ng, in our
mortal state (though supposedly God knows and has given a certain
amount of light) Newman calls Rationalism; and if God has spoken,
surely such Rationalism is irrational. The doctrine that there is no
positive truth in religion, that one creed is as good as another, and
that all is opinion, Newman calls Liberalism; but if God has revealed
the truth such Liberalism is false.

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 Je