starting, the actual movement
began in the conviction that a great and sudden danger to the Church was
at hand, and that an unusual effort must be made to meet it. But if the
occasion was in a measure accidental, there was nothing haphazard or
tentative in the line chosen to encounter the danger. From the first it
was deliberately and distinctly taken. The choice of it was the result
of convictions which had been forming before the occasion came which
called on them. The religious ideas which governed the minds of those
who led the movement had been traced, in outline at least, firmly and
without faltering.

The movement had its spring in the consciences and character of its
leaders. To these men religion really meant the most awful and most
seriously personal thing on earth. It had not only a theological basis;
it had still more deeply a moral one. What that basis was is shown in a
variety of indications of ethical temper and habits, before the
movement, in those who afterwards directed it. The _Christian Year_ was
published in 1827, and tells us distinctly by what kind of standard Mr.
Keble moulded his judgment and aims. What Mr. Keble's influence and
teaching did, in training an apt pupil to deep and severe views of truth
and duty, is to be seen in the records of purpose and self-discipline,
often so painful, but always so lofty and sincere, of Mr. Hurrell
Froude's journal. But these indications are most forcibly given in Mr.
Newman's earliest preaching. As tutor at Oriel, Mr. Newman had made what
efforts he could, sometimes disturbing to the authorities, to raise the
standard of conduct and feeling among his pupils. When he became a
parish priest, his preaching took a singularly practical and
plain-spoken character. The first sermon of the series, a typical
sermon, "Holiness necessary for future Blessedness," a sermon which has
made many readers grave when they laid it down, was written in 1826,
before he came to St. Mary's; and as he began he continued. No sermons,
except those which his great opposite, Dr. Arnold, was preaching at
Rugby, had appealed to conscience with such directness and force. A
passionate and sustained earnestness after a high moral rule, seriously
realised in conduct, is the dominant character of these sermons. They
showed the strong reaction against slackness of fibre in the religious
life; against the poverty, softness; restlessness, worldliness, the
blunted and impaired sense of truth, whi