sts against the irreverence of examination fell on deaf ears. The
answer was the simple insistance on investigation. The very reluctance
to permit it was an indication that it would not bear investigation.

At the opening of the century, this idea, expressed in varying forms,
was rapidly becoming prevalent. The citadel of the Church was
assaulted, by some with ferocity, and by others with scorn and
contempt. The defence was on the old lines of denunciation of the
wickedness of the assailants, of vituperative epithets, and of the
assumption of special and divine illumination. The issue of the
conflict would not have been doubtful, had it been continued with
these tactics. The Church would have been relegated to the limbo of
superstition and the hide-bound pedantry of ecclesiasticism, if new
defenders on new principles had not entered the lists. Reinforcement
came from a band of philosophic thinkers of whom Wordsworth and
Coleridge were the pioneers. The influence of both these men was
underestimated at the time. They appeared weak and ineffective, but
the ideas to which they gave expression, entered the minds of stronger
men, who applied them with more vigorous force. The Church, Coleridge
declared, as Carlyle interprets him, was not dead, but tragically,
asleep only. It might be aroused and might again become useful, if
only the right paths were opened. Coleridge could not open the paths,
he could but vaguely show the depth and volume of the forces pent up
in the Church; but he insisted that they were there, that eternal
truth was in Christianity, and that out of it must come the light and
life of the world. As his little band of hearers listened to him, they
saw the first faint gleams of the light which was to illumine the
world and make the darkness and degradation of the materialistic
philosophy an impossibility to the devout mind. Thus he stood at the
beginning of the nineteenth century, as Erasmus stood at the beginning
of the sixteenth, perceiving and proclaiming the existence of truths
which others were to apply to the needs of the time.

To ascertain precisely in what form the forces of Christianity existed
and how they might be applied to nineteenth century life, became early
in the nineteenth century the problem on which the best thought of the
time was concentrated. Coleridge's unshaken conviction that it was
solvable, inspired many with courage. Whately, Arnold, Schleiermacher,
Bunsen, Ewald, Newman, Hare,