Hugh was surprised to receive a letter from
Maitland from Paris which ran as follows:--

"_MY DEAR NEVILLE,--It was a great pleasure to see you and to revive
the memories of old days. I have thought a good deal over our
conversation, and have made up my mind that I ought to write to you.
But first let me ask your pardon, if in the heat of argument I allowed
my zeal to outrun my courtesy. I was over-tired and over-strained, and
in the mood when any opposition to one's own cherished ideals is deeply
and perhaps unreasonably distressing._

"_You seemed to me--I will freely grant this--to be a real and candid
seeker after truth; but the sheltered and easy life that you have led
disguises from you the urgency of the struggle. If you had wrestled as
I have for years with infidelity and wickedness, and had seen, as I
have a thousand times, how any laxity of doctrinal opinion is always
visited upon its victim by a corresponding laxity of moral action, you
would feel very differently._

"_I think you are treading a very dangerous path. To me it is clear
that our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, in His recorded utterances, in
a world of incredible wickedness and vague speculation, deliberately
narrowed the issues of life and death. He originated a society, to
which He promised the guidance of the Spirit, and woe to the man who
tries to find a religion outside of that Church._

"_You seem to me, if you will forgive the expression, to be more than
half a Pagan; to put Christianity on a level--though you allow it a
certain pre-eminence--with other refining influences. You spoke of art
and poetry as if they could bring men to God, and that in spite of the
fact that, as I reminded you, there is not a syllable in our Lord's
words that could be construed into the least sympathy with art or
poetry at all. You called yourself a Christian, and I have no doubt
that you sincerely believe yourself to be one; but to me you seemed to
be more like one of those, cultured Greeks who gave St. Paul an
interested hearing on the Acropolis. And yet you seemed to me so
genuinely anxious to do what was right, that I am going to ask you,
faithfully and sincerely, to reconsider your position. You are
drifting into a kind of vague and epicurean optimism. You spoke of the
message of God through nature; there is no direct message through that
channel, it is only symbolical of the inner divine processes._

"_I am not going to argue with you; but