glorified, always in the human sense, but beyond the ordinary
measure. It is worked out through the medium of a being--one ought
to say a character, but I withhold the word, for there is no
sufficient substratum of character to uphold the qualities--gifted
with much intellectual subtlety and readiness, and almost every
conceivable moral excellence. He finds vent in an energetic
attempt to carry his new gospel among the skilled artisans of
London, whom the writer apparently considers as supplying the
_norm_ for all right human judgment. He has extraordinary success,
establishes a new church under the name of the new Christian
brotherhood, kills himself with overwork, but leaves his project
flourishing in a certain "Elgood Street." It is in fact (like the
Salvation Army), a new Kirche der Zukunft.

I am always inclined to consider this Theism as among the least
defensible of the positions alternative to Christianity. Robert
Elsmere who has been a parish clergyman, is upset entirely, as it
appears, by the difficulty of accepting miracles, and by the
suggestion that the existing Christianity grew up in an age
specially predisposed to them.

I want as usual to betray you into helping the lame dog over the
stile; and I should like to know whether you would think me
violently wrong in holding that the period of the Advent was a
period when the appetite for, or disposition to, the supernatural
was declining and decaying; that in the region of human thought,
speculation was strong and scepticism advancing; that if our Lord
were a mere man, armed only with human means, His whereabouts was
in this and many other ways misplaced by Providence; that the
gospels and the New Testament must have much else besides miracle
torn out of them, in order to get us down to the _caput mortuum_
of Elgood Street. This very remarkable work is in effect identical
with the poor, thin, ineffectual production published with some
arrogance by the Duke of Somerset, which found a quack remedy for
difficulties in what he considered the impregnable citadel of
belief in God.

Knowles has brought this book before me, and being as strong as it
is strange, it cannot perish still-born. I am tossed about with
doubt as to writing upon it.

_To Lord Acton._

_Oxford, April 8, '88._--I am grateful for your m