d original ways of regarding questions
which seemed worn out and exhausted. The volumes which grew out of the
Adam de Brome lectures were some of the most characteristic portions of
the theological literature of the early movement. They certainly greatly
influenced the course of thought in it, and some of its most serious
issues.

The movement was not one of mere opinion. It took two distinct though
connected lines. It was, on the one hand, theological; on the other,
resolutely practical. Theologically, it dealt with great questions of
religious principle--What is the Church? Is it a reality or a mode of
speech? On what grounds does it rest? How may it be known? Is it among
us? How is it to be discriminated from its rivals or counterfeits? What
is its essential constitution? What does it teach? What are its
shortcomings? Does it nerd reform? But, on the other hand, the movement
was marked by its deep earnestness on the practical side of genuine
Christian life. Very early in the movement (1833) a series of
sketches of primitive Christian life appeared in the _British
Magazine_--afterwards collected under the title of the _Church of the
Fathers_ (1840)--to remind people who were becoming interested in
ancient and patristic theology that, besides the doctrines to be found
in the vast folios of the Fathers, there were to be sought in them and
laid to heart the temptations and trials, the aspirations and moral
possibilities of actual life, "the tone and modes of thought, the habits
and manners of the early times of the Church." The note struck in the
first of Mr. Newman's published sermons--"Holiness necessary for future
blessedness"--was never allowed to be out of mind. The movement was,
above all, a moral one; it was nothing, allowed to be nothing, if it
was not this.[65] Seriousness, reverence, the fear of insincere words
and unsound professions, were essential in the character, which alone it
would tolerate in those who made common cause with it.

Its ethical tendency was shown in two things, which were characteristic
of it. One was the increased care for the Gospels, and study of them,
compared with other parts of the Bible. Evangelical theology had dwelt
upon the work of Christ, and laid comparatively little stress on His
example, or the picture left us of His Personality and Life. It regarded
the Epistles of St. Paul as the last word of the Gospel message. People
who can recall the popular teaching, which was spoken