ousand excellences, but a blot it would remain; just as we
should feel a handsome man disfigured by the loss of an eye or a hand.
And so, again, if a professing Christian made the Almighty a being of
simple benevolence, and He was, on the contrary, what the Church of
England teaches, a God who punishes for the sake of justice, such a
person was making an idol or unreality the object of his religion, and
(apart from more serious thoughts about him) so far he could not respect
him. Thus the principle of dogmatism gradually became an essential
element in Charles's religious views.

Gradually, and imperceptibly to himself; for the thoughts which we have
been tracing only came on him at spare times, and were taken up at
intervals from the point at which they were laid down. His lectures and
other duties of the place, his friends and recreations, were the staple
of the day; but there was this undercurrent ever in motion, and sounding
in his mental ear as soon as other sounds were hushed. As he dressed in
the morning, as he sat under the beeches of his college-garden, when he
strolled into the meadow, when he went into the town to pay a bill or
make a call, when he threw himself on his sofa after shutting his oak at
night, thoughts cognate with those which have been described were busy
within him.

Discussions, however, and inquiries, as far as Oxford could afford
matter for them, were for a while drawing to an end; for Trinity Sunday
was now past, and the Commemoration was close at hand. On the Sunday
before it, the University sermon happened to be preached by a
distinguished person, whom that solemnity brought up to Oxford; no less
a man than the Very Rev. Dr. Brownside, the new Dean of Nottingham, some
time Huntingdonian Professor of Divinity, and one of the acutest, if not
soundest academical thinkers of the day. He was a little, prim,
smirking, be-spectacled man, bald in front, with curly black hair
behind, somewhat pompous in his manner, with a clear musical utterance,
which enabled one to listen to him without effort. As a divine, he
seemed never to have had any difficulty on any subject; he was so clear
or so shallow, that he saw to the bottom of all his thoughts: or, since
Dr. Johnson tells us that "all shallows are clear," we may perhaps
distinguish him by both epithets. Revelation to him, instead of being
the abyss of God's counsels, with its dim outlines and broad shadows,
was a flat, sunny plain, laid out with st