d be the Reformation and the sea.

Froude's religious position is best stated in his own words, written
when he was in South Africa, to a member of his family:

"I know by sad experience much of what is passing in your mind.
Although my young days were chequered with much which I look back on
with regret and shame, still I believe I always tried to learn what
was true, and when I had found it to stick to it. The High Church
theology was long attractive to me, but then I found, or thought I
found, that it had no foundation, and indeed that very few of its
professors in their heart of hearts believed what they were saying.
Apostolic Succession, Sacramental Grace, and the rest of it, are
very pretty, but are they facts? Is it a fact that any special
mysterious power is communicated by a Bishop's hands? Is it a fact
that a child's nature is changed by water and words--or that the
bread when it is broken ceases to be bread? We cannot tell that it
is not so, you say. But can we tell that it is so? and we ought to
be able to tell before we believe it. All that fell away from me
when I came in contact with the Cleavers and their friends. Their
views never commended themselves to me wholly; but at least they
were spiritual and not material. And election is a fact, although
they express it oddly--and so is reprobation--and so is what they
say of free will, and so is conversion. It is true that we bring
natures into the world which are moulded by circumstances and by
their own tendencies, as clay in the hands of the potter. Look round
you and see that some are made for honour and some for dishonour. So
far I agree with the Evangelicals still, and I agree too with them
that if what they call faith--that is, a distinct conviction of sin,
a resolution to say to oneself "Sammy, my boy, this won't do,"* a
perception and love for what is right and good, and a loathing of
the old self--can be put into one, and by the grace of God we see
that it can be and is--the whole nature is changed, is what we call
regenerated. This is certain--and it is to me certain also that the
world and we who live in it, with all these mysterious conditions of
our being, are no creation of accident or blind law. We were created
for purposes unknown to us by Almighty God, who is using us and
training us for His own objects--objects wholly unconceivable by us,
but nevertheless which we know to exist, for Intelligence never
works but for an end.

--
* The re