do, and who would be startled at seeing that realised in particulars which they confess in an abstract form.  Many there are who do not at all feel that it is capable of a practical application; and while they bring it forward on special occasions, in formal expositions of faith, or in answer to a direct interrogatory, let it slip from their minds almost entirely in their daily conduct or their religious teaching, from the long and inveterate habit of thinking and acting without it.  We must not, then, at all be surprised at finding that to modify the principles and motives on which men act is not the work of a day; nor at undergoing disappointments, at witnessing relapses, misconceptions, sudden disgusts, and, on the other hand, abuses and perversions of the true doctrine, in the case of those who have taken it up with more warmth than discernment.

From the end of 1835, or the beginning of 1836, the world outside of Oxford began to be alive to the force and the rapid growth of this new and, to the world at large, not very intelligible movement.  The ideas which had laid hold so powerfully on a number of leading minds in the University began to work with a spell, which seemed to many inexplicable, on others unconnected with them.  This rapidity of expansion, viewed as a feature of a party, was noticed on all sides, by enemies no less than friends.  In an article in the British Critic of April 1839, by Mr. Newman, on the State of Religious Parties, the fact is illustrated from contemporary notices.

There is at the present moment a reaction in the Church, and a growing reaction, towards the views which it has been the endeavours [of the Tract writers] and, as it seemed at the commencement, almost hopeless endeavours, to advocate.  The fairness of the prospect at present is proved by the attack made on them by the public journals, and is confessed by the more candid and the more violent among their opponents.  Thus the amiable Mr. Bickersteth speaks of it as having manifested itself “with the most rapid growth of the hot-bed of these evil days.”  The scoffing author of the Via Media says:  “At this moment the Via is crowded with young enthusiasts who never presume to argue, except against the propriety of arguing at all.”  The candid Mr. Baden-Powell, who sees more of the difficulties of the controversy than the rest of their antagonists pot together, says that it is clear that “these views ... have been extensively adopted, and are daily gaining ground among a considerable and influential portion of the members, as well as the ministers of the Established Church.”  The author of the Natural History of Enthusiasm says:  “The spread of these doctrines is in fact having the effect of rendering all other distinctions obsolete.  Soon there will be no middle ground left, and every man, especially every clergyman, will be compelled to make his choice between the two.” ...  The Bishop of Chester speaks of the subject “daily assuming a more serious and alarming aspect”:  a gossiping writer of the moment describes these doctrines as having insinuated themselves not only into popular churches and fashionable chapels, and the columns of newspapers, but “into the House of Commons.”

And the writer of the article goes on:—­