Oxford was the heart of clericism as well as Toryism, and the advance of Liberalism threatened the Anglican State Church, as well as the oligarchy of rotten boroughs. The Tractarian movement of sacerdotal reaction was already on foot. Gladstone imbibed the ecclesiastical as well as the political spirit of the place, and formed a friendship, which proved lasting, with the authors of the mediævalising movement. He published a defence of the Anglican State Church, which, as we know, was terribly cut up by Macaulay. The Reviewer, however, ends with a defence of religious establishments really weaker than anything in Gladstone. The State, according to Macaulay, though religion is not its proper business, has some time and energy to spare which it may usefully devote to the regulation of religion. Gladstone cast off by degrees his extreme Establishmentarianism. He came at last to disestablishing the Church in Ireland and pledging himself to disestablishment in Wales. But he remained firmly attached to the Church of England, encircled by High Church friends, who were really nearer to his heart than anybody else, deeply, even passionately, interested in all their questions, and an assiduous writer on their side. He was suspected of being a Papist. A Papist he certainly was not. No one could be more opposed to Papal usurpation. His special sympathy was with anti-Papal and anti-Infallibilist Catholics, such as Döllinger and Lord Acton. His religious faith was simple and profound; so simple that he continued in this sceptical age to believe in the plenary inspiration of the Bible, and in the Mosaic account of the Creation. He retained unshaken faith in Providence and in the efficacy of prayer. This in his meditations constantly and clearly appears. At the same time, he grew tolerant of free inquiry as a conscientious quest of truth. Many Nonconformists, the leaders especially, notwithstanding his Anglicanism and his suspected leanings to Rome, were drawn to him on broad grounds of religious sympathy, and lent him their political support. Lord Salisbury called him “a great Christian.” He could not have been more truly described. He had thought of taking Holy Orders. From this he had been happily deterred, but he seems to have been fond of officiating in a semi-clerical way by reading the lessons in Hawarden Church. Gladstone’s zeal in the service of his nation and humanity, his loyalty to right and hatred of tyranny and injustice, and his conscientious industry, were sustained by spiritual influences, and Christianity has a right to appeal to his character in support, not of its dogmas, but of its principles.