culiar
views. The disputes and animosities between High and Low Church, and all
the feuds of religious sectarianism, caused him the deepest disgust. I
think, indeed, that he carried this feeling too far. He had a horror of
_cant_, which I also think was exaggerated; for it gave him a repulsion
for all outward show of religious observances. He often told me that he
never missed the practice of prayer, at morning and evening, and at
other times. But his prayers were his own: his own thoughts in his own
words. He said that he could not pray in the set words of another; nor
unless he was _alone_. As to joining in family prayers, or praying at
church, he found it impossible. He constantly read the New Testament. He
deprecated the indiscriminate reading of the Bible. He firmly believed
in the efficacy of sincere prayer; and was always pleased when I told
him I had prayed for him."

To this it may be added, that many recent conversions to the Church of
Rome, though apparently of an exactly opposite character, have in
reality also been brought about by the scientific inquiries of the age.
The religious sentiment, alarmed at the prospect of a possible taking
away of that which it feeds upon, has sought in many instances to
preserve it permanently under the guardianship of the strongest
ecclesiastical authority. In an age of less intellectual disturbance
this anxiety would scarcely have been felt; and the degree of authority
claimed by one of the reformed Churches would have been accepted as
sufficient. Here again the agitations of the modern intellect have
caused division in families; and as you are lamenting the heterodoxy of
your son, so other parents regret the Roman orthodoxy of theirs.

LETTER IV.

TO THE SON OF THE LADY TO WHOM THE PRECEDING LETTER WAS ADDRESSED.

Difficulty of detaching intellectual from religious questions--The
sacerdotal system--Necessary to ascertain what religion
is--Intellectual religion really nothing but philosophy--The popular
instinct--The test of belief--Public worship--The intellect moral, but
not religious--Intellectual activity sometimes in contradiction to
dogma--Differences between the intellectual and religious lives.

Your request is not so simple as it appears. You ask me for a frank
opinion as to the course your mind is taking in reference to very
important subjects; but you desire only intellectual, and not religious
guidance. The difficulty is to effect any clear de