ns of awful perplexity which equally before
and after his change Dr. Newman makes. Those who have never doubted,
who can no more imagine the practical difficulties accompanying a great
change of belief than they can imagine a change of belief itself, will
meet with much that to them will seem beyond pardon, in the actual
events of a change, involving such issues and such interests, made so
deliberately and cautiously, with such hesitation and reluctance, and
in so long a time; they will be able to point to many moments in it
when it will be easy to say that more or less ought to have been said,
more or less ought to have been done. Much more will those who are on
the side of doubt, who acquiesce in, or who desire the overthrow of
existing hopes and beliefs, rejoice in such a frank avowal of the
difficulties of religion and the perplexities of so earnest a believer,
and make much of their having driven such a man to an alternative so
obnoxious and so monstrous to most Englishmen. It is a book full of
minor premisses, to which many opposite majors will be fitted. But
whatever may be thought of many details, the effect and lesson of the
whole will not be lost on minds of any generosity, on whatever side
they may be; they will be touched with the confiding nobleness which
has kept back nothing, which has stated its case with its weak points
and its strong, and with full consciousness of what was weak as well as
of what was strong, which has surrendered its whole course of conduct,
just as it has been, to be scrutinised, canvassed, and judged. What we
carry away from following such a history is something far higher and
more solemn than any controversial inferences; and it seems almost like
a desecration to make, as we say, capital out of it, to strengthen mere
argument, to confirm a theory, or to damage an opponent.

The truth, in fact, is, that the interest is personal much more than
controversial. Those who read it as a whole, and try to grasp the
effect of all its portions compared together and gathered into one,
will, it seems to us, find it hard to bend into a decisive triumph for
any of the great antagonist systems which appear in collision. There
can be no doubt of the perfect conviction with which Dr. Newman has
taken his side for good. But while he states the effect of arguments on
his own mind, he leaves the arguments in themselves as they were, and
touches on them, not for the sake of what they are worth, but to
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