They endeavor, and often
successfully, to enlist these feelings in the service of piety. Music,
painting, and architecture, they consecrate as the handmaids of
religion. Thus they attract an order of men chiefly found among the most
cultivated classes, whose hearts must be reached through their
imagination rather than their understanding.... In the same spirit the
writers of this party have contributed to the religious literature of
the day many admirable works which under the guise of fiction teach the
purest Christianity, and exemplify its bearing in every detail of common
life. To the training of childhood especially they have rendered most
valuable aid, by thus embodying the precepts of the Gospel. But we need
not do more than allude to works so universally known and valued as
those of Miss Sewell, Mr. Adams, and Bishop Wilberforce. Again the
revival of the High Church party has effected an important improvement
among the clergy. Many of these were prejudiced by hereditary dislike
against the doctrines and the persons of the Evangelicals, and by this
prejudice, were repelled from religion.
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