type, should have
become, by a mysterious transmutation, the religion of active,
inventive, conquering nations. I have no doubt that the essence of
Christianity lies in a contemplative simplicity, and that it is in
strong opposition to what is commonly called civilisation. It aims at
improving society through the uplifting of the individual, not at
uplifting the individual through social agencies. We have improved upon
that in our latter-day wisdom, for the Christian ought to be inherently
unpatriotic, or rather his patriotism ought to be of an all-embracing
rather than of an antagonistic kind. I do not want to make lofty
excuses for myself; my own unworldliness is not an abnegation at all,
but a deliberate preference for obscurity. Still I should maintain that
the vital and spiritual strength of a nation is measured, not by the
activity of its organisations, but by the number of quiet, simple,
virtuous, and high-minded persons that it contains. And thus, in my own
case, though the choice is made for me by temperament and
circumstances, I have no pricking of conscience on the subject of my
scanty activities. It is not mere activity that makes the difference.
The danger of mere activity is that it tends to make men complacent, to
lead them to think that they are following the paths of virtue, when
they are only enmeshed in conventionality. The dangers of the quiet
life are indolence, morbidity, sloth, depression, unmanliness; but I
think that it develops humility, and allows the daily and hourly
message of God to sink into the soul. After all, the one supreme peril
is that of self-satisfaction and finality. If a man is content with
what he is, there is nothing to make him long for what is higher. Any
one who looks around him with a candid gaze, becomes aware that our
life is and must be a provisional one, that it has somehow fallen short
of its possibilities. To better it is the best of all courses; but next
to that it is more desirable that men should hope for and desire a
greater harmony of things, than that they should acquiesce in what is
so strangely and sadly amiss.

June 18, 1890.

I have made a new friend, whose contact and example help me so
strangely and mysteriously, that it seems to me almost as though I had
been led hither that I might know him. He is an old and lonely man, a
great invalid, who lives at a little manor-house a mile or two away.
Maud knew him by name, but had never seen him. He wrote me