mbination in him,
of deep reverence for the old language of dogmatic theology, and an
energetic maintenance of its fitness and value, with dissatisfaction,
equally deep and impartially universal, at the interpretations put on
this dogmatic language by modern theological schools, and at the modes
in which its meaning is applied by them both in directing thought and
influencing practice. This habit of distinguishing sharply and
peremptorily between dogmatic language and the popular reading of it at
any given time is conspicuous in his earliest as in his latest handling
of these subjects; in the pamphlet of 1835, _Subscription no Bondage_,
explaining and defending the old practice at Oxford; and in the papers
and letters, which have appeared from him in periodicals, on the
Athanasian Creed, and which are, we suppose, almost his last writings.

The world at large thought Mr. Maurice obscure and misty, and was, as
was natural, impatient of such faults. The charge was, no doubt, more
than partially true; and nothing but such genuine strength and
comprehensive power as his could have prevented it from being a fatal
one to his weight and authority. But it is not uninstructive to
remember what was very much at the root of it. It had its origin, not
altogether, but certainly in a great degree, in two of his moral
characteristics. One was his stubborn, conscientious determination, at
any cost of awkwardness, or apparent inconsistency, or imperfection of
statement, to say out what he had to say, neither more nor less, just
as he thought it, and just as he felt it, with the most fastidious care
for truthful accuracy of meaning. He never would suffer what he
considered either the connection or the balance and adjustment of
varied and complementary truths to be sacrificed to force or point of
expression; and he had to choose sometimes, as all people have, between
a blurred, clumsy, and ineffective picture and a consciously incomplete
and untrue one. His choice never wavered; and as the artist's aim was
high, and his skill not always equally at his command, he preferred the
imperfection which left him the consciousness of honesty. The other
cause which threw a degree of haze round his writings was the personal
shape into which he was so fond of throwing his views. He shrunk from
their enunciation as arguments and conclusions which claimed on their
own account and by their own title the deference of all who read them;
and he submitted t