evere and
passionless disputation, questions which were once more, after the
interval of more than a century, beginning to touch hearts and
consciences, and were felt to be fraught with the gravest practical
issues. And Mr. Newman, in his mode of dealing with them, unsystematic,
incomplete, unsatisfactory in many ways as it was, yet saw in them not
abstract and scholastic inquiries, however important, but matters in
which not only sound argument, but sympathy and quick intelligence of
the conditions and working of the living minds around him, were needed
to win their attention and interest. To persons accustomed to Mr.
Newman's habit of mind and way of writing, his ease, his frankness, his
candour, his impatience of conventionality, his piercing insight into
the very centre of questions, his ever-ready recognition of nature and
reality, his range of thought, his bright and clear and fearless style
of argument, his undisplayed but never unfelt consciousness of the true
awfulness of anything connected with religion, any stiff and heavy way
of treating questions which he had treated would have seemed
unattractive and unpersuasive. He had spoiled his friends for any mere
technical handling, however skilful, of great and critical subjects. He
himself pointed out in a review the unique merit and the real value of
Mr. Palmer's book, pointing out also, significantly enough, where it
fell short, both in substance and in manner. Observing that the
"scientific" system of the English Church is not yet "sufficiently
cleared and adjusted," and adding a variety of instances of this
deficiency, he lets us see what he wanted done, where difficulties most
pressed upon himself, and where Mr. Palmer had missed the real substance
of such difficulties. Looking at it by the light of after-events, we can
see the contradiction and reaction produced by Mr. Palmer's too
optimist statements. Still, Mr. Newman's praise was sincere and
discriminating. But Mr. Palmer's book, though never forgotten, scarcely
became, what it at another time might well have become, an English
text-book.

FOOTNOTES:

[68] Whately's _Life_, ed. 1875, pp. 187-190.

[69] Advertisement to vol. i. 1st Nov. 1834.

[70] _Apologia_, p. 139.

[71] Vide _Lyra Apostolica_, Nos. 170, 172:

How shall I name thee, Light of the wide West,
Or heinous error-seat?...
Oh, that thy creed were sound!
For thou dost soothe the heart, thou Church of Rome,
By thy unwearied