religious doubts. From Evangelical Protestantism to Roman
Catholicism he passed by slow degrees without once entering the
domain of scepticism. Dissenting altogether from Bishop Butler's
view that reason is the only faculty by which we can judge even of
revelation, he set religion apart, outside reason altogether. From
the pulpit of St. Mary's he told his congregation that Hume's
argument against miracles was logically sound. It was really more
probable that the witnesses should be mistaken than that Lazarus
should have been raised from the dead. But, all the same, Lazarus
was raised from the dead: we were required by faith to believe it,
and logic had nothing to do with the matter. How Butler would have
answered Hume, Butler to whom probability was the guide of life, we
cannot tell. Newman's answer was not satisfactory to Froude. If Hume
were right, how could he also be wrong? Newman might say, with
Tertullian, Credo quia impossibile. But mankind in general are not
convinced by paradox, and "to be suddenly told that the famous
argument against miracles was logically valid after all was at least
startling."*

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* Short Studies on Great Subjects, 4th series, p. 205.
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Perplexed by this dilemma, Froude at Oxford as a graduate, taking
pupils in what was then called science, and would now be called
philosophy, for the Honour School of Literae Humaniores. He was soon
offered, and accepted, a tutorship in Ireland. His pupils father,
Mr. Cleaver, was rector of Delgany in the county of Wicklow. Mr.
Cleaver was a dignified, stately clergyman of the Evangelical
school. Froude had been taught by his brother at home, and by his