emotions as if they were the end of all these gigantic works--the
Milky Way, the blazing sun, the teeming earth--only to raise thoughts
of reverence in the heart of this pitiful being, and failing too, so
hopelessly, so constantly to do so?...

"'I will accept Christ,' said Herbert, 'as my superior, yes! as my
master, yes! but not as my God.'" One sees, I think, where the
difficulty lies; it must be felt by any man whose idea of God is
very high, whose belief in humanity very low.

And again--

"I believe in a revelation which is coming, which may be among us
now, though we do not suspect it, in the words and deeds of some
simple-minded heroic man.

"No one who preceded the Christian revelation could possibly, from
the fabric of the world as it then was, have anticipated the form it
was about to take. This revelation, too, will be as unexpected as it
will be new--it will come in the night as a thief; the '_quo modo_'
I can not even attempt to guess, except that it will take the form
of some vast simplification of the myriad and complicated issues of
human life."

But such entries as these were left to his diaries and most private
correspondence; he never attempted a crusade against ordinary forms
of belief, mistaken though he deemed them, often putting a strong
constraint upon himself in conversation. If he was pressed to give an
account of his religious principles he used smilingly to say that he
belonged to the great Johnsonian sect, who practised the religion of
all sensible men, and who kept what it was to themselves.

There were two views of life with which he had no patience only--the
men who preached the open confession of agnosticism, "if you have
anything to tell us for goodness sake let us have it, but if you have
not, hold your tongue; you are like a clock that has gone wrong, but
insists on chiming to show everybody that it hasn't the least idea
of the time;" and secondly, the men who "took no interest" in the
problems of religion and morals; for a deliberate avoidance of them
he had some respect, but for a professional moralist who took
everything for granted, and for feeble materialists who did not
"trouble their head" about such things, he had a profound contempt.

The following remarks that he gave vent to on the subject of orthodox
Christianity and an Established Church are very striking, and after
what has preceded might appear paradoxical and ridiculous. But they
are in reality absolutely con