To others again, as we have already said, the working of the Holy Spirit meant a gentle warming of the heart, or a gush of pious emotion. 'All warmed by prayer', in a well-known hymn, is an example of the depths to which religious verse can descend.
We shall do well, indeed, not to despise the work of grace in its slenderest manifestations or among the least of God's little ones. There must be many to whom little more than a faint sensation is possible; but we need not therefore encourage—as modern religion in its prayers, hymns, and preaching has encouraged—the idea that a sentimental man is the noblest work of God, I remember a chapter in the record of his work by that good mission-priest, Robert Dolling,[1] called 'Our Saints'; and hardly one of those parochial saints is quite right in the head. We have too often not asked and not expected more from the picked members of our churches than ambiguous religiosity and a patient endurance of our sermons. We have been content with negative virtues; and we sometimes find ourselves not a little disturbed at the foolishness which surrounds us, masquerading as good churchmanship or as a state of salvation.
Now the Christian Church long ago bore her testimony about such perversions of the doctrine of inspiration. She did it by the strongest insist-
