way in which he touched into life old truths, moral or spiritual, which all Christians acknowledge, but most have ceased to feel—­when he spoke of “unreal words,” of the “individuality of the soul,” of the “invisible world,” of a “particular Providence,” or again, of the “ventures of faith,” “warfare the condition of victory,” “the Cross of Christ the measure of the world,” “the Church a Home for the lonely.”  As he spoke, how the old truth became new; how it came home with a meaning never felt before!  He laid his finger how gently, yet how powerfully, on some inner place in the hearer’s heart, and told him things about himself he had never known till then.  Subtlest truths, which it would have taken philosophers pages of circumlocution and big words to state, were dropt out by the way in a sentence or two of the most transparent Saxon.  What delicacy of style, yet what strength! how simple, yet how suggestive! how homely, yet how refined! how penetrating, yet how tender-hearted!  If now and then there was a forlorn undertone which at the time seemed inexplicable, you might be perplexed at the drift of what he said, but you felt all the more drawn to the speaker. ...  After hearing these sermons you might come away still not believing the tenets peculiar to the High Church system; but you would be harder than most men, if you did not feel more than ever ashamed of coarseness, selfishness, worldliness, if you did not feel the things of faith brought closer to the soul.—­John Keble, by J. C. Shairp, Professor of Humanity, St. Andrews (1866), pp. 12-17.

I venture to add the judgment of another contemporary, on the effect of this preaching, from the Reminiscences of Sir F. Doyle, p. 145:—­

That great man’s extraordinary genius drew all those within his sphere, like a magnet, to attach themselves to him and his doctrines.  Nay, before he became a Romanist, what we may call his mesmeric influence acted not only on his Tractarian adherents, but even in some degree on outsiders like myself.  Whenever I was at Oxford, I used to go regularly on Sunday afternoons to listen to his sermon at St. Mary’s, and I have never heard such preaching since.  I do not know whether it is a mere fancy of mine, or whether those who know him better will accept and endorse my belief, that one element of his wonderful power showed itself after this fashion.  He always began as if he had determined to set forth his idea of the truth in the plainest and simplest language—­language, as men say, “intelligible to the meanest understanding.”  But his ardent zeal and fine poetical imagination were not thus to be controlled.  As I hung upon his words, it seemed to me as if I could trace behind his will, and pressing, so to speak, against it, a rush of thoughts, of feelings which he kept struggling to hold back, but in the end they were generally too strong for him, and poured themselves out in a torrent of eloquence all the more impetuous from having