mself
shrank from because they were extreme. But it was all over with his
command of time, his liberty to make up his mind slowly on the great
decision. He had to go at Mr. Ward's pace, and not his own. He had to
take Mr. Ward's questions, not when he wanted to have them and at his
own time, but at Mr. Ward's. No one can tell how much this state of
things affected the working of Mr. Newman's mind in that pause of
hesitation before the final step; how far it accelerated the view which
he ultimately took of his position. No one can tell, for many other
influences were mixed up with this one. But there is no doubt that Mr.
Newman felt the annoyance and the unfairness of this perpetual
questioning for the benefit of Mr. Ward's theories, and there can be
little doubt that, in effect, it drove him onwards and cut short his
time of waiting. Engineers tell us that, in the case of a ship rolling
in a sea-way, when the periodic times of the ship's roll coincide with
those of the undulations of the waves, a condition of things arises
highly dangerous to the ship's stability. So the agitations of Mr.
Newman's mind were reinforced by the impulses of Mr. Ward's.[116]

But the great question between England and Rome was not the only matter
which engaged Mr. Ward's active mind. In the course of his articles in
the _British Critic_ he endeavoured to develop in large outlines a
philosophy of religious belief. Restless on all matters without a
theory, he felt the need of a theory of the true method of reaching,
verifying, and judging of religious truth; it seemed to him necessary
especially to a popular religion, such as Christianity claimed to be;
and it was not the least of the points on which he congratulated himself
that he had worked out a view which extended greatly the province and
office of conscience, and of fidelity to it, and greatly narrowed the
province and office of the mere intellect in the case of the great mass
of mankind. The Oxford writers had all along laid stress on the
paramount necessity of the single eye and disciplined heart in accepting
or judging religion; moral subjects could be only appreciated by moral
experience; purity, reverence, humility were as essential in such
questions as zeal, industry, truthfulness, honesty; religious truth is a
gift as well as a conquest; and they dwelt on the great maxims of the
New Testament: "To him that hath shall be given"; "If any man will do
the will of the Father, he shall