iritual
character as first and foremost and above all things essentially a
religious society of divine institution, not dependent on the creation
or will of man, or on the privileges and honours which man might think
fit to assign to it; and he had undoubtedly familiarised the minds of
many with this way of regarding it, however imperfect, or cloudy, or
unpractical they might find the development of his ideas, and his
deductions from them. And in Oxford the questions which had stirred the
friends at Hadleigh had stirred others also, and had waked up various
responses. Whately's acute mind had not missed these questions, and had
given original if insufficient answers to them. Blanco White knew only
too well their bearing and importance, and had laboured, not without
success, to leave behind him his own impress on the way in which they
should be dealt with. Dr. Hampden, the man in Oxford best acquainted
with Aristotle's works and with the scholastic philosophy, had thrown
Christian doctrines into a philosophical calculus which seemed to leave
them little better than the inventions of men. On the other hand, a
brilliant scholar, whose after-career was strangely full of great
successes and deplorable disasters, William Sewell of Exeter College,
had opened, in a way new to Oxford, the wealth and magnificence of
Plato; and his thoughts had been dazzled by seeming to find in the
truths and facts of the Christian Church the counterpart and realisation
of the grandest of Plato's imaginations. The subjects treated with such
dogmatic severity and such impetuous earnestness in the Tracts were, in
one shape or another, in all men's minds, when these Tracts broke on the
University and English society with their peremptory call to men "to
take their side."

There was just a moment of surprise and uncertainty--uncertainty as to
what the Tracts meant; whether they were to be a new weapon against the
enemies of the Church, or were simply extravagant and preposterous
novelties--just a certain perplexity and hesitation at their conflicting
aspects; on the one hand, the known and high character of the writers,
their evident determination and confidence in their cause, the
attraction of their religious warmth and unselfishness and nobleness,
the dim consciousness that much that they said was undeniable; and on
the other hand, the apparent wildness and recklessness of their words:
and then public opinion began steadily to take its "ply," and