aims which nothing but the most irresistible counter-claims
could overcome or neutralise--the claims of a shipwrecked body cut off
from country and home, yet as a shipwrecked body still organised, and
with much saved from the wreck, and not to be deserted, as long as it
held together, in an uncertain attempt to rejoin its lost unity.
Resignation, retirement, silence, lay communion, the hope of ultimate,
though perhaps long-deferred reunion--these were his first thoughts.
Misgivings could not be helped, would not be denied, but need not be
paraded, were to be kept at arm's-length as long as possible. This is
the picture presented in the autobiography of these painful and dreary
years; and there is every evidence that it is a faithful one. It is
conceivable, though not very probable, that such a course might go on
indefinitely. It is conceivable that under different circumstances he
might, like other perplexed and doubting seekers after truth, have
worked round through doubt and perplexity to his first conviction. But
the actual result, as it came, was natural enough; and it was
accelerated by provocation, by opponents without, and by the pressure of
advanced and impatient followers and disciples in the party itself.

2. This last was the second of the two influences spoken of above. It
worked from below, as the first worked from above.

Discussions and agitations, such as accompanied the movement, however
much under the control of the moral and intellectual ascendancy of the
leaders, could not of course be guaranteed from escaping from that
control. And as the time went on, men joined the movement who had but
qualified sympathy with that passionate love and zeal for the actual
English Church, that acquaintance with its historical theology, and that
temper of discipline, sobriety, and self-distrust, which marked its
first representatives. These younger disciples shared in the growing
excitement of the society round them. They were attracted by visible
height of character, and brilliant intellectual power. They were alive
to vast and original prospects, opening a new world which should be a
contrast to the worn-out interest of the old. Some of these were men of
wide and abstruse learning; quaint and eccentric scholars both in habit
and look, students of the ancient type, who even fifty years ago seemed
out of date to their generation. Some were men of considerable force of
mind, destined afterwards to leave a mark on their