o Mr.
Gladstone described it, to bring home to the reader the impression that
there is something or other called the Gospel, "which whatever it may be,"
as was said by an old pagan poet of the Deity,(114) has formidable claims
not merely on the intellectual condescension, but on the loyal allegiance
and humble obedience of mankind. The book violently displeased both sides.
It used language that could not be consistently employed in treating of
Christianity from the orthodox point of view. On the other hand, it
constituted "a grave offence in the eyes of those to whom the chequered
but yet imposing fabric of actual Christianity, still casting its majestic
light and shadow over the whole civilised world, is a rank eyesore and an
intolerable offence." Between these two sets of assailants Mr. Gladstone
interposed with a friendlier and more hopeful construction.(115) He told
those who despised the book as resting on no evidence of the foundations
on which it was built, and therefore as being shallow and uncritical, that
we have a right to weigh the nature of the message, apart from the
credentials of the messenger. Then he reassured the orthodox by the hope
that "the present tendency to treat the old belief of man with a
precipitate, shallow, and unexamining disparagement" is only a passing
distemper, and that to the process of its removal the author of the book
would have the consolation and the praise of having furnished an earnest,
powerful, and original contribution.(116) Dean Milman told him that he had
brought to life again a book that after a sudden and brief yet brilliant
existence seemed to be falling swiftly into oblivion. The mask of the
anonymous had much to do, he thought, with its popularity, as had happened
to the _Vestiges of Creation_. Undoubtedly when the mask fell off,
interest dropped.

(M47) Dr. Pusey found the book intensely painful. "I have seldom," he told
Mr. Gladstone, "been able to read much at a time, but shut the book for
pain, as I used to do with Renan's." What revolted him was not the
exhibition of the human nature of the central figure, but of a human
nature apart from and inconsistent with its divinity; the writer's
admiring or patronising tone was loathsome. "What you have yourself
written," Pusey said, "I like much. But its bearings on _Ecce Homo_ I can
hardly divine, except by way of contrast." Dr. Newman thought that here
was a case where _materiam superabat opus_, and that Mr. Gladstone'