EFFECT OF THE REFORMATION
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That then was 'religion', and nothing else was deserving of the name! And 'religious' was a title which might not be given to parents and children, husbands and wives, men and women fulfilling faithfully and holily in the world the several duties of their stations, but only to those who had devised such a self-chosen service for themselves."[1]
This radically false conception of the meaning and value of human life was carried into every household and neighbourhood by the ubiquitous monastic system, and by the multitudes of preaching friars. It is hard for us now to realise the dominating place in mediæval Europe held by the monastic institutions. At the dissolution of the monasteries in England there had been already a considerable reduction in the number, but, even so, Henry VIII.'s Government dissolved more than eight hundred houses, some of them very small, but many of them splendid and famous,[2]
Every Englishman grew up in the neigh-
