of advertisement, she does not advertise. Had Hannington and Patteson been Jesuits, the world would have rung with their heroism: the native martyrs of Uganda would have been raised, as deservedly as any of former ages, to the altars of the Church. 'They were tortured, their arms were cut off, and they were bound alive to a scaffolding under which a fire was made, and so they were slowly burned to death. As they hung over the flames, the heathens told them to pray now to Jesus Christ if they thought He could help them. The spirit of the martyrs at once entered into the lads, and together they raised their voices and praised Jesus in the fire, singing till their shrivelled tongues refused to form the words.' * 'Salvete flores martyrum!' The freshness of the first days is here. The same spirit appears in lesser matters. Does a curate secede to Rome ? it is proclaimed in the newspapers. Does a Roman Catholic or a Dissenter conform to the Church? no one hears of it; the result being that a false impression of the situation is given, and that an inaccurate estimate of the relative gains and losses prevails. A sensational Catholic preacher denounces the sins of society, an eclectic Non-conformist propounds a New Theology; their respective chapels overflow and descriptive accounts of their proceedings, and their personal appearance appear in the halfpenny press. 'Non equidem invideo, miror magis.' A scholarly Churchman speaks from a University or Cathedral pulpit, and few hear or heed. He does not call in the reporter, or enlist in the service of religion and learning the arts of the acrobat and the buffoon. The current laxity with regard to religious observance has, for the time being at least, affected the Established Church more than the Free Churches. No one cause is sufficient to * ii. 398. account for the decline of church-going; though it is probably connected more intimately than with any other with the particular psychology of to-day. In an age of rush people are more easily bored and more intolerant of boredom; the submission to religious and social convention which led our parents to sit, or sleep, through a two hours' service is a thing of the past. But the tediousness of the modern pulpit is, in part at least, accountable for the emptiness of the modern pew. The weakest joint in the armour of the English Church is the education of the clergy. The quality of the candidates for Orders has fallen off; the proportion of honour-men among them is infinitesimal; too frequently their theological reading before ordination is limited to carefully prepared partisan handbooks, after it to the Guardian' and the Church Times.' The natural result follows. The men are zealous, often good organisers, assiduous in their visiting, their parish work and their schools. But their pulpit ministrations are vapid beyond bearing: "Their lean and flashy songs Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw; No one who has been accustomed to attend the services of the Presbyterian Church can be surprised that Church attendance is better in Scotland than in England, or fail to note the contrast between a learned and unlearned clergy, a living and a dead ministry of the Word. The best English sermons are of the essay type; preaching, in the sense in which the word is used in Scotland, is seldom heard. With this goes an ostrichlike reluctance and inability to face vital questions. In any but a clerical assembly the discussion on Schweitzer's Von 'Reimarus zu Wrede'* at the Cambridge Church Congress would have been thought disingenuous; and it is humiliating to reflect that, for one Anglican clergyman who has read or is capable of estimating the book, there are in all probability ten Nonconformists who have studied it, preached on it, and possess a working knowledge of the literature and the tendencies which it represents. It is to be regretted, it is very greatly to be regretted, that this is so. Ideas by themselves neither constitute religion nor guarantee its future. But to ply Englishmen with cautions against ideas is superfluous. We shall take to ourselves if we are wise the warning addressed by a great French scholar to his own Church: * Translated under the title of The Quest of the Historical Jesus.' A. and C. Black, 1910. 'La plus sage des politiques, la plus généreuse sollicitude pour les classes populaires, n'assureraient pas chez nous l'avenir du catholicisme, si le catholicisme, qui, étant une religion, est d'abord une foi, se présentait sous les apparences d'une doctrine et d'une discipline opposées au libre essor de l'esprit humain, déjà minées par la science, isolées et isolantes au milieu du monde qui veut vivre, s'instruire et progresser en tout.' * 'Securus judicat orbis terrarum.' The maxim makes not for the past but for the future; it opens before us, if we have eyes to discern it, a vision immense, immeasurable-unexplored continents and unsailed seas. They speak perhaps more truly than they know who tell us that for the English Church the time in which we live is critical; that she has come to the parting of the ways. The call of Empire is in her ears: she may hear it, and follow; she may be deaf to it, and refrain. In other words, she may resign herself to the distinctive position of Anglicanism, or she may rise to her higher calling, and take her stand for English Christianity as a whole. In the former case 'Abide ye here with the ass will be her programme. It is a poor one. She will rest on her past; she will appeal to the stationary elements of society-the uneducated, the unintelligent, those who for one reason or another stand outside the main stream. She will continue to influence the imagination and sentiment of a section of the nation; she will probably approximate more and more to medieval doctrine and ceremonial; by her claim, disputable as it is, to be (in the sectarian sense of the word) Catholic, she may retain a handful of enthusiasts whose natural gravitation is towards Rome. But this road leads nowhere. A Church which takes it may be long in dying, but is on the road to die. On the other a great, a very great, destiny awaits her—the furtherance of the religious life of the English people at home and beyond the seas. Her characteristic Via Media' is not, and is not likely to become, a middle term between Rome and Protestantism; the changes that are taking place in Latin Christendom do not look her way. But the least reformed' of the Reformed Churches, and inheriting the political genius of the nation to which she owes her distinctive features, she may unite for her own people the best elements of the old order and of the new. Should it be so, it is not England only that will be the gainer; the 'vasti 'luminis orae' will receive increase. Her past has been great; her future may be greater. The latter glory of this house shall be 'greater than the former; and in this place will I give peace.' Loisy, Autour d'un petit livre,' xxxv. * 6 ART. II.-THE BATTLE OF FONTENOY. 1. Les Campagnes du Maréchal de Saxe. Troisième Partie. Fontenoy. Par J. COLIN, Capitaine d'artillerie breveté à la Section historique de l'Etat-Major de l'Armée. 1906. 2. Fontenoy. By FRANCIS HENRY SKRINE. 1906. 3. History of the British Army. By the Hon. J. W. FORTESCUE. Vol. II. 1899. 4. The Campaigns of Saxe. By LT.-COL. E. M. LLOYD, R.E., 'Journal of the Royal United Service Institution.' November 1894. 5. William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland. By CAMPBELL MACLACHLAN. 1876. 6. Cumberland Papers. Windsor Castle. 7. Newcastle and Hardwicke Papers. British Museum. 8. Various Reports of the Historical Manuscripts Commission. 9. Foreign Office Papers. Campaigns in Flanders. 1745. Record Office. DR. R. JOHNSON's declaration that he never desired to hear ' of the Punic War while he lived' would probably be extended by most people to include the War of the Austrian Succession, 1741-1748. Few wars have been so confused in their motives and so little revolutionary in their final result. During eight years Europe was kept under arms: in the course of the struggle every continental power became either directly or indirectly involved; an incalculable number of lives were sacrificed, and at every stage of the contest the standard of international and diplomatic honesty became sensibly more debased. By the ultimate peace signed at Aixla-Chapelle the status quo of the belligerents was scarcely altered. The part played by England on the Continent in support of the Austrian cause was seldom effective and never decisive, and the duration of the war corresponds with one of the least notable periods of British statesmanship. These considerations have tended to obscure the dramatic significance of those tumultuous years during which the foundations of Prussia's greatness were laid, and during which the rivalry between France and England was revealed as a dominant factor of the eighteenth century. Fontenoy, however, survives the popular oblivion which has dulled the details of the struggle, and at least in name is familiar to every Englishman. The works of Mr. Skrine and Captain Colin* should do much to quicken the general interest in that romantic fight. Mr. Skrine has made an exact and vivid use of stores of material which had lain too long neglected. Captain Colin, in his exhaustive and admirable book, has collected a mass of new information from the archives of Paris and the Hague, and has utilised it to the lasting advancement of historical knowledge. Indeed it is not too much to say that these two volumes, if taken in conjunction, make it for the first time possible to form a coherent and definite idea of the movements of both the French and the allies throughout that memorable day, May 11, 1745. Captain Colin is eminently fair in his tribute to the British Infantry, and writes with the scientific detachment we have been taught to expect by his previous works and indeed by most publications which issue from the historical department of the French army. It is to be regretted that the works of Captain Colin are not better known in England. His volume on Fontenoy' is a monument of research, and with the exception of the Proceedings of the Court Martial on Ingoldsby,' to be seen at the Record Office, there does not appear to be an available document connected with the battle which he has not consulted. Far from being weighed down by authority, however, he has produced a book which is as instructive to military as it is entertaining to civilian readers. As to a few features of the battle, the Cumberland manuscripts and the Hardwicke and Newcastle Papers' afford supplementary information, but in other respects only serve to emphasise the accuracy with which Mr. Skrine and Captain Colin have performed their task. Mr. Fortescue in the second volume of his justly famous History of the British Army' has given a remarkable and picturesque description of the battle. More recently available documents have shown that his account is not altogether free from errors of detail, and to these, by the light of present knowledge, we shall call attention in the course of the following pages. Fontenoy followed hard on a series of dawdling and successless campaigns carried on by British arms in the Low Countries. In November 1744 the fall of Carteret and the accession to power of the Pelham administration had given rise to the hope that the fourth year of England's intervention in the War of the Austrian Succession would show some decisive * Now Commandant of Artillery. |