sibility, conspicuously and almost alone, of pointing out
definitely and argumentatively the objections to Dr. Hampden's teaching.
The number of Mr. Newman's friends might be, as Mr. Palmer says,
insignificant, but it was they who had taken the trouble to understand
and give expression to the true reasons for alarm.[59] Even in this
hasty and imperfect way, the discussion revealed to many how much deeper
and more various the treatment of the subject was in the hands of Mr.
Newman and Dr. Pusey compared with the ordinary criticisms on Dr.
Hampden. He had learned in too subtle a school to be much touched by the
popular exceptions to his theories, however loudly expressed. The
mischief was much deeper. It was that he had, unconsciously, no doubt,
undermined the foundation of definite Christian belief, and had resolved
it into a philosophy, so-called scholastic, which was now exploded. It
was the sense of the perilous issues to which this diluted form of
Blanco White's speculations, so recklessly patronised by Whately, was
leading theological teaching in the University, which opened the eyes of
many to the meaning of the movement, and brought some fresh friends to
its side.

There was no attempt to form a party, or to proselytise; there was no
organisation, no distinct and recognised party marks. "I would not have
it called a party," writes Dr. Newman in the _Apologia_. But a party it
could not help being: quietly and spontaneously it had grown to be what
community of ideas, aims, and sympathies, naturally, and without blame,
leads men to become. And it had acquired a number of recognised
nicknames, to friends and enemies the sign of growing concentration. For
the questions started in the Tracts and outside them became of
increasing interest to the more intelligent men who had finished their
University course and were preparing to enter into life, the Bachelors
and younger Masters of Arts. One by one they passed from various states
of mind--alienation, suspicion, fear, indifference, blank
ignorance--into a consciousness that something beyond the mere
commonplace of religious novelty and eccentricity, of which there had
been a good deal recently, was before them; that doctrines and
statements running counter to the received religious language of the
day, doctrines about which, in confident prejudice, they had perhaps
bandied about off-hand judgments, had more to say for themselves than
was thought at first; that the question