Excerpt from The Monthly Packet of Evening Readings for Members of the English Church, Vol. 30 English clergy up to the Oxford movement are now described as either Methodists, holding wrong tenets sincerely, or worldly pluralists who believed nothing and preached against enthusiasm, which is now held to be the one thing needful. Our age is a fast one, and expects that quality in all clergy. They are to strive for pace instead of peace, and show well in front of every movement; if possible, neither them selves to see, nor suggest to others, which way it ought to move, and where it ought to stop. It is therefore an unpopular thing to have to assert that common sense or judgment is a judicial faculty and the gift of God, intended to be used and to guide us in spiritual things, just'as enthusiasm, or partial abandonment of ordinary rules of mental judg ment, is the gift of God on certain rare occasions. It is more awkward still to require deliberate judgment, moderation, or decency itself, in congregational acts of devotion, or to assert that the excitement which passes for devotion must be had at any price. It was probably found that Greek or Italian assemblies in the sixth and seventh centuries were raised to a higher pitch of emotion by praying before saints whom they could see and that carried the whole question with their clergy. This is one of the commonest forms of seeking after a sign; and after a due amount of devotion the sign takes the place of the thing signified; and the image, having long excited passionate feeling, is supposed to have shown life or miraculous power. Then God or the saint is in it, and it can help the worshipper. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.