Yet it is true that I had

it was not intended to do so. observed, with some pain, what seemed to me indications of a want of enthusiasm, in the good sense of the word, of a moral sense and feeling corresponding to what I knew was your intellectual activity. I did not observe any thing amounting to a sneering spirit; but there seemed to me a coldness on religious matters, which made me fear lest it should change to sneering, as your understanding became more vigorous: for this is the natural fault of the undue predominance of the mere intellect, unaccompanied by a corresponding growth and liveliness of the moral affections, particularly that of admiration and love of moral excellence, just as superstition arises, where it is honest, from the undue predominance of the affections, without the strengthening power of the intellect advancing in proportion. This was the whole amount of my feeling with respect to you, and which has nothing to do with your conduct in school matters. I should have taken an opportunity of speaking to you about the state of your mind, had you not led me now to mention it. Possibly my impression may be wrong, and indeed it has been created by very trifling circumstances; but I am always keenly alive on this point, to the slightest indications, because it is the besetting danger of an active mind-a much more serious one, I think, than the temptation to mere personal vanity.

I must again say, most expressly, that I observed nothing more, than an apparent want of lively moral susceptibility. Your answers on religious subjects were always serious and sensible, and seemed to me quite sincere; I only feared that they proceeded, perhaps too exclusively, from an intellectual perception of truth, without a sufficient love and admiration for goodness. I hold the lines, “nil admirari,” &c., to be as utterly false as any moral sentiment ever uttered. Intense admiration is necessary to our highest perfection, and we have an object in the Gospel, for which it may be felt to the utmost, without any fear lest the most critical intellect should tax us justly with unworthy idol

atry. But I am as little inclined as any one to make an idol out of any human virtue, or human wisdom.

LXIX. TO W. W. HULL, ESQ.

Rugby, June 24, 1833.

An ordinary letter written to me when yours was, would have been answered some time since, but I do not like to write to you when I have no leisure to write at length. Most truly do I thank you both for your affectionate recollection of my birthday, and for coupling it in your mind with the 4th of April a. May my second birthday be as blessed to me, as the 20th of August, I doubt not, has been to her. . All writings which state the truth, must contain things which, taken nakedly and without their balancing truths, may serve the purposes of either party, because no party is altogether wrong. But I have no reason to think that my Church Reform Pamphlet has served the purposes of the antichristian party in any way, it being hardly possible to extract a passage which they would like. The High Church party are offended enough, and so are the Unitarians, but I do not see that either make a cat's paw of me. The Bishop con

firms here on Saturday, and I have had and have still a great deal to do in examining the boys for it. Indeed, the work is full heavy just now, but the fry are learning cricket, and we play nice matches sometimes to my great refreshment. God bless you and yours.

LXX. TO REV. AUGUSTUS HARE.

(In answer to objections to his Pamphlet.)

Grasmere, August 3, 1833.

And now I feel that to reply to your letter as I

could wish, would require a volume. You will say, why

a Alluding to his sister's birthday and death.

was not the volume published before, or with the pamphlet? To which I answer that, first, it would probably not have been read, and secondly, I was not prepared to find men so startled at principles, which have long appeared to me to follow necessarily from a careful study of the New Testament. Be assured, however, that, whether mistakenly or not, I fully believe that such a plan as I have proposed, taken altogether, would lead to a more complete representation of Scripture truth in our forms of worship and preaching than we have ever yet attained to; not, certainly, if we were only to cut away Articles, and alter the Liturgy-then the effect might be latitudinarian--but if, whilst relaxing the theoretical bond, we were to tighten the practical one by amending the government and constitution of the Church, then I do believe that the fruit would be Christian union, by which I certainly do not mean an agreement in believing nothing, or as little as we Mean time, I wish to remind you that one of St. Paul's favourite notions of heresy is "a doting about strifes of words." One side may be right in such a strife, and the other wrong, but both are heretical as to Christianity, because they lead men's minds away from the love of God and of Christ, to questions essentially tempting to the intellect, and which tend to no profit towards godliAnd again, I think you will find that all the "false doctrines" spoken of by the Apostles, are doctrines of sheer wickedness; that their counterpart in modern times is to be found in the Anabaptists of Munster, or the Fifth Monarchy Men, or in mere secular High Churchmen, or hypocritical Evangelicals,—in those who make Christianity minister to lust, or to covetousness, or to ambition; not in those who interpret Scripture to the best of their conscience and ability, be their interpretation ever so erro

can.

ness.

neous.

VOL. I.

B B

LXXI. TO REV. G. CORNISH.

Allan Bank, Grasmere, August 18, 1833.

I have had a good deal of worry from .

the party spirit of the neighbourhood, who in the first place have no notion of what my opinions are, and in the next place cannot believe that I do not teach the boys Junius and the Edinburgh Review, at the least, if not Cobbett and the Examiner. But this is an evil which flesh is heir to, if flesh, at least, will write as I have done.

I am sorry that you do not like the Pamphlet, for I am myself daily more and more convinced of its truth. I will not answer for its practicability; when the patient is at his last gasp, the dose may come too late, but still it is his only chance he may die of the doctor; he must die of the disease. I fear that nothing can save us from falling into the American system, which will well show us the inherent evil of our Protestantism, each man quarrelling with his neighbour for a word, and all discarding so much of the beauty and solemnity, and visible power of the Gospel, that in common minds, where its spiritual power is not very great, the result is like the savourless salt, the vilest thing in the world. I would join with all those who love Christ and pray to Him; who regard him not as dead, but as living. [This part of the letter has been accidentally torn away: the substance of it seems to have been the same as that of Letters LXI. and LXIX.] Make the [Church a] living and active society, like that of the first Christians, [and then] differences of opinion will either cease or will signify nothing. [Look] through the Epistles, and you will find nothing there condemned as [heresy] but what was mere wickedness; if you consider the real nature and connexion of the tenets condemned. For such differences of opinion as exist amongst Christians now, the 14th chapter of the Romans is the applicable lesson—not such passages as Titus iii. 10, or 2 John 10, 11, or Jude 3, (that much abused verse!) or 19 or 23. There is one ana

thema, which is indeed holy and just, and most profitable for ourselves as well as for others, (1 Corinth. xvi. 22,) but this is not the anathema of a fond theology. Lo! I have written you almost another pamphlet, instead of telling you of my wife and the fry, who for more than five weeks have been revelling amongst the mountains. But as far as scenery goes, I would rather have heath and blue hills all the year, than mountains for three months, and Warwickshire for nine, with no hills, either blue or brown, no heath, no woods, no clear streams, no wide plains for lights and shades to play over, nay, no banks for flowers to grow upon, but one monotonous undulation of green fields and hedges, and very fat cattle. But we have each our own work, and our own enjoyments, and I am sure that I have more than I can ever be sufficiently thank ful for.

LXXII. TO REV. JULIUS HARE.

Rugby, October 7, 1833.

In Italy you met Bunsen, and can now sympathize with the all but idolatry with which I regard him. So beautifully good, so wise, and so noble-minded! I do not believe that any man can have a deeper interest in Rome than I have, yet I envy you nothing so much in your last winter's stay there, as your continued intercourse with Bunsen. It is since I saw you that I have been devouring with the most intense admiration the third volume of Niebuhr. The clearness and compréhensiveness of all his military details is a new feature in that wonderful mind, and how inimitably beautiful is that brief account of Terni. You will not, I trust, misinterpret me, when I say that this third volume set me at work again in earnest, on the Roman History, last summer. As to any man's being a fit continuator of Niebuhr, that is absurd; but I have at least the qualification of an unbounded veneration for what he has done, and, as my name is mentioned in his book, I