mE OXFORD COUNTER-REFORMATION, 265 
humanity, or for any sympathy with the passions 
which are the pulses of human life. With the 
Prayer-book for his guide, he has provided us with 
a manual of religious sentiment corresponding to 
the Christian theory as taught by the Church of 
England Prayer-book, beautifully expressed in 
language which every one can understand and 
remember. High Churchmanship had been hitherto 
dry and formal; Keble carried into it the emotions 
of Evangelicalism, while he avoided angry collision 
with Evangelical opinions. 'Thus all parties could 
find much to admire in him, and little to suspect. 
English religious poetry was generally weak-—was 
not, indeed, poetry at all. Here was something 
which in its kind was excellent; and every one 
who was really religious, or wished to be religious, 
or even outwardly and from habit professed him- 
self and believed himself to be a Christian, found 
Keble’s verses chime in his heart like church 
bells. 
The ‘ Christian Year, however, could be all this, 
and yet notwithstanding it could be poetry of a 
particular period, and not for all time. Human 
nature remains the same; but religion alters, 
Christianity has taken many forms. In the early 
Church it had the hues of a hundred heresies. It