hings into fresh
vitality, were followed by a revival, with new artillery and larger
strategy, of a standing war that is roughly described as the conflict
between reason and faith, between science and revelation. The
controversy of Laudian divines with puritans, of Hoadly with non-jurors,
of Hanoverian divines with deists and free-thinkers, all may seem now to
us narrow and dry when compared with such a drama, of so many
interesting characters, strange evolutions, and multiple and startling
climax, as gradually unfolded itself to Mr. Gladstone's ardent and
impassioned gaze.

His is not one of the cases, like Pascal, or Baxter, or Rutherford, or a
hundred others, where a man's theological history is to the world,
however it may seem to himself, the most important aspect of his career
or character. This is not the place for an exploration of Mr.
Gladstone's strictly theological history, nor is mine the hand by which
such exploration could be attempted. In the sphere of dogmatic faith,
apart from ecclesiastical politics and all the war of principles
connected with such politics, Mr. Gladstone, by the time when he was
thirty, had become a man of settled questions. Nor was he for his own
part, with a remarkable exception in respect of one particular doctrine
towards the end of his life, ever ready to re-open them. What is
extraordinary in the career of this far-shining and dominant character
of his age, is not a development of specific opinions on dogma, or
discipline, or ordinance, on article or sacrament, but the fact that
with a steadfast tread he marched along the high anglican road to the
summits of that liberalism which it was the original object of the new
anglicans to resist and overthrow.

The years from 1831 to 1840 Mr. Gladstone marked as an era of a
marvellous uprising of religious energy throughout the land; it saved
the church, he says. Not only in Oxford but in England he declares that
party spirit within the church had fallen to a low ebb. Coming
hurricanes were not foreseen. In Lord Liverpool's government patronage
was considered to have been respectably dispensed, and church reform
was never heard of.[81] This dreamless composure was rudely broken. The
repeal of the test and corporation Acts in 1828 first roused the church;
and her sons rubbed their eyes when they beheld parliament bringing
frankly to an end the odious monopoly of office under the crown, all
corporate office, all magistracy, in men willin