Try to separate from the mass of their
statements that which is common to Socrates, Isaiah, David, St.
Bernard, the Jansenists, Luther, Mahomet, Bunyan - yes, and George
Eliot: of course you do not believe that this something could be
written down in a set of propositions like Euclid, neither will you
deny that there is something common and this something very
valuable. . . . I shall be sorry if the boys ever give a moment's
thought to the question of what community they belong to - I hope
they will belong to the great community.' I should observe that as
time went on his conformity to the church in which he was born grew
more complete, and his views drew nearer the conventional. 'The
longer I live, my dear Louis,' he wrote but a few months before his
death, 'the more convinced I become of a direct care by God - which
is reasonably impossible - but there it is.' And in his last year
he took the communion.
But at the time when I fell under his influence, he stood more
aloof; and this made him the more impressive to a youthful atheist.
He had a keen sense of language and its imperial influence on men;
language contained all the great and sound metaphysics, he was wont
to say; and a word once made and generally understood, he thought a
real victory of man and reason.
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