What went before that, however, in the way of liberal religious thinking, though informal in its nature, should not be ignored. It was the work of the poets of the end of the eighteenth and of the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. The culmination of the great revolt against the traditional in state and society and against the conventional in religion, had been voiced in Britain largely by the poets. So vigorous was this utterance and so effective, that some have spoken of the contribution of the English poets to the theological reconstruction. It is certain that the utterances of the poets tended greatly to the dissemination of the new ideas. There was in Great Britain no such unity as we have observed among the Germans, either of the movement as a whole or in its various parts. There was a consecution nothing less than marvellous in the work of the philosophers from Kant to Hegel. There was a theological sequence from Schleiermacher to Ritschl. There was an unceasing critical advance from the days of Strauss. There was nothing resembling this in the work of the English-speaking people. The contributions were for a long time only sporadic. The movement had no inclusiveness. There was no aspect of a solid front in the advance. In the department of the sciences only was the situation different. In a way, therefore, it will be necessary in this chapter merely to single out individuals, to note points of conflict, one and another, all along the great line of advance. Or, to put it differently, it will be possible to pursue a chronological arrangement which would have been bewildering in our study heretofore. With the one great division between the progressive spirits and the men of the reaction, it will be possible to speak of philosophers, critics and theologians together, among their own contemporaries, and so to follow the century as it advances.