In writing of Newman as I have, I have been moved by old attachment and personal veneration. But if I have incidentally contributed to show that a Catholic need not necessarily be either a weak man or a dishonest one, as is sometimes taken for granted among Liberals, I shall not be sorry. My opinion is that Newman differed from the stock Protestantism of his day, largely because he sought out light and sought it with a mind which for eagerness, keenness, subtlety, depth, has rarely been surpassed; that he left the Church of England because it was neither fish nor fowl--and rationality and consistency were not in it; that he went to Rome, because, taking his premises for granted, reason pointed that way. And yet the guarded way in which I have spoken has probably been noticed by my readers. I have not said that reason, abstractly speaking, was on his side, but that starting from his premises his course was reasonable--his premises being those to which most Christians hold. The difference was that he took them seriously and they became living principles, germs of ample growth in his mind, while others held them unthinkingly; that he had the rare power of realizing his ideas, while others took them as mechanically as we often take the stars at night--points of light they are to us and nothing more. But whether his premises were really sound is another question. My mature judgment is that they were not; had I been able to hold my Christian faith as I once held it, could I have resisted the solvents that science, and criticism, and philosophy were bringing to bear upon it, I should have gone I know not where; as it is, I am a Liberal (though not in Newman's sense). The ordinary idea of God I cannot hold, nor does it seem likely that I shall ever hold an idea of God with which the idea of a special revelation would be congruous; and even were the ordinary idea of God a true one, I think that the matter-of-fact evidence of a revelation through Jesus is insufficient. Reluctant as I was to admit it, struggle as I might against it, the share of Jesus in the errors and illusions of his time (the sense of which grew upon me) made it impossible for me at last to absolutely trust his consciousness; however great, however sublime a figure he was, it appeared that he belonged after all to our fallible humanity. Hence in my view we were thrown back on ourselves; we may have great and consoling beliefs about life and its purpose, about death and what lies beyond, about the fathomless Power from which we come and on whose bosom we rest; but a revelation we have not; they are beliefs which we ourselves form and do not receive from without. Rationalism, though not in the sense in which Newman used it, becomes the only method; and Liberalism, in the sense that whatever creed one may hold none can claim to be infallible, or of exclusive divine authority, and that good men of different creeds should respect and