ear which bridles and guides the lover with awe--even
though misplaced--of the beloved one's perfections; with dread--never
misplaced--of the beloved one's contempt. And therefore it is that
souls who have the germ of nobleness within, are drawn to souls more
noble than themselves, just because, needing guidance, they cling to
one before whom they dare not say or do, or even think, an ignoble
thing. And if these higher souls are--as they usually are--not
merely formidable, but tender likewise, and true, then the influence
which they may gain is unbounded, for good--or, alas! for evil--both
to themselves and to those that worship them. Woe to the man who,
finding that God has given him influence over human beings for their
good, begins to use it after awhile, first only to carry out through
them his own little system of the Universe, and found a school or
sect; and at last by steady and necessary degradation, mainly to feed
his own vanity and his own animal sense of power.

But Mr. Maurice, above all men whom I have ever met, conquered both
these temptations. For, first, he had no system of the Universe. To
have founded a sect, or even a school, would be, he once said, a sure
sign that he was wrong and was leading others wrong. He was a
Catholic and a Theologian, and he wished all men to be such likewise.
To be so, he held, they must know God in Christ. If they knew God,
then with them, as with himself, they would have the key which would
unlock all knowledge, ecclesiastical, eschatological (religious, as
it is commonly called), historic, political, social. Nay even, so he
hoped, that knowledge of God would prove at last to be the key to the
right understanding of that physical science of which he,
unfortunately for the world, knew but too little, but which he
accepted with a loyal trust in God, and in fact as the voice of God,
which won him respect and love from men of science to whom his
theology was a foreign world. If he could make men know God, and
therefore if he could make men know that God was teaching them; that
no man could see a thing unless God first showed it to him--then all
would go well, and they might follow the Logos, with old Socrates,
whithersoever he led. Therefore he tried not so much to alter men's
convictions, as, like Socrates, to make them respect their own
convictions, to be true to their own deepest instincts, true to the
very words which they used so carelessly, ignorant alike of th