AND ENGLISH CHURCH PRINCIPLES: PREPARED FOR PUBLICATION, AND LONDON: ELLIOT STOCK 62, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C. 1908 PREFACE THE following pages contain the main portion of a book written more than forty-five years ago by an Oxford layman during the latter part of a serious illness which kept him a prisoner on his bed for the greater part of ten years. He had suffered even as a boy from some obscure affection of the heart, and in 1852 was quite laid up. A letter written by him to his brother will give the reader an insight into his character: "DEAR JAMES, "43, ST. GILES', OXFORD, 66 December 12, 1854. "It is a long time since I attempted to write a note to anyone, but this day being my birthday, I have resolved to try my hand once more. I am forty-eight years of age to-day, and it is two years now since I have been under confinement with my last illness. You who get about actively amongst busy life can have little idea of the world in which I and thousands of sick people live, and it will surprise you, I dare say, when I tell you that if it could be said to me, 'Which two years of your life would you wish cancelled?' it would not be the two last. No; I reckon these last the most valuable of all the forty-eight, and only for this reason-viz., that I have learned more in them than in any other two. You would be surprised what a school the quiet bedroom constantly is, and how quickly one learns in it. I very often think this two years of seclusion should have occurred twenty years ago. Not that I have learned anything new-no, not so much that as that I have had time to examine everything I had before taken as a matter of course; and if I am any judge, V |