stity--and goes on to show how they illustrate "the _natural truth_
of Christianity," as distinct from any considerations of Revelation or
Law. "Now, really," he says, writing in 1877, "if there is a lesson
which in our day has come to force itself upon everybody, in all
quarters and by all channels, it is the lesson of the _solidarity_, as
it is called by modern philosophers, of men. If there was ever a notion
tempting to common human nature, it was the notion that the rule of
'every man for himself' was the rule of happiness. But at last it turns
out as a matter of experience, and so plainly that it is coming to be
even generally admitted--it turns out that the only real happiness is in
a kind of impersonal higher life, where the happiness of others counts
with a man as essential to his own. He that loves his life does really
turn out to lose it, and the new commandment proves its own truth by
experience."

And then he goes on to what he justly calls "the other great Christian
virtue, Pureness." When he was thirty-two, he had written--"The lives
and deaths of the 'pure in heart' have, perhaps, the privilege of
touching us more deeply than those of others--partly, no doubt, because
with them the disproportion of suffering to deserts seems so unusually
great. However, with them one feels--even I feel--that for their
purity's sake, if for that alone, whatever delusions they may have
wandered in, and whatever impossibilities they may have dreamed of, they
shall undoubtedly, in some sense or other, see God." And now,
twenty-three years later, he returns to the same theme. Science, he
says, is beginning to throw doubts on the "truth and validity of the
Christian idea of Pureness." There can be no more vital question for
human society. On the side of _natural truth_, experience must decide.
"But," he says, "finely-touched souls have a presentiment of a thing's
natural truth, even though it be questioned, and long before the
palpable proof by experience convinces all the world. They have it quite
independently of their attitude towards traditional religion.... All
well-inspired souls will perceive the profound natural truth of the
idea of pureness, and will be sure, therefore, that the more boldly it
is challenged the more sharply and signally will experience mark its
truth. So that of the two great Christian virtues, charity and chastity,
kindness and pureness, the one has at this moment the most signal
testimony from experi