nisters were helpless, as a marked incident now demonstrated. It was
not until 1883 that a serious attempt was made to change the law. The
Affirmation bill of that year has a biographic place, because it marks in
a definite way how far Mr. Gladstone's mind--perhaps not, as I have said
before, by nature or by instinct peculiarly tolerant--had travelled along
one of the grand highroads of human progress. The occasion was for many
reasons one of great anxiety. Here are one or two short entries, the
reader remembering that by this time the question was two years old:--

_April 24, Tuesday._--On Sunday night a gap of three hours in my
sleep was rather ominous; but it was not repeated.... Saw the
Archbishop of Canterbury, with whom I had a very long conversation
on the Affirmation bill and on _Church and State_. Policy
generally as well as on special subjects.... Globe Theatre in the
evening; excellent acting.... 25.... Worked on Oaths question....
26.... Made a long and _begeistert_(7) speech on the Affirmation
bill, taking the bull by the horns.

His speech upon this measure was a noble effort. It was delivered under
circumstances of unsurpassed difficulty, for there was revolt in the
party, the client was repugnant, the opinions brought into issue were to
Mr. Gladstone hateful. Yet the speech proved one of his greatest.
Imposing, lofty, persuasive, sage it would have been, from whatever lips
it might have fallen; it was signal indeed as coming from one so fervid,
so definite, so unfaltering in a faith of his own, one who had started
from the opposite pole to that great civil principle of which he now
displayed a grasp invincible. If it be true of a writer that the best
style is that which most directly flows from living qualities in the
writer's own mind and is a pattern of their actual working, so is the same
thing to be said of oratory. These high themes of Faith, on the one hand,
and Freedom on the (M8) other, exactly fitted the range of the thoughts in
which Mr. Gladstone habitually lived. "I have no fear of Atheism in this
House," he said; "Truth is the expression of the Divine mind, and however
little our feeble vision may be able to discern the means by which God may
provide for its preservation, we may leave the matter in His hands, and we
may be sure that a firm and courageous application of every principle of
equity and of justice is the best method we can adopt for the preserva