Page:Hannah More (1887 Charlotte Mary Yonge British).djvu/101

Rh thanksgivings, it is because our hearts do not accompany our words!" Moreover, she demonstrates that conscientious objections to the Litany or the Athanasian Creed could hardly be the real cause of absence from church, since there were all the Sunday afternoons free from either, and eight-and-forty Sunday mornings without the Quicumque.

The Duke seems to have declared that religion was in a highly flourishing state, and he is answered by references to the Elizabethan and early Stuart days, when statesmen were far more openly zealous in piety. Miss More accepts, however, his praise of the period as "the Age of Benevolence," but argues most soundly that lavish gifts are of no avail without efforts at reforming the vices that cause poverty and misery; and then she plunges into a subject she afterwards pursued more fully, that of religious education, ending with drawing a beautiful picture of a true Christian life.

So much did it delight Bishop Porteous that, in allusion to Sir Thomas More's exclamation: "Aut Erasmus aut Diabolus," he wrote "Aut Morus aut Angelus."

Just after her return to Somersetshire, Miss More was greatly shocked. On a Sunday, in the midst of morning service, the congregations in the Bristol churches were startled by the bell and voice of the crier, proclaiming the reward of a guinea for a poor negro