ticism; but against
this criticism is to be set the fact, that in a long and energetic
life, in which amidst great trials and changes there was a singular
uniformity and consistency of character maintained, he did unite the
two--the most devout Christianity with the most fearless and
unshrinking boldness in facing the latest announcements and
possibilities of modern thought. That he always satisfactorily
explained his point of view to others is more than can be said; but he
certainly satisfied numbers of keen and anxious thinkers, who were
discontented and disheartened both by religion as it is presented by
our great schools and parties, and by science as its principles and
consequences are expounded by the leading philosophical authorities of
the day. The other point to which we have adverted partly explains the
influence which he had with such minds. He had no system to formulate
or to teach. He was singularly ready to accept, as adequate expressions
of those truths in whose existence he so persistently believed, the old
consecrated forms in which simpler times had attempted to express them.
He believed that these truths are wider and vaster than the human mind
which is to be made wiser and better by them. And his aim was to reach
up to an ever more exact, and real, and harmonious hold of these
truths, which in their essential greatness he felt to be above him; to
reach to it in life as much as in thought. And so to the end he was
ever striving, not so much to find new truths as to find the heart and
core of old ones, the truth of the truth, the inner life and
significance of the letter, of which he was always loth to refuse the
traditional form. In these efforts at unfolding and harmonising there
was considerable uniformity; no one could mistake Mr. Maurice's manner
of presenting the meaning and bearing of an article of the Creed for
the manner of any one else; but the result of this way of working, in
the effect of the things which he said, and in his relations to
different bodies of opinion and thought both in the Church and in
society, was to give the appearance of great and important changes in
his teaching and his general point of view, as life went on. This
governing thought of his, of the immeasurably transcendent compass and
height of all truths compared with the human mind and spirit which was
to bow to them and to gain life and elevation by accepting them,
explains the curious and at present almost unique co