thoughtfully and justly said by an historian of the Church that "the foundation of societies such as these, to assist the Church in fulfilling her duty to the nation and the empire, is evidence of belief in her methods and trust in her future far more eloquent than the sermons of preachers or the speeches of politicians."

It should not be forgotten that Mary II., by her personal patronage, by the force of her individual character, and by that mode of Church energy of which she was one embodiment, assisted not a little in the formation of those societies.

The death of Mary was a loss to the Church and to the country. Such strenuous piety and such implicit wifeliness as were hers are not easily spared at any time or in any rank of life. At the side of a King occupied, it is true, with the general cause of liberty and toleration, but having insufficient detachment from the activities of battlefield, camp and State, and not enough liking for either theories or formulas, even if piety were an impulse of his soul to be concerned for the deepening of the spiritual life of individuals among his subjects, or for the organization of charitable and pious endeavours, a woman like Mary was irreplaceable. She was also a loss to her husband and to the nation, in that, by the removal of her influence, William became more definitely a politician. The balance of interests, which the natural Toryism of Mary's womanhood and the preciser religionism of her saintliness had enabled the King to hold more justly in her lifetime, was destroyed. After her death, William rapidly advanced a number of Whig bishops to power. Their latitudinarianism, even in some respects their indifferentism, roused the indignation of the Tory lower clergy -doctrinaires and ritualists, many of them. Yet the Whigs maintained their little day of power, both over Church and over State, well on into the reign of Anne. This Queen's inclination to Toryism and to definite Churchmanship gradually modified their power. As a last effort to recover greatness, they impeached a bombastic orator among High Church preachers—one Dr.

Sacheverell-for using seditious language before the Lord Mayor of London. The sermon he had delivered with vehemence and unction was indeed a diatribe against the Revolution and the Whigs. But James II. was nine years dead, and Anne too becomingly filled the throne for her occupancy to be insecure. Yet she had no great liking for the Hanoverian succession, and was believed by some to cherish the hope that descendants of her father might become sufficiently Anglicized in faith to deserve the reversion of her Crown. So Dr. Sacheverell's reaffirmation of the doctrine of non-resistance was not altogether distasteful to her. She seems at least to have been won by his explanation that he had preached only of general rules and not of particular exceptions. This view of his offence seems also to have been accepted by the Whigs. In any case, the House of Lords-all Whiggish as it was-convicted Sacheverell, but gave him only a nominal sentence. A Tory country and clergy took the verdict for an acquittal. The Queen dissolved Parliament, and, when a new House was assembled, Anne was at the head of a Tory Government, with a Tory and High Church majority in the House of Commons. Then was passed rapidly an Act, long nourished by the High Church party, to prevent Nonconformists from conforming occasionally as a matter of form, in order to qualify for political office or political power. Another Act, to prevent Nonconformists from setting up their own schools for their children, also received the Royal assent. Without definitely attacking the Toleration Act of William and Mary, whereby all Protestant Trinitarian Nonconformists were allowed free use of their religion, it was designed to stop the growth of Dissent, even as already, in William's reign, there had been an Act for the suppression of the growth of Popery, by inhibiting Roman Catholics from having schools for the young of their faith. The Anglican Church Catholic-that branch of the Universal Church transmitted in unbroken succession from Apostolic times, but Re-formed because of inroads of superstition and error, and Protesting against the unjustifiable ascendency of the Roman See-was now

firmly established as the National Church of England, having wholly vanquished the Puritanism that demands a Presbyterian form of Church government. And under Anne, true devotee of Anglicanism, the Church made a last stand for the complete dominion of individual consciences and the undisputed control of State offices. From blindness as to the true use and destiny of Christ's religion the English Church Catholic had yet to be purged. Meanwhile it had been greatly purified, and was entering into ways of truer dignity than it had ever trod before. Anne, though inferior in personal piety to her sister, had a wider, higher vision of the true office and destiny of the Church. And she had a more maternal concern for the well-being-spiritual and material-of her people. For her the religious edifice of which Jesus Christ Himself is the Chief Corner Stone had the sanctity Mary discovered only in altitudes of the individual soul.

Where Mary was concerned for the destructive Protestantism that was in her time the only bulwark stout enough to repel the encroachments of Popery, Anne's interest was given to the constructive Catholicism without which all the piety and devotion of those at war with Rome remain only negative qualities. The divinity of those of Mary's way of thinking, and of others more deeply learned, though certainly not more rigid in conduct than herself, was essential to the faith at a time when confusion, treachery and innovation in Church and State had obliterated the original ground-plan, and thrown out of line the rising walls of the Anglo-Catholic Church. The temper and the mettle of the individual men and women to be built into the structure needed to be tried and tested. At least the foundationsof godly men and of pious women-must be sure. full form, proportion and grace of the Building-not made with hands-would come later. Queen Anne had a true eye for the eventual beauty and majesty of the uprearing Church.

The

This dull and decorous woman, whose mind worked slowly even as her body moved lethargically, and whose affections fixed themselves stubbornly on creatures more