like children playing with edged tools, not knowing that they would cut, or with fire, not knowing that it would burn. There are two new dogmas in what has been defined about Scripture first that Scripture is inspired. In the decree of Trent the Apostles are declared to be inspired, and they, thus inspired, are the fountain-head both of tradition and Scripture. Bouvier, I think, says that inspiration in Scripture is not defined, though it is certissimum.' Secondly, that by ་ the Testamenta' is meant not the Covenants, but the collection of books constituting the Bible, of which in consequence, as well as of the Covenants, God becomes the 'Auctor.' . . . It seems to me that a perfectly new platform of doctrines is created, as regards our view of Scripture, by these new Canons-so far as this, that, if their primary and surface meaning is to be evaded, it must be by a set of explanations heretofore not necessary. Indeed, the whole Church platform seems to me likely to be off its ancient moorings it is like a ship which has gradually swung round, or taken up a new position.1 Tradition broken down, assent replaced by evasion. Was it worth having come so far to find so little? Was it not impossible either for a Church or for the individual believer to stand outside the essential movement of things? After the definition, Newman hoped, it appears, for some concerted action on the part of the minority bishops. When none came, he consoled himself by the relative moderation. of the formula. 'Pius has been overruled; I believe he wished for a much more stringent dogma than he has got.' And the fall of the Temporal Power in the same year seemed to him significant. It suggests the thought that to be at once infallible in religion and a despot in temporals is perhaps too great for mortal men.'2 Newman's elevation to the cardinalate under Leo XIII -an act at once wise and gracious-was one of the many hopeful signs with which the new reign opened; and it is pleasant to think that in the evening of his days the cloud lifted that had pressed on him so heavily and so long. It was, perhaps, natural that his friends should 1 Ward, Life of Newman, ii. 294-5. 2 Ibid., ii. 380. overestimate its significance. To the Pope, who did not know English, Newman was little more than a name. The appointment, he was told, would give satisfaction in England; and it was urged upon him by persons whom he wished to oblige. His policy was one of conciliation; he wished to establish a modus vivendi with civilisation, to make the Papacy (which had fallen into contempt under his predecessor) respected, to heal old sores. More than this he could not do-perhaps would not have done if he could. And his pontificate, important as it was, was an episode; with Pius X the reaction came. Newman did not live to see it. He passed He passed 'ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem' on August 11, 1890. It is not to be regretted that, disillusioned as he was, and injusta noverca as he had found the Church of his adoption, he remained a Roman Catholic. The Reformation standpoint was not his; the fiction of Anglo-Catholicism could not have held him. I can understand a Catholic turning Liberal; my imagination fails as to the attempt to turn him into a Puseyite,' he wrote in 1868; and though his influence led, and still leads, men to what he would have called Liberalism, a Liberal he was not and had never been. Manning was accustomed to say that temper had been his ruin. It would have been truer to say that temperament was the key to his career. It was temperament that led him to the Tractarian Movement, to Rome, and to anti-Vaticanism; the personal factor always plays the decisive part. The vulgarity of Ultramontanism offended him; he was not of that world. The entourage of Pius IX left a bad taste in the mouth. It is impossible to conceive him taking part in such a correspondence as that which passed between Manning and Talbot, anything like an appeal to ignorance was distasteful to him; he was repelled by the Univers,' under Veuillot, and the 'Tablet,' under Herbert Vaughan. He saw that the policy of the Vatican was overreaching itself; it was in the interest of Catholicism that he minimised the Syllabus and opposed the Definition of 1870. And passus est humani aliquid.' 1 Ward, Life of Newman, ii. 71. A less sensitive man than he would have resented the succession of slights to which he had been subjected by men notoriously his inferiors mentally and morally. He resented them deeply and bitterly; no one was less disposed than he to suffer gladly either fools or insolence. He left a profound mark, both on the Church of his birth and on that of his adoption. The Oxford Movement meant a practical religious revival: more zeal, more devotion, more and-in many ways-more efficient work. But its foundation was insecure. In the world of ideas it was a negligible quantity; and though still dominant in the Church and among the clergy, there are signs that it has now about reached its height, and that it must soon begin to break up owing to certain internal contradictions which the enthusiasm of its adherents has hitherto masked or ignored.'1 The discrepancy between the theory and the facts is too radical to be blinked; the more we learn of Christian origins the more clearly these point to another reading of history. Nor has it increased the influence of the Church in this country. 'It is necessary to insist (since the contrary is so often asserted) that the last seventy years of Church life have been for the Church a period of decline.' The Church is weaker and Dissent stronger than when the Oxford Movement began. In the Church of Rome Newman's influence has been for breadth and moderation. His philosophy of religion has kept Catholics in the Church who would otherwise have fallen away from her; the doctrine of Probability offered a way of escape to those who were unconvinced by the 'proofs' of the Scholastics; that of Development to those who recognised the gulf which lay between primitive, or even patristic, Christianity and Rome. It may be a question how far it is desirable to keep men in a Church under a misconception of her teaching and tendencies. It is a compromise, and, like all compromises, inconsistent. But it has its uses, and may serve in a transition time. Newman will live in literature as the author of a fascinating religious autobiography; in history as the 1 W. R. Inge, in The Churchman, February 1912. 2 Ibid. author of the Essay on Development.' The book is a striking anticipation of the Evolution philosophy; the application of this to theology marked a turning-point in religious thought. To many he was, and is, a prophet. To others he was a false prophet, from whose influence they have detached themselves hardly and after many years. The English Church owes him little; he deflected her course for close upon a century. Anglicanism of the ecclesiastical type owes him much; more than any one man he was its creator. Catholicism owes him more: he restored its prestige and its poetry; like the pious sons of Noah he went backwards' and threw a veil over its shame. He was a great magician; his spells made the dead live, and called the things that are not as though they were. But the efficacy of such spells vanishes with darkness. I awoke, and behold it was a dream.' Yet surely he was a great man, more surely still an unhappy one; the impression of melancholy deepens at every page. The might-have-beens of history are an unprofitable field of speculation. Mr. Birrell enlarges, plausibly enough, on the futility of the supposition that 'if he had not been brought up an evangelical, if he had learned German, if he had married, if he had been made an archdeacon-all would have been different.' Yet it is impossible to resist the conviction that the accident of birth placed him in the very time and in the very circumstances least propitious to the development of his genius on the lines of life. A Cardinal of the Roman Church is not, to say the least of it, more obviously a shipwreck than a dean or even a bishop of the English Establishment.' It may be so. But men may be divided into two classes, according as they face onwards or backwards. And the tragedy of Newman's life is that, with his rare gifts, his in many ways unsurpassed powers, and his unique personality, he was the father of them that look back. III. LOISY THE temper of eighteenth-century Catholicism differed in many respects from that of the Catholicism of to-day. It was learned, moderate, unaggressive. Religious and secular society had arrived at a modus vivendi : there was less talk about religion, but not, perhaps, less religion than now. If it be urged that the age was somewhat at ease in Zion, it may be answered that much depends on the way in which this objection is put. It possessed a sense of proportion, and, in general, of the harmony of existence; it took to heart the counsel of the Preacher not to be righteous overmuch.' Muratori was its scholar; Benedict XIV, lettered and urbane, its pontiff the author of the Universal Prayer lived and died a Catholic; nor was his orthodoxy questioned by his contemporaries; it was a later generation that took exception to his 'Jehovah, Jove, or Lord.' Theology was coloured by the easy philosophy of the time. Neither went to the root of things, or possessed the inductive basis that has been laid by later science. But the practical conclusions of each were tolerable: good sense and good temper made up for defective method and imperfect knowledge of fact. The older Ultramontanism had died out; the new was unborn : to those who looked back upon it, the age seemed like that of the Antonines-a golden age. On this century, so tolerant, so progressive, so optimistic, the Revolution broke like a tornado, leaving destruction in its train. It passed: men rose and looked round them. Society, civil and religious, lay in ruins; the old landmarks, the old shelters, were gone. 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