of working out the doctrinal mysteries that
this institution embodied, and with Mr. Gladstone to work out a thing in
his own mind always meant to expound and to enforce for the minds of
others. His pen was to him at once as sword and as buckler; and while
the book on _Church and State_, though exciting lively interest, was
evidently destined to make no converts in theory and to be pretty
promptly cast aside in practice, he soon set about a second work on
_Church Principles_. It is true that with the tenacious instinct of a
born controversialist, he still gave a good deal of time to constructing
buttresses for the weaker places that had been discovered by enemies or
by himself in the earlier edifice, and in 1841 he published a revised
version of _Church and State_.[111] But ecclesiastical discussion was by
then taking a new shape, and the fourth edition fell flat. Of _Church
Principles_, we may say that it was stillborn. Lockhart said of it, that
though a hazy writer, Gladstone showed himself a considerable divine,
and it was a pity that he had entered parliament instead of taking
orders. The divinity, however, did not attract. The public are never
very willing to listen to a political layman discussing the arcana of
theology, and least of all were they inclined to listen to him about the
new-found arcana of anglo-catholic theology. As Macaulay said, this time
it was a theological treatise, not an essay upon important questions of
government; and the intrepid reviewer rightly sought a more fitting
subject for his magician's gifts in the dramatists of the Restoration.
Newman said of it, 'Gladstone's book is not open to the objections I
feared; it is doctrinaire, and (I think) somewhat self-confident; but it
will do good.'

III

A few sentences more will set before us the earliest of his transitions,
and its gradual dates. He is writing about the first election at
Newark:--

It was a curious piece of experience to a youth in his twenty-third
year, young of his age, who had seen little or nothing of the
world, who resigned himself to politics, but whose desire had been
for the ministry of God. The remains of this desire operated
unfortunately. They made me tend to glorify in an extravagant
manner and degree not only the religious character of the state,
which in reality stood low, but also the religious mission of the
conservative party. There w