Читать книгу The Great Revival of the Eighteenth Century: with a supplemental chapter on the revival in America онлайн

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With abundant wealth and means of happiness, the people fell far short of what we should consider comfort now. Life and liberty were cheap, and a prevalent Deism or Atheism was united to a wild licentiousness of manners, brutalising all classes of society. For the most part, the Church of England had so shamefully forgotten or neglected her duty—this is admitted now by all her most ardent ministers—while the Noncomformists had sunk generally into so cold an indifferentism in devotion, and so hard and sceptical a frame in theology, that every interest in the land was surrendered to profligacy and recklessness, and, in thoughtful minds, to despair. Society in general was spiritually dead. The literature of England, with two or three famous exceptions, suffered a temporary eclipse. Such as it was, it was perverted from all high purposes, and was utterly alien to all purity and moral dignity. A good idea of the moral tone of the times might be obtained by running the eye over a few volumes of the old plays of this period, many of them even written by ladies; it is amazing to us now to think not only that they could be tolerated, but even applauded. The gaols were filled with culprits; but this did not prevent the heaths, moors, and forests from swarming with highwaymen, and the cities with burglars. In the remote regions of England, such as Cornwall in the west, Yorkshire and Northumberland in the north, and especially in the midland Staffordshire, the manners were wild and savage, passing all conception and description. We have to conceive of a state of society divested of all the educational, philanthropic, and benevolent activities of modern times. There were no Sunday-schools, and few day-schools; here and there, some fortunate neighbourhood possessed a grammar-school from some old foundation. Or, perhaps some solitary chapel, retreating into a bye-lane in the metropolitan city, or the country town, or, more probably, far away from any town, stood at some confluence of roads, a monument of old intolerance; but, as we said, religious life was in fact dead, or lying in a trance.