But how can Newman have had _reasons_ for his course? we may incredulously ask. And here I revert to my particular state of mind years ago. The question for me was, holding as I did that in Jesus, God had spoken to the world, and that under God he was the Lord, and Saviour, and Judge of men, could I remain standing in such a position? It was a starting-point, but did it not lead somewhere? Holding so much, despite the difficulties, was it not possible that consistently therewith, I must hold more, despite further difficulties? Looking about me among Unitarians, with whom I was then associated, I felt that even this faith had scant acceptance among them. For example, taking a country church for a year, I found that not in a decade or more had there been any additions to the church membership, or even efforts in that direction; the church was, practically, simply an assemblage of pew-holders. My own efforts to induce persons to confess Jesus as their Lord, to take his name, to become his avowed follower before the world (i. e. to join his church), were something novel; yet a church, an assembly of followers, was essential to my idea of Christianity,--Jesus having said, "Whoever will confess me before men, him will I confess before my Father who is in heaven," and a king without a kingdom (or right to a kingdom) being in itself absurd. I could not help the foreboding that Unitarianism was not a finality or more than a camp for a night; nay, the question was whether Unitarianism was not doing more to dissipate Christianity, than to build it up in any historical sense of the term.