EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES. 75 



would have devoted a chapter to him. In those times 

 ecclesiastics practically ruled the world and the rulers 

 of the world. Religious controversy was then the only 

 occupation of inquisitive and earnest minds. It was 

 too often marked by bloodshed rather than by discus- 

 sion, but the noble enthusiasm of a Gladstone, had he 

 been there, would have frowned on sanguinary settle- 

 ments of questions relating to the Incarnation and the 

 Trinity ; he would himself indeed have proclaimed 

 final and infallible judgments on Athanasian, or Arian, 

 or Eutychian, or Monophysite themes. But while Mr. 

 Gladstone is a saint first, and it his sainthood mainly 

 which fascinates the multitude, he is a political artist 

 second. His genius is not for political philosophy, as 

 with the reflective temperament; it is altogether 

 for execution. He does not go out of his way to seek 

 truths ; he instinctively, as is the bias of the active 

 temperament, seizes those which lie in his path and 

 converts them into parchment clauses. Conservatism 

 in religion is rarely divorced from conservatism in 

 politics. A few, but very few, indomitable thinkers 

 Mr. Gladstone is not one of them have reasoned them- 

 selves into seemingly inconsistent positions. Hume 

 and Gibbon were conservative in politics and innovative 

 in religion. Mr. Gladstone at heart is deeply conserva- 

 tive in all directions, not so much from training and 

 circumstances, as from a nervous organization, which is 

 unchecked by a too leisurely contemplation, or by a too 

 strenuous introspection. 



How comes it then that a man who, above all others, 

 reveres precedent and defers to authority is leader of 

 the party of innovation and freedom ? The answer is 

 on every tongue : " Mr. Gladstone must lead/' From 

 peculiar nervous organization, and not from passion 



