Newman's 'confidence towards God' was of a still nobler kind. It rested on an unclouded faith in the Divine guidance, and on a very just estimate of the worthlessness of contemporary praise and blame. There have been very few men who have been able to combine so strong a faith with a thorough distrust of both logic-chopping and emotional excitement, and who, while denying themselves these aids to conviction, have been able to say, calmly and without petulance, that with them it is a very small thing to be judged of man's judgment. 'What (he asks) can increase their peace who believe and trust in the Son of God? Shall we add a drop to the ocean, or grains to the sand of the sea? We pay indeed our superiors full reverence, and with cheerfulness as unto the Lord; and we honour eminent talents as deserving admiration and reward; and the more readily act we thus, because these are little things to pay.'[89] Such unworldliness as this, in the well-chosen words of R.H. Hutton, 'stands out in strange and almost majestic contrast to the eager turmoil of confused passions, hesitating ideals, tentative virtues, and groping philanthropies, amidst which it was lived.' Another mark of greatness is unbroken consistency and unity of aim in a long life. There are few parallels to the neglect of his own literary reputation by Newman. Higher interests, he thought, were at stake; and so he had no dream of building for himself 'a monument more durable than brass,' and of claiming a pedestal among the great writers of English prose and verse. He accepted long years of literary barrenness; he wrote historical essays for which he had no special aptitude, and dogmatic disquisitions which even his genius could not save from dulness; he even descended into mere journalism. The 'Apologia' would probably not have been written but for the accident of Kingsley's attack. It has, no doubt, been said with truth that Newman showed great dexterity in choosing opponents with whom to cross swords--Kingsley, Pusey, Gladstone, and his old Anglican self. But this does not alter the fact that a man who must have been conscious of rare literary gifts made no attempt to immortalise himself by them. It was for the Church, and not for himself, that he wrote as well as lived.