But a great change took place in 1832. Earnest men, as we have seen, arose at Oxford, who devoted themselves to the study of certain Anglo-Catholic divines and Greek and Latin fathers. Some of them introduced ritualistic practices, older than the Reformation. The change under Henry VIII. and Elizabeth was approved by them no further than as it wiped away stains from the face of popery. I recollect a High Church layman telling me he liked an ornate service, but that he was left far behind by the newly advanced party. I have myself witnessed ceremonies in Anglican churches so nearly approaching the Romanistic that only a practised eye could discern the difference. There were, however, men of another order, who had a liking for Anglo-Catholic theology, but eschewed revived ceremonialism; and I have heard a High Churchman in Westminster Abbey preach such a sermon on the necessity of the Holy Spirit for the salvation of souls as, with a few expressions, a Methodist might have delivered. He pronounced a glowing eulogium on John Wesley. On one side this clergyman appeared a warm-hearted Evangelical, on the other, he was a staunch High Churchman. When I think of Evangelicals early in this century, they present a different class from men of the type just described. As a boy in Norwich I heard Simeon of Cambridge, and Legh Richmond of Turvey; and I remember them at this moment as they appeared in the autumn of that year to advocate the British and Foreign Bible Society. The former of the two does not come to my recollection so vividly as the latter; him I can now see, with his pleasant face, and large spectacles, mounting, with a lame foot, the pulpit stairs of St. Lawrence’s Church—attired, not in a white surplice, but in a black gown: nothing priestly in his appearance and manner. His sermon was on behalf of the Society for Promoting Christianity among Jews. He took for his text, “For thy servants take pleasure in her stones and favour the dust thereof.” With a soft, winning voice, and “a sweet reasonableness” he discoursed on the interest, which all Christians should feel in building up the Church of God, especially with stones gathered from ruins of the House of Israel. In St Andrew’s Hall he spoke on behalf of the Bible Society, and related a conversation he had on the subject with the Emperor Alexander of Russia, when he visited England after the Napoleonic wars. He also told touching stories of what the Word of God could do for people amidst sins and sorrows. As to Charles Simeon, whom I heard, he did not penetrate like dew, but came down with hailstones and coals of fire. At a later period Episcopalians bestirred themselves in many parts of the country, and from end to end, in building and other efforts for church extension, and I recollect Dean Alford told me how surprised the Church Commissioners were at the liberal response given to challenges for aiding ecclesiastical objects.