A fair idea may thus be formed of the State Church in its character of a veritable catholic, not less than a national, power. Improved organization does not always argue increased efficiency. The machinery of the Roman Empire was never more elaborate than when it was in a state of atrophy. Coinciding, however, with the unmistakable signs of spiritual life at home and abroad, the domestic resources and the foreign work of the national religion are tributes alike to the efficacy of the Church as a world-wide instrument of righteousness, and to the increased motive power of religion during the Victorian age. With the spiritual work that has been done, certain names very briefly must be associated. The Oxford Tractarianism between 1832-46 is only one of many manifestations of religious life which mark that epoch, and which nearly perplexed into infidelity the Oxford verger aforesaid. In extreme Evangelicalism outside our Church, the followers of Wesley, regardless of their founder's injunction not to form a separate sect, were perfecting their system when the reign began. In 1833, an English clergyman at Plymouth, J. L. Darby, left the National Church and founded the sect of 'Brethren' who take their name from the Western seaport where he had officiated. Fifteen years later, in 1848, Plymouth Brethrenism was itself divided by one of Darby's followers, named Newton; he created a clique of his own now called by their rival religionists, the loose, or open, Brethren. The missionary and literary activities of this little sect are really remarkable. In 1843 Presbyterianism across the Tweed had a schism of its own. The secession of Chalmers on the issue of State patronage resulted in the founding of the Free Kirk. The religious activity of the epoch has been universal. Among the older dissenting bodies, Congregationalists, in point of numbers, influence, in national repute of their leaders, perhaps come first. These in 1837, numbered 170,000 full members. Now they number nearly 400,000. Of the Baptists there were, in 1837, 125,000. Sixty years later they are 340,000. This increase is due to the single agency of C. H. Spurgeon, whose personal influence is not yet fully realized but may be judged from the circulation by millions of his posthumous Sermons, as well as by the pulpit imitations of him in all Communions, not excepting the high Anglican pulpits. Hence of course Nonconformist numbers depending largely on individual attractions, are subject to greater fluctuations than in the Establishment. Roman Catholics have increased in the large towns of England and in the Colonies. In 1837 their priests were less than 1,000. Fifty years later they were in round numbers 2,500. Their Churches have risen from 600 to 1,350. The activity of British Evangelicalism is farther shown by the doubling of the income of the British and Foreign Bible Society during the reign, by the cost of a New Testament being ten-pence in 1837, a penny in 1897.