ce it had become Utilitarian and
empirical; while it had yet insisted upon holding on to the
essentially irrational element.

The religious tradition was becoming untenable in this sense at the
same time as the political tradition. If radicalism in both were to be
effectually resisted, some better foundation must be found for
conservatism. I should be tempted to say that a critical period was
approaching, did I not admit that every period can always be described
as critical. In fact, however, thoughtful people, perceiving on the
one hand that the foundations of their creed were shaking, and yet
holding it to be essential to their happiness, began to take a new
position. The 'Oxford movement,' started soon afterwards, implied a
conviction that the old Protestant position was as untenable as the
radical asserted. Its adherents attempted to find a living and visible
body whose supernatural authority might maintain the old dogmatic
system. Liberal thinkers endeavoured to spiritualise the creed and
prove its essential truths by philosophy, independently of the
particular historical evidence. The popular tendency was to admit in
substance that the dogmas most assailed were in fact immoral: but to
put them into the background, or, if necessary, to explain them away.
The stress was to be laid not upon miracles, but upon the moral
elevation of Christianity or the beauty of character of its founder.
The 'unsectarian' religion, represented in the most characteristic
writings of the next generation, in Tennyson and Browning, Thackeray
and Dickens, reflects this view. Such men detested the coarse and
brutalising dogmas which might be expounded as the true 'scheme of
salvation' by ignorant preachers seeking to rouse sluggish natures to
excitement; but they held to religious conceptions which, as they
thought, really underlay these disturbing images, and which, indeed,
could hardly be expressed in any more definite form than that of a
hope or a general attitude of the whole character. The problem seemed
to be whether we shall support a dogmatic system by recognising a
living spiritual authority, or frankly accept reason as the sole
authority, and, while explaining away the repulsive dogmas, try to
retain the real essence of religious belief.

II. CONTEMPORARY THOUGHT

If I were writing a general history of opinion, it would be necessary
to discuss the views of Mill's English contemporaries; to note their
attitude in regard to th