It can scarcely be contested that his conceptions of that truth were, in some grave respects, defective.  The absolute dominion and overruling providence of God are always present to his mind, and he urges as the ground of all virtuous effort the Character and Example of Christ.  But the notion of Atonement finds no place in his thought.  The virtuous will attain to eternal blessedness, and the vicious will perish in their vices.  The free pardon of confessed sin—­access to happiness through a Divine Mediation—­in a word, the Doctrine of the Cross—­seems, as far as his recorded utterances go, to have been quite alien from his system of religion.  The appeal to personal experience of sinfulness, forgiveness, and acceptance, he would have dismissed as mere enthusiasm—­and he declared in his sermon on the Character and Genius of the Christian Religion, that “the Gospel has no enthusiasm.”  That it once was possible for a clergyman to utter these five words as containing an axiomatic truth, marks, perhaps as plainly as it is possible for language to mark it, the change effected in the religion of the Church of England by the successive action of the Evangelical Revival and of the Oxford Movement.

Sydney Smith’s firm belief, from first to last, was that Religion was intended to make men good and happy in daily life.  This was “the calm tenor of its language,” and the “practical view” of its rule.  And, as far as it goes, no one can quarrel with the doctrine so laid down.  After staying with some Puritanical friends, he wrote:—­

“I endeavour in vain to give them more cheerful ideas of religion:  to teach them that God is not a jealous, childish, merciless tyrant; that He is best served by a regular tenour of good actions,—­not by bad singing, ill-composed prayers, and eternal apprehensions.  But the luxury of false religion is, to be unhappy!”

It was probably this strong conviction that everything pertaining to religion ought to be bright and cheerful, that led him, as far back as the days when he was preaching in Edinburgh, to urge the need for more material beauty in public worship.—­

“No reflecting man can ever wish to adulterate manly piety (the parent of all that is good in the world) with mummery and parade.  But we are strange, very strange creatures, and it is better perhaps not to place too much confidence in our reason alone.  If anything, there is, perhaps, too little pomp and ceremony in our worship, instead of too much.  We quarrelled with the Roman Catholic Church, in a great hurry and a great passion; and, furious with spleen, clothed ourselves with sackcloth, because she was habited in brocade; rushing, like children, from one extreme to another, and blind to all medium between complication and barrenness, formality and neglect.  I am very glad to find we are calling in, more and more, the aid of music to our services.  In London, where it can be commanded, good music has a prodigious