devoted natures. There are certain forms of suffering which affect
only the tenderest and truest hearts; they have so many privileges, that
this pain has been imposed upon them as the shadow of their sunshine.

Let me suggest, as some ground of consolation and of hope, that your
very knowledge of the difference which pains you is in itself the
evidence of a deeper unity. If your son has told you the full truth
about the changes in his belief, it is probably because you yourself
have educated him in the habit of truthfulness, which is as much a law
of religion as it is of honor. Do you wish this part of his education to
be enfeebled or obliterated? Could the Church herself reasonably or
consistently blame him for practising the one virtue which, in a
peaceful and luxurious society, demands a certain exercise of courage?
Our beliefs are independent of our will, but our honesty is not; and he
who keeps his honesty keeps one of the most precious possessions of all
true Christians and gentlemen. What state of society can be more
repugnant to high religious feeling than a state of smooth external
unanimity combined with the indifference of the heart, a state in which
some splendid official religion performs its daily ceremonies as the
costliest functionary of the Government, whilst the men of culture take
a share in them out of conformity to the customs of society, without
either the assent of the intellect or the emotion of the soul? All
periods of great religious vitality have been marked by great and open
diversity of belief; and to this day those countries where religion is
most alive are the farthest removed from unanimity in the details of
religious doctrine. If your son thinks these things of such importance
to his conscience that he feels compelled to inflict upon you the
slightest pain on their account, you may rest assured that his religious
fibre is still full of vitality. If it were deadened, he would argue
very much as follows. He would say: "These old doctrines of the Church
are not of sufficient consequence for me to disturb my mother about
them. What is the use of alluding to them ever?" And then you would have
no anxiety; and he himself would have the feeling of settled peace which
comes over a battle-field when the dead are buried out of sight. It is
the peculiarity--some would say the evil, but I cannot think it an
evil--of an age of great intellectual activity to produce an amount of
critical inquiry into r