t: "I will tell
you, sir, how the case stands. God has given to you English many good
gifts. You make fine ships, and sharp penknives, and good cloth and
cottons, and you have rich nobles and brave soldiers; and you write and
print many learned books (dictionaries and grammars): all this is of
God. But there is one thing that God has withheld {146} from you and
has revealed to us; and that is the knowledge of the true religion by
which one may be saved."'[5]

But although Newman was led to give up Christianity, and practically to
hold that one religion was as good as another, he clung tenaciously to
what he supposed to be common to all religions, belief in God, a belief
deep and ardent. The rationalism of the Deists did not approve itself
to him. 'Our Deists of past centuries tried to make religion a matter
of the pure intellect, and thereby halted at the very frontier of the
inward life: they cut themselves off even from all acquaintance with
the experience of spiritual men.'[6] He nourished his soul with psalms
and hymns: he sought communion with God. He saw the weakness of
Morality without the inspiring power of Religion. 'Morals can seldom
gain living energy without the impulsive force derived from
Spirituals.... However {147} much Plato and Cicero may talk of the
surpassing beauty of virtue, still virtue is an abstraction, a set of
wise rules, not a Person, and cannot call out affection as an existence
exterior to the soul does. On the contrary, God is a Person; and the
love of Him is of all affections by far the most energetic in exciting
us to make good our highest ideals of moral excellence and in clearing
the moral sight, so that that ideal may keep rising. Other things
being equal (a condition not to be forgotten) a spiritual man will hold
a higher and purer morality than a mere moralist. Not only does Duty
manifest itself to him as an ever-expanding principle, but since a
larger and larger part of Duty becomes pleasant and easy when performed
under the stimulus of Love, the Will is enabled to concentrate itself
more on that which remains difficult and greater power of performance
is attained.'[7] Where shall we find a more {148} vivid or more
spiritual description of the rise and progress of devotion in the soul
than in the words of this man, who placed himself beyond the pale of
every Christian communion? 'One who begins to realise God's majestic
beauty and eternity and feels in contrast how li