d mediaeval schoolmen have amassed words, and amassed nothing
else. One distinct discovery of a solid truth, however humble, is worth
all their labours. This condemnation applies not only to philosophy, but
to the religious embodiment of philosophy. No satisfactory conclusion
ever has been reached or ever will be reached in theological disputes.
On all such topics, he tells Mr. Gladstone, there has always been the
widest divergence of opinion. Nor are there better hopes for the future.
The ablest minds, he says in the Essay upon Ranke, have believed in
transubstantiation; that is, according to him, in the most ineffable
nonsense. There is no certainty that men will not believe to the end of
time the doctrines which imposed upon so able a man as Sir Thomas More.
Not only, that is, have men been hitherto wandering in a labyrinth
without a clue, but there is no chance that any clue will ever be found.
The doctrine, so familiar to our generation, of laws of intellectual
development, never even occurs to him. The collective thought of
generations marks time without advancing. A guess of Sir Thomas More is
as good or as bad as the guess of the last philosopher. This theory, if
true, implies utter scepticism. And yet Macaulay was clearly not a
sceptic. His creed was hidden under a systematic reticence, and he
resisted every attempt to raise the veil with rather superfluous
indignation. When a constituent dared to ask about his religious views,
he denounced the rash inquirer in terms applicable to an agent of the
Inquisition. He vouchsafed, indeed, the information that he was a
Christian. We may accept the phrase, not only on the strength of his
invariable sincerity, but because it falls in with the general turn of
his arguments. He denounces the futility of the ancient moralists, but
he asserts the enormous social value of Christianity.

His attitude, in fact, is equally characteristic of the man and his
surroundings. The old Clapham teaching had faded in his mind: it had not
produced a revolt. He retained the old hatred for slavery; and he
retained, with the whole force of his affectionate nature, reverence for
the school of Wilberforce, Thornton, and his own father. He estimated
most highly, not perhaps more highly than they deserved, the value of
the services rendered by them in awakening the conscience of the nation.
In their persistent and disinterested labours he recognised a
manifestation of the great social force of Chr