popular reading.[93] In prose
literature, in subtler forms than the verse of Shelley, new dissolving
elements appeared that were destined to go far. Schleiermacher, between
1820 and 1830, opened the sluices of the theological deep, whether to
deluge or to irrigate. In 1830 an alarming note was sounded in the
publication by a learned clergyman of a history of the Jews. We have
seen (p. 56) how Mr. Gladstone was horrified by it. Milman's book was
the beginning of a new rationalism within the fold. A line of thought
was opened that seemed to make the history of religious ideas more
interesting than their truth. The special claims of an accepted creed
were shaken by disclosing an unmistakeable family likeness to creeds
abhorred. A belief was deemed to be accounted for and its sanctity
dissolved, by referring it historically to human origins, and showing it
to be only one branch of a genealogical trunk. Historic explanation
became a graver peril than direct attack.

IV

NEW IDEAS AND TENDENCIES

The first skirmish in a dire conflict that is not even now over or near
its end happened in 1836. Lord Melbourne recommended for the chair of
divinity at Oxford Dr. Hampden, a divine whose clumsy handling of nice
themes had brought him, much against his intention, under suspicion of
unsound doctrine, and who was destined eleven years later to find
himself the centre of a still louder uproar. Evangelicals and
Tractarians flew to arms, and the two hosts who were soon to draw their
swords upon one another, now for the first time, if not the last,
swarmed forth together side by side against the heretic. What was rather
an affront than a penalty was inflicted upon Hampden by a majority of
some five to one of the masters of arts of the university, and in accord
with that majority, as he has just told us, though he did not actually
vote, was Mr. Gladstone. Twenty years after, when he had risen to be a
shining light in the world's firmament, he wrote to Hampden to express
regret for the injustice of which in this instance 'the forward
precipitancy of youth' had made him guilty.[94] The case of Hampden gave
a sharp actuality to the question of the relations of church and crown.
The particular quarrel was of secondary importance, but it brought home
to the high churchmen what might be expected in weightier matters than
the affair of Dr. Hampden from whig ministers, and confirmed th