ttle and transitory man
is, how dependent and feeble, longs to lean upon him for support. But
He is _outside_ of the heart, like a beautiful sunset, and seems to
have nothing to do with it: there is no getting into contact with Him,
to press against Him. Yet where rather should the weak rest than on
the strong, the creature of the day than on the Eternal, the imperfect
than on the Centre of Perfection? And where else should God dwell than
in the human heart? for if God is in the universe, among things
inanimate and unmoral, how much more ought He to dwell with our souls!
and they, too, seem to be infinite in their cravings: who but He can
satisfy them? Thus a restless {149} instinct agitates the soul,
guiding it dimly to feel that it was made for some definite but unknown
relation towards God. The sense of emptiness increases to positive
uneasiness, until there is an inward yearning, if not shaped in words,
yet in substance not alien from that ancient strain, "As the hart
panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, O God;
my soul is athirst for God, even for the Living God."'[8]

Mr. Newman, in his later days, we understand, had modified the
bitterness of his opposition to historical Christianity and was ready
to avow himself as a disciple of Christ.

Miss Frances Power Cobbe was another devout spirit who, with less
violence but equal decisiveness, accepted Theism as apart from
Christianity. In her case, even more visibly than in Mr. Newman's, it
was not Christianity which she rejected, but sundry distortions of it
with which it had in her mind become {150} identified. She wrote not a
few articles so permeated with the Christian spirit and imbued with the
Christian hope that the most ardent believer in Christ could read them
with entire approval and own himself their debtor. She took an active
part in many philanthropic movements, and she was an earnest and
eloquent advocate of faith in the Divine Ordering of the world and in
human immortality.

'Theism,' she said, 'is not Christianity _minus_ Christ, nor Judaism
_minus_ the miraculous legation of Moses, nor any other creed
whatsoever merely stripped of its supernatural element. It is before
all things the positive affirmation of the Absolute Goodness of God:
and if it be in antagonism to other creeds, it is principally because
of, and in proportion to, their failure to assert that Goodness in its
infinite and all-embracing completeness.'[