s
observations were more valuable for their own sake, than as a
recommendation or defence of the book:--

_Jan. 9, 1868._--I hope I have followed you correctly, says Newman:
your main proposition seems to be, that whereas both Jew and
Gentile had his own notion of an heroic humanity, and neither of
them a true notion, the one being political, the other even
immoral, the first step necessary for bringing in the idea of an
Emmanuel into the world, was to form the human mould into which it
'might drop,' and thus to supplant both the Judaic and the heathen
misconception by the exhibition of the true idea. Next, passing
from antecedent probabilities to history, the order of succession
of the synoptical and the fourth gospels does in fact fulfil this
reasonable anticipation. This seems to me a _very great_ view, and
I look forward eagerly to what you have still to say in
illustration of it. The only objection which I see can be made to
it is, that it is a clever controversial expedient after the event
for accounting for a startling fact. This is an objection not
peculiar to it, but to all explanations of the kind. Still, the
question remains--whether it is a fact that the sacred writers
recognise, however indirectly, the wise economy which you assert,
or whether it is only an hypothesis?

As to the specific principles and particular opinions in Mr. Gladstone's
criticism of what we now see to have been a not very effective or deeply
influential book, we may think as we will. But the temper of his review,
the breadth of its outlook on Christian thought, tradition, and society,
show no mean elements in the composition of his greatness. So, too, does
the bare fact that under the pressure of office and all the cares of a
party leader in a crisis, his mind should have been free and disengaged
enough to turn with large and eager interest to such themes as these. This
was indeed the freedom of judgment with which, in the most moving lines of
the poem that he loved above all others, Virgil bidding farewell to Dante
makes him crowned and mitred master of himself--_Perch' io te sopra te
corono e mitrio._(117)

IV

(M48) Other strong gusts swept the high latitudes, when Dr. Colenso,
Bishop of Natal, published certain destructive criticisms upon the
canonical Scriptures. His metropolitan at Cape Town pronounced sentence of
deprivation; Colenso appea