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tism, for I know that my mode of expressing the truth so eliminated is just as much a form as the mode of Romanism, Evangelicalism, or Atheism, and may become just as bigoted and narrow; only I am quite saved, I believe, from gazing upon anything but the invisible and the eternal as reality. Meanwhile I try to feel with all, not as a latitudinarian, but so far as all or any hold, even formally and bigotedly, truths. And I feel that to them in that stage, that form may be necessary. It also keeps me humble; for I feel how almost impossible it is for a human mind to gaze on realities, essences, truths, except in the concrete-just as oxygen can only be seen in combination with iron, for instance, when it becomes rust; with sulphur, when it becomes sulphuric acid, &c. &c.

Humanly speaking, therefore, it is impossible that I could ever become an Evangelical, a Romanist, or an Infidel. Neither of the two first, because I feel that they have only poor forms of truth, materialistic and metaphysical: not the last, because I feel too deeply, even in his negations, truth; in his 'It is not,' how much more truly 'Something is.'

I am blind and ignorant; but I can see this at least, that the blue, red, yellow, &c., reflected from sky and bush and sea, are not the light itself, but only reflected fragments of the light; the 'elements of the world' on which the light is broken, but yet made visible. Some day you will feel this. I think you feel it now, and suspect that Romanism is not finality, but only uncouth stammerings of truth, and very, very coarse.

CXII.

I have had a long correspondence with Maurice and Mr. Drew. I asked Mr. Tower's brother to dinner a day or two ago. He is a sincere, earnest-minded man, very High Church I should think, but, like many of that school, generous and liberal. My visits among the poor to-day included two very sad cases. One, that of a poor family, the father of which is just dead, and the mother a hard-working worthy woman, overwhelmed with grief, and crushed by inability to pay the funeral expenses. Only £4!

And to think that £4, lavished like pence by tens of thousands of the wealthy people in this country, can make eight or nine human beings free, and the want of it reduce them nearly to starvation. I was able to promise to defray the bill-not all out of my own pocket; the gratitude and relief were touching indeed.

The other case was that of a poor creature, whom I left with what appeared an abscess in the cheek-bone. It is now pronounced cancer. The pain amounts to agony, incessant and intolerable. Morphine stupifies for a short time, and chloride of lime partly purifies the horrors of the mouth; but in that state now for months she must remain, and no earthly power can save her, scarcely any even assuage her torture. Since then I have—not laughed—no, for my laugh is now a ghastly, hollow, false lie of a thing-but I have dined, forgotten, talked, read, written, with no physical pain now to endure. How passing strange that misery of suffering is; and how questionable the right which two-thirds of the world assume to themselves of filling their ears with cotton, that the moans may not break in upon their silken repose, and that the cry of the toiling thousands may float by on the blast unheard! But suppose that cry goes up to the ears of God, and He asks, 'Whom did you relieve? whom did you clothe? whom did you feed, with your tens, hundreds, or thousands?' Assuredly, protest against Kingsley who will, he stood on a deep awful truth, 'God will yet take account of the selfishness of wealth : and His quarrel has yet to be fought out.' I have been thinking lately much, sadly, selfcondemningly.

Had any one preached that all the evils of anarchy and insubordination proceeded from the selfish vanities of the poorer classes, forgetting that a revolution may be goaded on, it would have been one-sided and dangerous; but as soon as ever a man is found to state somewhat too strongly the case of the weak against the strong, the Churchman cries, 'Danger!' Danger to comfort and property, I suppose, which is the only danger that wakes up a protest.

Do not be dismayed or discouraged if the reading of Scripture

does not suggest as yet. Receive, imbibe, and then your mind will create; but our mistake lies in thinking that we can give out until we have taken in. In all things this is the order. Poets are creators, because recipients; they open their hearts wide to Nature, instead of going to her with views of her readymade and second-hand. They come from her and give out what they have felt and what she said to them; so with Scripture —patient, quiet, long, revering, listening to it; then suggestive

ness.

CXIII.

July, 1851.

I wish I did not hate preaching so much, but the degradation of being a Brighton preacher is almost intolerable. I cannot dig, to beg I am ashamed;' but I think there is not a hardworking artisan whose work does not seem to me a worthier and higher being than myself. I do not depreciate spiritual work— I hold it higher than secular; all I say and feel is, that by the change of times the pulpit has lost its place. It does only part of that whole which used to be done by it alone. Once it was newspaper, schoolmaster, theological treatise, a stimulant to good works, historical lecture, metaphysics, &c., all in one. Now these are partitioned out to different officers, and the pulpit is no more the pulpit of three centuries back, than the authority of a master of a household is that of Abraham, who was soldier, butcher, sacrificer, shepherd, and emir in one person. Nor am I speaking of the ministerial office; but only the 'stump orator' portion of it-and that I cannot but hold to be thoroughly despicable.

I had an hour's baiting from Mrs. - yesterday, in reference, no doubt, to what the papers have been saying, and to reports of my last sermons. She talked very hotly of the practice of laying all faults at the door of the aristocracy, whereas it was the rich city people, on whom she lavished all her (supposed) aristocratic scorn, who were in fault, because they would live like nobles. Besides, did not the nobles spend their money, and was not that support of the poor? I wasted my time in trying to

explain to her that expenditure is not production; that 50,000l. a year spent is not 50,000l. worth of commodities produced, and adds nothing to the real wealth of the country. I tried to show her that twenty servants are not supported by their master, but by the labourers who raise their corn and make their clothes; and that twenty being taken off the productive classes throws so much more labour upon those classes. Of course such things are necessary; only employment does not create anything. Men engaged in carrying dishes or in making useless roads are employed, no doubt. But this labour does the country no good; and the paying of them for their labour, or the mere giving in charity, may make a fairer distribution of the wealth there is, but does not go one step towards altering the real burden of the country or producing new wealth. Extravagant expenditure impoverishes the country. This simple fact I could not make her comprehend. Then she got upon political preachingabused it very heartily-acknowledged that religion had to do with man's political life, but said a clergyman's duty is to preach obedience to the powers that be--was rather puzzled when I asked her whether it were legitimate to preach from James v. I : 'Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl,' &c.-asked whether it was possible for old women and orphans to understand such subjects to which I replied, 'No; and if a clergyman refuse to touch on such subjects, which belong to real actual life, the men will leave his church; and, as is the case in the Church of England, he will only have charity orphans, who are compelled to go, and old women to preach to.'

He wanted me

On Monday I had a long visit from to preach in Percy Chapel for some schools. I refused. The system of 'starring' it through the country is a contemptible one. If there is a feeble light in any man, the glowworm is the type which nature has given for his conduct, to shine or glimmer quietly in his own place, and let the winged insects come to the light if they like. Whereas the fireflies which fly in the West Indies, obtruding themselves about in people's faces, are caught and put under a watch-glass by the inhabitants, to show them what o'clock it is by night. When they have been used up they

are thrown aside, and no one stops to see whether they live or die. The quiet little glowworm is seen alone by those that love it. Birds of prey are asleep. What a pretty little fable might be made of this! For men and women it is true. She who will be admired, flashing her full-dressed radiance in the foolish or rather wise world's face, will be treated like the firefly, used to light up a party or to flirt with, and then, &c. &c.

CXIV.

'A firm belief that at some brighter period, when the world should have grown ripe for it, in heaven's own time, a new truth would be revealed in order to establish the whole relation between man and woman on a surer ground of mutual happiness. The angel and apostle of the coming revelation must be a woman indeed, but lofty, pure and beautiful and wise : moreover, not through dusky grief, but through the ethereal medium of joy, and showing how sacred love should make us happy by the truest test of a love successful to that end.'-Hawthorne.

That is to me remarkable, as a coincidence with a favourite thought of mine concerning the origin of Mariolatry, which I have sometimes worked out, and also with an unmistakable tendency in the present day to revive Mariolatry, as if the truth in it were not yet got out.

It coincides, too, with the (sometimes frantic) efforts made for female emancipation, and outcries, especially in America, about their slavery; it coincides, moreover, with a philosophic speculation of M. Comte's upon this subject, who looks for the hope of the future in, not hero-worship, but woman-worship.

I think it would shed a kind of setting light and glory upon the deathbeds of those whose aspirations have been high, and whose work is done in this world, if, as they go out of it, they could see some such hope for the race coming in—as at the dawn of a former salvation, hearts old and worn with hopless expectation cried, 'Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace.' A work written by the author quoted above contains some interesting and valuable thoughts on this head—not quixotic. Mean

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