was to supply so amply.  But it was a blow struck, not before it was necessary, by a strong hand; and it may safely be said that it settled the place of the sacrament of baptism in the living system of the English Church, which the negations and vagueness of the Evangelical party had gravely endangered.  But two other essays appeared in the Tracts, most innocent in themselves, which ten or twenty years later would have been judged simply on their merits, but which at the time became potent weapons against Tractarianism.  They were the productions of two poets—­of two of the most beautiful and religious minds of their time; but in that stage of the movement it is hardly too much to say that they were out of place.  The cause of the movement needed clear explanations; definite statements of doctrines which were popularly misunderstood; plain, convincing reasoning on the issues which were raised by it; a careful laying out of the ground on which English theology was to be strengthened and enriched.  Such were Mr. Newman’s Lectures on Justification, a work which made its lasting mark on English theological thought; Mr. Keble’s masterly exposition of the meaning of Tradition; and not least, the important collections which were documentary and historical evidence of the character of English theology, the so-called laborious Catenas.  These were the real tasks of the hour, and they needed all that labour and industry could give.  But the first of these inopportune Tracts was an elaborate essay, by Mr. Keble, on the “Mysticism of the Fathers in the use and interpretation of Scripture.”  It was hardly what the practical needs of the time required, and it took away men’s thoughts from them; the prospect was hopeless that in that state of men’s minds it should be understood, except by a very few; it merely helped to add another charge, the vague but mischievous charge of mysticism, to the list of accusations against the Tracts.  The other, to the astonishment of every one, was like the explosion of a mine.  That it should be criticised and objected to was natural; but the extraordinary irritation caused by it could hardly have been anticipated.  Written in the most devout and reverent spirit by one of the gentlest and most refined of scholars, and full of deep Scriptural knowledge, it furnished for some years the material for the most savage attacks and the bitterest sneers to the opponents of the movement.  It was called “On Reserve in communicating Religious Knowledge”; and it was a protest against the coarseness and shallowness which threw the most sacred words about at random in loud and declamatory appeals, and which especially dragged in the awful mystery of the Atonement, under the crudest and most vulgar conception of it, as a ready topic of excitement in otherwise commonplace and helpless preaching.  The word “Reserve” was enough.  It meant that the Tract-writers avowed the principle of keeping back part of the counsel of God.  It meant, further, that the real spirit of the party was