mes I had heard
him preach very beautiful sermons, and I felt I very greatly needed
the guidance of _someone who knew._ I wanted, I longed for, a
human intermediary. I knew that I was in the hands of the God
Whom for so many years I had so passionately sought; but He was
so immeasurably great, and I so pitifully small, and I needed a
human being--someone to whom I might speak about God.

Yet something warned me not to commence as though speaking of
myself, but of another person. I said only a few words, of the joy of
this person in finding and loving God, and immediately my friend
spoke very severely of persons who imagined they had found, and
loved, God. God was not to be found by our puny, shifting and
uncertain love: He was to be found by duty, by obedience to Church
rules, by pious attendance _At Church._ He explained to me various
dogmas which helped me no more than the moaning of the wind; he
explained the absolute necessity (for salvation) of certain beliefs and
written sentences, and ceremonials in the Church. Love was not the
way. Love was emotion, emotion was deceptive: the mind, and
severe firm attention to the dictates of The Church was what was
required; in fact, he unfolded before me the Ecclesiastical Mind. I
shrank back from it, dismayed, frightened. Were all the deep needs
and requirements of the soul to be satisfied in the singing of hymns
and Te Deum, in the close and reverent attention to the Ceremonies
before the altar, and of the actions of Priests! Did, or could, any
reasoning creature truly think to Find God by merely repeating,
however reverently, the same prayers and ceremonies Sunday after
Sunday! Could the great mountain up which my soul had sweated,
and which each soul must climb--could it be climbed by kneeling in
a pew in church? No; a total change of _character_ was needed, and
Christ Himself was necessary for this change--Jesus Christ gliding
into the heart and mind and soul, and _biding_ there because of that
heart's, that mind's, invitation to, and love for, Him. Secretly--in
one's own chamber, every hour of the day, in the streets, in the
fields--in this way it might be accomplished.

With Christ biding in the heart all the Church service would
_become_ a thing of beauty as between the Soul and God; but
without this Jesus Christ dwelling in the heart, the connection was
not yet made between the Soul--the service--and the Godhead.

Perhaps amongst Romans I should find the understan