RELIGION THE MAINSPRING

All his activities were in his own mind one. This, we can hardly repeat
too often, is the fundamental fact of Mr. Gladstone's history. Political
life was only part of his religious life. It was religion that prompted
his literary life. It was religious motive that, through a thousand
avenues and channels stirred him and guided him in his whole conception
of active social duty, including one pitiful field of which I may say
something later. The liberalism of the continent at this epoch was in
its essence either hostile to Christianity or else it was indifferent;
and when men like Lamennais tried to play at the same time the double
part of tribune of the people and catholic theocrat, they failed. The
old world of pope and priest and socialist and red cap of liberty fought
on as before. In England, too, the most that can be said of the leading
breed of the political reformers of that half century, with one or two
most notable exceptions, is that they were theists, and not all of them
were even so much as theists.[123] If liberalism had continued to run in
the grooves cut by Bentham, James Mill, Grote, and the rest, Mr.
Gladstone would never have grown to be a liberal. He was not only a
fervid practising Christian; he was a Christian steeped in the fourth
century, steeped in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Every man
of us has all the centuries in him, though their operations be latent,
dim, and very various; in his case the roots were as unmistakeable as
the leafage, the blossom, and the fruits. A little later than the date
with which we are now dealing (May 9, 1854)--and here the date matters
little, for the case was always the same--he noted what in hours of
strain and crisis the Bible was to him:--

On most occasions of very sharp pressure or trial, some word of
scripture has come home to me as if borne on angels' wings. Many
could I recollect. The Psalms are the great storehouse. Perhaps I
should put some down now, for the continuance of memory is not to
be trusted. 1. In the winter of 1837, Psalm 128. This came in a
most singular manner, but it would be a long story to tell. 2. In
the Oxford contest of 1847 (which was very harrowing) the verse--'O
Lord God, Thou strength of my health, Thou hast covered my head in
the day of battle.' 3. In the Gorham contest, after the judgment:
'And though all this be come upon us, yet do we