eir religion. And yet, the Bible, it was
severally claimed, gave the basis to the Presbyterian creed, to the
Methodist creed, to, one might say, a hundred creeds, even including
the slender one of Unitarians. How certain words of Newman came home
to me in the midst of such reflections! "There is an overpowering
antecedent improbability in Almighty God's announcing that He has
revealed something, and then revealing nothing; there is no antecedent
improbability in His revealing it elsewhere than in an inspired
volume." I do not mean to say that I was converted by Newman; but I
was open to light on that side. I did not shut my mind, as most
Protestants seemed to, and I dimly felt, I had a sort of foreboding
that, if what I already held was true, reason might be on his side.
And it was reason--the demand for a set of views that should be
harmonious and consistent--that made me dissatisfied; and so I could
give credit to the idea that Newman in his changes, and in his final
act, was influenced by reason.

To Newman, the main difficulty of all lay in the being of God. If
there was a God, it seemed rational to him that there should be a
revelation, taking into account the actual condition of men. If there
was a revelation, the Catholic Church presented more signs of being
its bearer and custodian than any other body or institution of men. I
think if we are disposed to question the rationality of his course, we
shall find, if we examine the matter carefully, that it is because we
question his postulates, not his reasoning or results. Granted that
there is a God, as men ordinarily understand that term, and I think
that a revelation is antecedently probable; granted that a revelation
has been made, as Protestants (save Unitarians) are agreed, and I
think it but reasonable to suppose that some such body as the Catholic
Church claims to be should be its bearer and unerring interpreter to
men. We are mistaken if we think that Newman devised any short-cut to
mental peace, or used any other instrument or method for arriving at
his results than we ordinarily employ in sound reasonings of every
day. He claimed no intuitions, no vision of theological truth, and he
was less arbitrary and fanciful in defending Catholic dogma than I
have known "philosophers" to be in defending the being of God and the
immortality of the soul. He tells us in his _Apologia_ that he
believed in a God on a ground of probability, that he believed in
Christianit