[78] Dr. Newman will, of course, be excepted; for his remarkable Dissertation prefixed to the translation of Fleury’s “History” is known to many, more especially in its new form,—a volume already referred to at length in chap. ii. pp. 35-36. It is certainly quite unjust to include the Tractarian school amongst those who are referred to by Mr. Lecky in the following passage:—“At present nearly all educated men receive an account of a miracle taking place in their own day, with an absolute and even derisive incredulity which dispenses with all examination of the evidence.”—Vol. i. p. 1. Though many are reticent, and many more shrink from publicity and rude criticism, it is known that the direct influence of the Miraculous and Supernatural is by no means unknown in the Church of England.
[79] Job xxv. 5.
[80] See a most remarkable Letter from the pen of my friend the Rev. R. S. Hawker, of Morwenstow, on “The Claims of Science and Faith,” standing as an Appendix to this Chapter, in which the office of the angels is referred to.
[81] Mr. Mill, who is now dead, wrote that “this World was a bungled business in which no clear-sighted man [meaning himself apparently, and modestly] could see any signs either of wisdom or of God.” Mr. Matthew Arnold, son of Dr. Arnold of Rugby, has written that “the existence of God is an unverifiable hypothesis.” A third writer maintains that the “great duty” of the philosophers “should be to eliminate the idea of God from the minds of men,” a sentiment not unlike that of Mr. Congreve, already quoted on p. 19 of vol. i.; while a popular publication, circulated by thousands amongst the lower classes, declares that the mission of its Editors is “to teach men to live without the fear of God; to die without the fear of the Devil; and to attain salvation without the Blood of the Lamb.”
