of September. When W. G. Ward was condemned, the Oxford Movement, to all outward appearance, came to an ignominious end. The old leaders were paralyzed, and the new directors had proved the quality of their service by advancing toward Rome as rapidly as their convictions could carry them.

It is not easy to analyze the Movement, either from the point of view of its promoters, or as the giving of emphasis to a special school of thought in the Church of England. What it seemed to those who were in it is one thing, and what it seems to those who now consider it as a whole is quite another. It has always been studied by partisans. Roman Catholics were thankful for it because it brought to them men who have given a new status to the Roman Church in England; and the best interpretations of the Movement have come from Cardinal Newman, Canon Oakeley, and Mr. Wilfrid Ward. The fundamental ideas which were behind it, so far as they find expression in philosophy and life, are gathered up in Cardinal Newman's "Grammar of Assent" and in Dr. W. G. Ward's "Philosophy of Theism," both of which are intended to supply a working principle to those who believe in God and in Christianity, and would justify that belief on grounds of reason. The field which Newman undertook to cover as a Tractarian and as a Catholic entitles him to rank among the profoundest religious teachers of the century. Without the keen logical powers of Dr. Ward, he had the power of brooding in the unseen realm of ideas, among the facts of consciousness which supply the grounds of human reasoning, and here his philosophy became rooted in the first principles of being; and it is here that he began to construct anew the processes of thought by which the belief in God and in Christianity could be brought home with certainty and power to the minds of men. Newman had the temptation to be an Agnostic, but through the imagination and reason the constructive element in him worked toward positive results. When you take up his writings that are outside of special questions of the Church, you always find him constructive, positive, incisive, inspiring, and interpreting truth to the whole nature of man. This is his enduring claim as an English thinker. Dr. Ward had not Newman's power to search out first principles, and to pioneer the way where others had failed, but, granted the lead of another mind, or the first principles of belief, he could work out with wonderful mastery of detail, and with the logical force of an intensely earnest and honest mind, the conclusions to which these principles led. His "Philosophy of Theism" is a faithful interpretation of

Whately, who in politics and religion were carrying everything before them. It was now a conglomerate mass of opinion, out of which it was difficult to tell what might come. Dr. Pusey, until the reaction toward Liberalism or Broad Church had reached its full expression in the "Essays and Reviews" of 1860, was the only man in the Church of England whose character, attainments, and thorough honesty of purpose combined to form a rallying point for the Catholic interests which had once been centred in Newman and Ward. What went on in the period from 1845 to 1860, during which Dr. Pusey was the head of the Catholic party, will not be known to the world until Canon Liddon's "Memoir of Dr. Pusey" is published; but it was during this period that the Church of England, beset by many difficulties which grow out of the relations of a national Church to the state, had a double life. The Catholic party slowly matured and concentrated its forces, not going forward toward Rome, not leaning too hard upon primitive antiquity, but vindicating Catholic positions against the doctrinal decisions of an ecclesiastical court controlled by the state, and working forward to the expression of Catholic doctrine in Christian worship, and the incorporation of Catholic methods in the religious life of the nation. No one can say that the Oxford Movement, thus working itself clear of Rome and acquiring a positive character and position, reached its full expression in the English Church after an ideal method, but with much misunderstanding, under the lead of men like Canon Carter and Dr. Littledale, for the verification of Catholic truth in Church doctrine, and under the direction of parish priests like Dean Hook, Charles Lowder, and A. H. Mackonochie, with the venerable Father Pusey behind them, for the realization of this truth in practice, the Catholic school of thought has worked itself into the very heart of the Anglican Church, and to-day at Oxford, and even at Cambridge, divides with the Broad Church school the allegiance of the best religious life in England.

It is possible to-day to take a large view of the position in which parties or schools of thought stand toward a corporate institution like the Church of England, and the Oxford Movement has better illustrated than perhaps anything else in English religious history, during the present century, the attitude in which a religious body with historic and Catholic antecedents stands toward modern religious life. The problem raised at the English Reformation, stated in terms of philosophy, was the possibility of the combination of Catholic authority with the freedom of the individual mind

It is here that the Oxford Movement vindicates for itself all that has been claimed for it by its most ardent friends and supporters. It is a part of that process, initiated with the Reformation, by which the people who were destined to take the lead in modern thought and activity have endeavored to make organized Christianity a part of the national consciousness, and a reality in its ethical and spiritual meaning to each individual. It is easy for the Roman Catholic to say that the Church of England lacks this or that; and it is easy for the free Protestant to say that the Anglican affirmations of Christianity are too slow for the modern spirit to profit by them; but it is this power on the part of a Church organization to hold dissimilar views or separate schools of thought in vigorous activity within its limits, and yet utilize their life and strength for a common end, which is just the charm and glory and power and majesty of Christianity in modern life; and the lesson, above all others, which is taught by the way in which the Oxford Movement, with all its limitations and disappointments, has found itself a true, real, and organic part of the Church of England, is, that a living Christian body must hold in solution and without precipitation, and with the ability to use them for higher ends, elements which are dissimilar in character, and yet which have their place in the higher unity that presents God and Christ in relation to the whole of humanity. The English Church has very grave and serious defects, and people are not slow in pointing them out; at a period when statesmanship should have guided the Anglican bishops, and large principles should have ruled their conduct, they behaved like a set of schoolboys who are chiefly anxious to get the better of their antagonists: but whatever may be the defects of their treatment of Newman and his companions, or of the inconsistencies in which the rulings of a state court have involved Christian discipline and authority, the comprehensive movement of the Church of England, little as it may resemble the primitive Church in a less highly organized civilization, vindicates the principles by which Christianity is maintained in its full influence and strength in modern life; and the history of the Oxford Movement, viewed in its length and breadth, points out how a school of thought can be used, through a term of years, for larger ends and even greater interests than its original promoters ever dreamed of.

BROOKLINE, MASS.

Julius H. Ward.