the greatest
enthusiasm the old expressions of piety, it is the human elements in that
faith which are made to appear most prominently. We are told that no
radiant angel came across the gloom with a clear message for Romola in her
moment of direst distress and need. Then we are told that many such see no
angels; and we are made to realize that angelic voices are to George Eliot
the voices of her fellows.

In those times, as now, there were human beings who never saw angels or
heard perfectly clear messages. Such truth as came to them was brought
confusedly in the voices and deeds of men not at all like the seraphs
of unfailing wing and piercing vision--men who believed falsities as
well as truths, and did the wrong as well as the right. The helping
hands stretched out to them were the hands of men who stumbled and
often saw dimly, so that these beings unvisited by angels had no other
choice than to grasp that stumbling guidance along the path of reliance
and action which is the path of life, or else to pause in loneliness
and disbelief, which is no path, but the arrest of inaction and death.

The same thought is expressed in _Silas Marner_, that man is to expect no
help and consolation except from his fellow-man.

In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led
them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels
now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is
put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and
bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may he a
little child's.

Even more explicit in its rejection of all sources of help, except the
human, is the motto to "The Lifted Veil."

Give me no light, great Heaven, but such as turns
To energy of human fellowship;
No powers beyond the growing heritage
That makes completer manhood.

The purpose of this story is to show that supernatural knowledge is a curse
to man. The narrator of the story is gifted with the power of divining even
the most secret thoughts of those about him, and of beholding coming
events. This knowledge brings him only evil and sorrow. His spiritual
insight did not save him from folly, and he is led to say,--

"There is no short cut, no patent tram-road to wisdom. After all the
centuries of invention, the soul's path lies through the thorny
wilderness, which mu