on religious thought in Oxford at the critical time when it appeared.  But it had defects, and the moment was against it.  It was dry and formal—­inevitably so, from the scientific plan deliberately adopted for it; it treated as problems of the theological schools, to be discussed by the rules of severe and passionless disputation, questions which were once more, after the interval of more than a century, beginning to touch hearts and consciences, and were felt to be fraught with the gravest practical issues.  And Mr. Newman, in his mode of dealing with them, unsystematic, incomplete, unsatisfactory in many ways as it was, yet saw in them not abstract and scholastic inquiries, however important, but matters in which not only sound argument, but sympathy and quick intelligence of the conditions and working of the living minds around him, were needed to win their attention and interest.  To persons accustomed to Mr. Newman’s habit of mind and way of writing, his ease, his frankness, his candour, his impatience of conventionality, his piercing insight into the very centre of questions, his ever-ready recognition of nature and reality, his range of thought, his bright and clear and fearless style of argument, his undisplayed but never unfelt consciousness of the true awfulness of anything connected with religion, any stiff and heavy way of treating questions which he had treated would have seemed unattractive and unpersuasive.  He had spoiled his friends for any mere technical handling, however skilful, of great and critical subjects.  He himself pointed out in a review the unique merit and the real value of Mr. Palmer’s book, pointing out also, significantly enough, where it fell short, both in substance and in manner.  Observing that the “scientific” system of the English Church is not yet “sufficiently cleared and adjusted,” and adding a variety of instances of this deficiency, he lets us see what he wanted done, where difficulties most pressed upon himself, and where Mr. Palmer had missed the real substance of such difficulties.  Looking at it by the light of after-events, we can see the contradiction and reaction produced by Mr. Palmer’s too optimist statements.  Still, Mr. Newman’s praise was sincere and discriminating.  But Mr. Palmer’s book, though never forgotten, scarcely became, what it at another time might well have become, an English text-book.

FOOTNOTES: 

[68] Whately’s Life, ed. 1875, pp. 187-190.

[69] Advertisement to vol. i. 1st Nov. 1834.

[70] Apologia, p. 139.

[71] Vide Lyra Apostolica, Nos. 170, 172: 

  How shall I name thee, Light of the wide West,
    Or heinous error-seat?... 
  Oh, that thy creed were sound! 
  For thou dost soothe the heart, thou Church of Rome,
  By thy unwearied watch and varied round
  Of service, in thy Saviour’s holy home.

And comp.  No. 171, The Cruel Church.