Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/826

804 nowhere but in the Roman Church could you find any real breakwater against an incredulity which could survive even the aspirations of so noble a nature as hers. And as I listened to this eloquent exposition with one ear, the sound of Professor Tyndall's eloquent Irish voice, descanting on the proposal for a "prayer-gauge," which had lately been made in the "Contemporary Review," by testing the efficacy of prayer on a selected hospital ward, captivated the other. Everything alike spoke of the extraordinary fermentation of opinion in the society around us. Moral and intellectual "yeast" was as hard at work multiplying its fungoid forms in the men who met at that table as even in the period of the Renaissance itself.

I was very much struck then, and frequently afterward, by the marked difference between the expression of the Roman Catholic members of our society and all the others. No men could be more different among themselves than Dr. Ward and Father Dalgairns and Archbishop Manning, all of them converts to the Roman Church. But, nevertheless, all had upon them that curious stamp of definite spiritual authority which I have never noticed on any faces but those of Roman Catholics, and of Roman Catholics who have passed through a pretty long period of subjection to the authority they acknowledge. In the Metaphysical Society itself there was every type of spiritual and moral expression. The wistful and sanguine, I had almost said hectic idealism, of James Hinton struck me much more than anything he contrived to convey by his remarks. The noble and steadfast but somewhat melancholy faith which seemed to be sculptured on Dr. Martineau's massive brow, shaded off into wistfulness in the glance of his eyes. Professor Huxley, who always had a definite standard for every question which he regarded as discussable at all, yet made you feel that his slender definite creed in no respect represented the cravings of his large nature. Professor Tyndall's eloquent addresses frequently culminated with some pathetic indication of the mystery which to him surrounded the moral life. Mr. Fitzjames Stephen's gigantic force, expended generally in some work of iconoclasm, always gave me the impression that he was revenging himself on what he could not believe, for the disappointment he had felt in not being able to retain the beliefs of his youth. But in the countenances of our Roman Catholic members there was no wistfulness—rather an expression which I might almost describe as a blending of grateful humility with involuntary satiety—genuine humility, genuine thankfulness for the authority on which they anchored themselves; but something also of a feeling of the redundance of that authority, and of the redundance of those provisions for their spiritual life of which almost all our other members seemed to feel that they had but a bare and scanty pasturage.

Dr. Ward, who was to read the paper of the evening, struck me as one of our most unique members. His mind was, to his own apprehension at least, all strong lights and dark shadows. Either he was