This is part of one of Lady Blanche Balfour’s prayers, written at the age of twenty-six: 

From the dangers of metaphysical subtleties and from profitless speculation on the origin of evil—­Good Lord deliver me.

From hardness of manner, coldness, misplaced sarcasm, and all errors and imperfections of manner or habit, from words and deeds by which Thy good may be evil-spoken, of through me, or not promoted to the utmost of my ability—­Good Lord deliver me.

Teach me my duties to superiors, equals and inferiors.  Give me gentleness and kindliness of manner and perfect tact; a thoughtful heart such as Thou lovest; leisure to care for the little things of others, and a habit of realising in my own mind their positions and feelings.

Give me grace to trust my children—­with the peace that passeth all understanding—­to Thy love and care.  Teach me to use my influence over each and all, especially children and servants, aright, that I may give account of this, as well as of every other talent, with joy—­and especially that I may guide with the love and wisdom which are far above the religious education of my children.

By Lady Blanche Balfour, 1851.

Born and bred in the Lowlands of Scotland, Arthur Balfour avoided the narrowness and materialism of the extreme High Church; but he was a strong Churchman.  I wrote in a very early diary:  “I wish Arthur would write something striking on the Established Church, as he could express better than any one living how much its influence for good in the future will depend on the spirit in which it is worked.”

His mind was more critical than constructive; and those of his religious writings which I have read have been purely analytical.  My attention was first arrested by an address he delivered at the Church Congress at Manchester in 1888.  The subject which he chose was Positivism, without any special reference to the peculiarities of Comte’s system.  He called it The Religion of Humanity. [Footnote:  An essay delivered at the Church Congress, Manchester, and printed in a pamphlet] In this essay he first dismisses the purely scientific and then goes on to discuss the Positivist view of man.  The following passages will give some idea of his manner and style of writing: 

Man, so far as natural science itself is able to teach us, is no longer the final cause of the universe, the heaven-descended heir of all the ages.  His very existence is an accident, his history a brief and discreditable episode in the life of one of the meanest of the planets.  Of the combination of causes which first converted a piece or pieces of unorganised jelly into the living progenitors of humanity, science indeed, as yet, knows nothing.  It is enough that from such beginnings, Famine, Disease, and Mutual Slaughter, fit nurses of the future lord of creation, have gradually evolved, after infinite travail, a race with conscience enough to know that it is vile,