’Is it my defect of spiritual experience, that while that weight of sagacity, which is the iron to the dart of genius, is needful to satisfy me, the undertone of another and a deeper knowledge does not please, does not command me?  Even in Handel’s Messiah, I am half incredulous, half impatient, when the sadness of the second part comes to check, before it interprets, the promise of the first; and the strain, “Was ever sorrow like to his sorrow,” is not for me, as I have been, as I am.  Yet Handel was worthy to speak of Christ.  The great chorus, “Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead; for as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive,” if understood in the large sense of every man his own Saviour, and Jesus only representative of the way all must walk to accomplish our destiny, is indeed a worthy gospel.’

* * * * *

’Ever since ——­ told me how his feelings had changed towards Jesus, I have wished much to write some sort of a Credo, out of my present state, but have had no time till last night.  I have not satisfied myself in the least, and have written very hastily, yet, though not full enough to be true, this statement is nowhere false to me.

* * * ’Whatever has been permitted by the law of being, must be for good, and only in time not good.  We trust, and are led forward by experience.  Light gives experience of outward life, faith of inward life, and then we discern, however faintly, the necessary harmony of the two.  The moment we have broken through an obstruction, not accidentally, but by the aid of faith, we begin to interpret the Universe, and to apprehend why evil is permitted.  Evil is obstruction; Good is accomplishment.

’It would seem that the Divine Being designs through man to express distinctly what the other forms of nature only intimate, and that wherever man remains imbedded in nature, whether from sensuality, or because he is not yet awakened to consciousness, the purpose of the whole remains unfulfilled.  Hence our displeasure when Man is not in a sense above Nature.  Yet, when he is not so closely bound with all other manifestations, as duly to express their Spirit, we are also displeased.  He must be at once the highest form of Nature, and conscious of the meaning she has been striving successively to unfold through those below him.  Centuries pass; whole races of men are expended in the effort to produce one that shall realize this Ideal, and publish Spirit in the human form.  Here and there is a degree of success.  Life enough is lived through a man, to justify the great difficulties attendant on the existence of mankind.  And then throughout all realms of thought vibrates the affirmation, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”

’I do not mean to lay an undue stress upon the position and office of man merely because I am of his race, and understand best