Page:Dr Stiggins, His Views and Principles.pdf/149

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

Dr. Stiggins:

Miss Yonge, for example, was technically, I believe, a member of the Establishment, and her pages are here and there tainted with Anglican doctrine. And yet I know of no work which is more distinctly representative of our principles than hers. Those doctors and ministers in the country or in country towns, always with enormous families, the daily round of life under such conditions so faithfully and patiently described, without haste, without rest, are as good in their way as anything that George Eliot accomplished, and as remote from the fever-heated and unwholesome atmosphere of Romanism and Ritualism and "art" as can be well imagined. We smell no fumes of incense here, our eyes are not dazzled with the sheen of strange vestments, with the complexities of antique architecture—for I have always felt quite sure that the church built by Ethel at Cocksmoor would have been one in which, with few alterations, I could have gladly ministered. Even when the peculiarities of the Establishment are mentioned, we suffer no shock,

144