a
perfected philosophical system. The end was dark, the solution
incomprehensible. He must rather live as far as possible in a high and
lofty emotion, beholding the truth by hints and glimpses, pursuing as
far as possible all uplifting intuitions, all free and generous
desires. It was useless to walk in a prescribed path, to frame one's
life on the model of another's ideal. He must be open-minded, ready to
revise his principles in the light of experience. He must hold fast to
what brought him joy and peace. How restful after all it was to know
that one had one's own problem, one's own conditions! All that was
necessary was to put oneself firmly and constantly in harmony with the
great purpose that had set one exactly where one was, and given one a
temperament, a character, good and evil desires, hopes, longings,
temptations, aspirations. One could not escape from them, thank God.
If one only desired God's will, one's sins and sufferings as well as
one's hopes and joys all worked together to a far-off end. One must go
straight forward, in courage and patience and love.

XII

Sacrifice--The Church--Certainty

Hugh made friends at Cambridge with a young Roman Catholic priest, who
was working there. His new friend was a very simple-minded man; he
seemed to Hugh the only man of great gifts he had ever known, who was
absolutely untouched by any shadow of worldliness. Hugh knew of men
who resisted the temptations of the world very successfully, to whom
indeed they were elementary temptations, long since triumphed over; but
this man was the only man he had ever known who was gifted with
qualities that commanded the respect and admiration of the world, yet
to whom the temptations of ambition and success seemed never to have
appeared even upon the distant horizon. He was an interesting talker,
a fine preacher, and a very accomplished writer; but his interest was
entirely centred upon his work, and not upon the rewards of it. He was
very poor; but he had no regard for anything--luxury, power,
position--that the world could give him. He had no wish to obtain
influence; he only cared to make the work on which he was engaged as
perfect as he could. The man was really an artist pure and simple; he
seemed to have little taste even for pastoral work.

One day they sat together, on a hot breathless afternoon, in a college
garden, on a seat beneath some great shady chestnut-trees, and looked
out lazily upon the