se men, she seems to say, who see no
difficulties in the world, you little know on what shaky ground you
stand, and how easily you might be reduced to absurdity. You critical
and logical intellects, who silence all comers and cannot be answered,
and can show everybody to be in the wrong--into what monstrous and
manifest paradoxes are you not betrayed, blind to the humble facts
which upset your generalisations, not even seeing that dulness itself
can pronounce you mistaken!

In the presence of such a narrative as this, sober men will think more
seriously than ever about charging their most extreme opponents with
dishonesty and disregard to truth.

As we said before, this history seems to us to leave the theological
question just where it was. The objections to Rome, which Dr. Newman
felt so strongly once, but which yielded to other considerations, we
feel as strongly still. The substantial points of the English theory,
which broke down to his mind, seem to us as substantial and trustworthy
as before. He failed, but we believe that, in spite of everything,
England is the better for his having made his trial. Even Liberalism
owes to the movement of which he was the soul much of what makes it now
such a contrast, in largeness of mind and warmth, to the dry,
repulsive, narrow, material Liberalism of the Reform era. He, and he
mainly, has been the source, often unrecognised and unsuspected, of
depth and richness and beauty, and the strong passion for what is
genuine and real, in our religious teaching. Other men, other
preachers, have taken up his thoughts and decked them out, and had the
credit of being greater than their master.

In looking back on the various turns and vicissitudes of his English
course, we, who inherit the fruits of that glorious failure, should
speak respectfully and considerately where we do not agree with him,
and with deep gratitude--all the more that now so much lies between
us--where we do. But the review makes us feel more than ever that the
English Church, whose sturdy strength he underrated, and whose
irregular theories provoked him, was fully worthy of the interest and
the labours of the leader who despaired of her. Anglicanism has so far
outlived its revolutions, early and late ones, has marched on in a
distinct path, has developed a theology, has consolidated an
organisation, has formed a character and tone, has been the organ of a
living spirit. The "magnetic storms" of thought which sweep