is deaf to the work of God that has been since their time. What has
your dead wisdom done for you, my daughter? It has left you without a
heart for the neighbors among whom you dwell, without care for the
great work by which Florence is to be regenerated and the world made
holy; it has left you without a share in the Divine life which quenches
the sense of suffering self in the ardors of an ever-growing love. And
now, when the sword has pierced your soul, you say, 'I will go away; I
cannot bear my sorrow.' And you think nothing of the sorrow and the
wrong that are within the walls of the city where you dwell; you would
leave your place empty, when it ought to be filled with your pity and
your labor. If there is wickedness in the streets, your steps should
shine with the light of purity; if there is a cry of anguish, you, my
daughter, because you know the meaning of the cry, should be there to
still it. My beloved daughter, sorrow has come to teach you a new
worship; the sign of it hangs before you."

This teaching of renunciation is no less distinctly presented in _The Mill
on the Floss_, the chief ethical aim of which is its inculcation. It is
also there associated with the Catholic form of its expression, through
Maggie's reading of _The Imitation of Christ_, a book which was George
Eliot's constant companion, and was found by her bedside after her death.
It was the spirit of that book which attracted George Eliot, not its
doctrines. Its lofty spirit of submission and renunciation she admired; and
she believed that altruism can be made real only through tradition, only as
associated with past heroisms and strivings and ideals. As an embodiment of
man's craving for perfect union with humanity, for full and joyous
submission to his lot, the old forms of faith are sacred. They carry the
hopes of ages; they are a pictured poem of man's inward strivings. To break
away from these memories is to forsake one's home, is to repudiate one's
mother. We cannot intellectually accept them, we cannot assent to the
dogmas associated with them; but the forms are the spontaneous expressions
of the heart, while the dogmas are an after-thought of the inquiring
intellect. The real meaning of the cross of Christ is self-sacrifice for
humanity's sake; that was its inspiration, that has ever been its true
import. It was this view of the subject which made George Eliot so
continuously asso