ting work of calling these thoughts into question,
and cross-examining himself upon their grounds and tenableness. He
tried too much; the multiplicity of his intellectual interests was too
much for him, and he often thought that he was explaining when he was
but weaving a wordy tissue, and "darkening counsel" as much as any of
the theological sciolists whom he denounced. People, for instance,
must, it seems to us, be very easily satisfied who find any fresh light
in the attempt, not unfrequent in his letters, to adapt the Lutheran
watchword of Justification by faith to modern ideas. He was very rapid,
and this rapidity made him hasty and precipitate; it also made him apt
to despise other men, and, what was of more consequence, the
difficulties of the subject likewise. Others did not always find it
easy to understand him; and it may fairly be questioned if he always
sufficiently asked whether he understood himself. He was generous and
large-spirited in intention, though not always so in fact.

Doubtless so much knowledge, so much honest and unsparing toil, such
freshness and quickness of thought, have not been wasted; there will
always be much to learn from Bunsen's writings. But his main service
has been the moral one of his example; of his ardent and high-souled
industry, of his fearlessness in accepting the conclusions of his
inquiries, of his untiring faith through many changes and some
disappointments that there is a way to reconcile all the truths that
interest men--those of religion, and those of nature and history. The
sincerity and earnestness with which he attempted this are a lesson to
everybody; his success is more difficult to recognise, and it may
perhaps be allowable to wish that he had taken more exactly the measure
of the great task which he set to himself. His ambition was a high one.
He aspired to be the Luther of the new 1517 which he so often dwelt
upon, and to construct a theology which, without breaking with the
past, should show what Christianity really is, and command the faith
and fill the opening thought of the present. It can hardly be said that
he succeeded. The Church of the Future still waits its interpreter, to
make good its pretensions to throw the ignorant and mistaken Church of
the Past into the shade.

XVII

COLERIDGE'S MEMOIR OF KEBLE[20]

[20]
_A Memoir of the Rev. John Keble_. By the Right Hon. Sir J.T.
Coleridge. _Saturday Review_, 20th March 1860.

Mr. Keble h