I implore you to give some time
to a careful study of the New Testament and the Fathers. I feel sure
that light will be sent you. Pray earnestly for it, if you have not,
as I more than half suspect, given up prayer in favour of a vague
aspiration. And be sure of this, that I shall not forget you in my own
prayers. I shall offer the Holy Sacrifice in your intention; I shall
make humble intercession for you, for you seem to me to be so near the
truth and yet so far away. Forgive my writing thus, but I feel called
upon to warn you of what is painfully clear to me.--Believe me, ever
sincerely yours,_

"_RALPH MAITLAND_"

This letter touched Hugh very much with a kind of melancholy pathos.
He contented himself with writing back that he did indeed, he believed,
desire to see the truth, and that he deeply appreciated Maitland's
sympathy and interest.

"_No impulse of the heart, on behalf of another, is ever thrown away, I
am sure of that. But you would be the first to confess, I know, that a
man must advance by whatever light he has; that no good can come of
accepting the conclusions of another, if the heart and mind do not
sincerely assent; and that if I differ from yourself as to the precise
degree of certainty attainable in religious matters, it is not because
I despise the Spirit, but because I think that I discern a wider
influence than you can admit._"

He received in reply a short note to say that Maitland felt that Hugh
was making the mistake of trusting more to reason than to divine
guidance, but adding that he would not cease to pray for him day by day.

Hugh reflected long and seriously over this strange episode; but he did
not experience the smallest temptation to desert a rational process of
inquiry. He read the Gospels again, and they seemed to confirm him in
his belief that a wide and simple view of life was there indicated. He
seemed to see that the spirit which Christ inculcated was a kind of
mystical uplifting of the heart to God, not a doctrinal apprehension of
His nature. It seemed indeed to him that Christ's treatment of life
was profoundly poetical, that it tended to point men to the aim of
discerning a beautiful quality in action and life. Those delicate and
moving stories that He told--how little they dealt with sacramental
processes or ecclesiastical systems! They rather expressed a vivid and
ardent interest in the simplest emotions of life. They taught one to
be humble, forgiv