ture of Divinity, in which He arrays Himself
to become apprehensible by the finite intellect; and a Science that
tries to understand everything explains nothing. Authority, instead of
being discarded, is invoked to deliver men out of the great waters of
spiritual and political anarchy. The Tractarians struck in with a
fierce attack on Rationalism, propounding Faith and Revelation as
imperative grounds of belief. You must accept the dogmas, not as
useful, not as moral or reasonable, not even as derived intuitively,
but as the necessary fundamental truths declared by the infallible
Church to be essential to salvation. Those who could not find
infallibility in a State Church went over to Rome, abandoning the Via
Media; others were content with the high sacramental position of
Anglicanism; the moderate Rationalists took shelter with the Broad
Church; a few retreated into the cloudy refuge of transcendental
idealism. The two extreme parties, the Broad Church and the
Sacerdotalists, were at bitter feud with each other; yet they both
denounced the common enemy. Arnold 'agreed with Carlyle that the
Liberals greatly overrate Bentham, and the political economists
generally; the _summum bonum_ of their science is not identical with
human life ... and the economical good is often, from the neglect of
other points, a social evil.' Newman held that to allow the right of
private judgment was to enter upon the path of scepticism; and the
latest infidel device, he says, is to leave theology alone. He set up
the argument, well-worn but always impressive, that science gives no
certainty; and Mr. Stephen contends against it with the weapons of
empiricism:--

'The scientific doctrines must lay down the base to which all other
truth, so far as it is discoverable, must conform. The essential
feature of contemporary thought was just this: that science was
passing from purely physical questions to historical, ethical, and
social problems. The dogmatist objects to private judgment or free
thought on the ground that, as it gives no criterion, it cannot
lead to certainty. His real danger was precisely that it leads
irresistibly to certainty. The scientific method shows how such
certainty as is possible must be obtained. The man of science
advocates free inquiry precisely because it is the way to truth,
and the only way, though a way which leads through many errors.'

Mr. Stephen is himself a