derstood; plain, convincing reasoning on the issues which
were raised by it; a careful laying out of the ground on which English
theology was to be strengthened and enriched. Such were Mr. Newman's
_Lectures on Justification_, a work which made its lasting mark on
English theological thought; Mr. Keble's masterly exposition of the
meaning of Tradition; and not least, the important collections which
were documentary and historical evidence of the character of English
theology, the so-called laborious _Catenas_. These were the real tasks
of the hour, and they needed all that labour and industry could give.
But the first of these inopportune Tracts was an elaborate essay, by Mr.
Keble, on the "Mysticism of the Fathers in the use and interpretation of
Scripture." It was hardly what the practical needs of the time required,
and it took away men's thoughts from them; the prospect was hopeless
that in that state of men's minds it should be understood, except by a
very few; it merely helped to add another charge, the vague but
mischievous charge of mysticism, to the list of accusations against the
Tracts. The other, to the astonishment of every one, was like the
explosion of a mine. That it should be criticised and objected to was
natural; but the extraordinary irritation caused by it could hardly have
been anticipated. Written in the most devout and reverent spirit by one
of the gentlest and most refined of scholars, and full of deep
Scriptural knowledge, it furnished for some years the material for the
most savage attacks and the bitterest sneers to the opponents of the
movement. It was called "On Reserve in communicating Religious
Knowledge"; and it was a protest against the coarseness and shallowness
which threw the most sacred words about at random in loud and
declamatory appeals, and which especially dragged in the awful mystery
of the Atonement, under the crudest and most vulgar conception of it, as
a ready topic of excitement in otherwise commonplace and helpless
preaching. The word "Reserve" was enough. It meant that the
Tract-writers avowed the principle of keeping back part of the counsel
of God. It meant, further, that the real spirit of the party was
disclosed; its love of secret and crooked methods, its indifference to
knowledge, its disingenuous professions, its deliberate concealments,
its holding doctrines and its pursuit of aims which it dared not avow,
its _disciplina arcani_, its conspiracies, its Jesuitical s