No one who has studied the character and career of Sydney Smith would expect him to be very sympathetic with the work which bore the name of Pusey. In 1841 he preached against it at St. Paul's.

"I wish you had witnessed, the other day, my incredible boldness in attacking the Puseyites. I told them that they made the Christian religion a religion of postures and ceremonies, of circumflexions and genuflexions, of garments and vestures, of ostentation and parade; that they took tithe of mint and cummin, and neglected the weightier matters of the law,-justice, mercy, and the duties of life: and so forth."

From Combe Florey he wrote:

"Everybody here is turning Puseyite. Having worn out my black gown, I preach in my surplice; this is all the change I have made, or mean to make."

In 1842 he wrote to a friend abroad :

"I have not yet discovered of what I am to die, but I rather believe I shall be burnt alive by the Puseyites. Nothing so remarkable in England as the progress of these foolish people. I have no conception what they mean, if it be not to revive every absurd ceremony, and every antiquated folly, which the common sense of mankind has set to sleep. You will find at your return a fanatical Church of England, but pray do not let it prevent your return. We can always gather together, in Green Street, a chosen few who have never bowed the knee to Rimmon."

It may be questioned whether the Hermit of Green Street was very well qualified to settle the points at

1 In early life he wrote from Edinburgh :-"In England, I maintain, (except among ladies in the middle rank of life) there is no religion at all. The Clergy of England have no more influence over the people at large than the Cheesemongers of England."

issue between the "Puseyites" and himself, or had bestowed very close attention on what is, after all, mainly a question of Documents. In earlier days, when it suited his purpose to argue for greater liberality towards Roman Catholics, he had said :

"In their tenets, in their church-government, in the nature of their endowments, the Dissenters are infinitely more distant from the Church of England than the Catholics are."

In 1813 he had intervened in the controversy which raged round the cradle of that most pacific institution, the British and Foreign Bible Society, and had taken the unexpectedly clerical view that Churchmen were bound to "circulate the Scriptures with the Prayer Book, in preference to any other method." But he grounded a claim to promotion on the fact that he had "always avoided speculative, and preached practical, religion." He spoke of a "theological" bishop in the sense of dispraise, and linked the epithet with "bitter" and "bustling." Beyond question he had read the Bible, but he was not alarmingly familiar with the sacred text. It is reported that he once referred to the case of the man who puts his hand to the plough and looks back 2 as being "somewhere in the Epistles." He forgot the names of Job's daughters, until reminded by a neighbouring Squire who had called his greyhounds Jemima, Kezia, and Keren-Happuch. He attributed the Nunc Dimittis to an author vaguely but conveniently known as "The Psalmist," and by so doing drew down on himself the ridicule of Wilson

1 By Mr. Stuart Reid.

2 St. Luke ix. 62.

Croker.1 It may be questioned whether he ever read the Prayer Book except in Church. With the literature of Christian antiquity he had not, so far as his writings show, the slightest acquaintance; and his knowledge of Anglican divines-Wake, and Cleaver, and Sherlock, and Horsley-has a suspicious air of having been hastily acquired for the express purpose of confuting Bishop Marsh. So we will not cite him as a witness in a case where the highest and deepest mysteries of Revelation are involved, and where a minute acquaintance with documents is an indispensable equipment. We prefer to take leave of him as a Christian preacher, seeking only the edification of his hearers. In a sermon on the Holy Communion, preached from the pulpit of St. Paul's, he delivers this striking testimony to a religious truth, which, if stated in a formal proposition, he would probably have disavowed :

:

"If you, who only partake of this Sacrament, cannot fail to be struck with its solemnity, we who not only receive it, but minister it to every description of human beings, in every season of peril and distress, must be intimately and deeply pervaded by that feeling. To know the power of this Sacrament, give it to him whose doom is sealed, who in a

1 "What can we think of the fitness of a man to address his Queen and his country in the dogmatical strain of this pamphlet, who does not know the New Testament from the Old; the Psalms from the Gospel, David from Simeon; who expatiates so pompously on the duty and benefit of prayer, yet mistakes and miscalls a portion of the Common Prayer, which he is bound in law and in conscience to repeat every evening of his life.”—Quarterly Review, July 1837.

The reference is to the Sermon on the Queen's Accession. The blunder was rectified in a later edition.

few hours will be no more. The Bread and the Wine are his immense hope! they seem to stand between him and infinite danger, to soothe pain, to calm perturbation, and to inspire immortal courage."

What is the conclusion of the whole matter? It is, in my judgment, that Sydney Smith was a patriot of the noblest and purest type; a genuinely religious man according to his light and opportunity; and the happy possessor of a rich and singular talent which he employed through a long life in the willing service of the helpless, the persecuted, and the poor. To use his own fine phrase, the interests of humanity "got into his heart and circulated with his blood."1 He wrote and spoke and acted in prompt and uncalculating obedience to an imperious conviction.—

"If," he said, "you ask me who excites me, I answer you, it is that Judge Who stirs good thoughts in honest hearts-under Whose warrant I impeach the wrong, and by Whose help I hope to chastise it."

Here was both the source and the consecration of that glorious mirth by which he still holds his place in the hearts and on the lips of men. His playful speech was the vehicle of a passionate purpose. From his earliest manhood, he was ready to sacrifice all that the sordid world thinks precious for Religious Equality and Rational Freedom.

1 He said this of Lord Grey.

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