xpressed them in the terms of a metaphysical theory, and
expanded them into what theologians call the doctrines of grace and
sin, the fluctuations of the union of the soul with its unseen friend.
The life of those who are capable of a passion for perfection still
produces the same mental states; but that religious expression of them
is no longer congruous with the culture of the age. Still, all inward
life works itself out in a few simple forms, and culture cannot go
very far before the religious graces reappear in it in a subtilized
intellectual shape. There are aspects of the religious character which
have an artistic worth distinct from their religious import. Longing,
a chastened temper, spiritual joy, are precious states of mind, not
because they are part of man's duty or because God has commanded them,
still less because they are means of obtaining a reward, but because
like culture itself they are remote, refined, intense, existing only
by the triumph of a few over a dead world of routine in which there
is no lifting of the soul at all. If there is no other world, art in
its own interest must cherish such characteristics as beautiful
spectacles. Stephen's face, 'like the face of an angel,' has a worth
of its own, even if the opened heaven is but a dream.

Our culture, then, is not supreme, our intellectual life is
incomplete, we fail of the intellectual throne, if we have no inward
longing, inward chastening, inward joy. Religious belief, the craving
for objects of belief, may be refined out of our hearts, but they must
leave their sacred perfume, their spiritual sweetness behind. This law
of the highest intellectual life has sometimes seemed hard to
understand. Those who maintain the claims of the older and narrower
forms of religious life against the claims of culture are often
embarrassed at finding the intellectual life heated through with the
very graces to which they would sacrifice it. How often in the higher
class of theological writings--writings which really spring from an
original religious genius, such as those of Dr. Newman--does the
modern aspirant to perfect culture seem to find the expression of the
inmost delicacies of his own life, the same yet different! The
spiritualities of the Christian life have often drawn men on, little
by little, into the broader spiritualities of systems opposed to
it--pantheism, or positivism, or a philosophy of indifference. Many in
our own generation, through religio