Elsmere
as with all men of religious temperament, belief in Christianity and
faith in God had not at the outset been a matter of reasoning at all,
but of sympathy, feeling, association, daily experience. Then the
intellect had broken in, and destroyed or transformed the belief in
Christianity. But after the crash, _faith_ emerged as strong as ever,
only craving and eager to make a fresh peace, a fresh compact with the
reason.

Elsmere had heard Grey say long ago in one of the few moments of real
intimacy he had enjoyed with him at Oxford, 'My interest in philosophy
springs solely from the chance it offers me of knowing something more
of God!' Driven by the same thirst he too threw himself into the
same quest, pushing his way laboriously through the philosophical
border-lands of science, through the ethical speculation of the day,
through the history of man's moral and religious past. And while on the
one hand the intellect was able to contribute an ever stronger support
to the faith which was the man; on the other, the sphere in him of a
patient ignorance, which abstains from all attempts at knowing what man
cannot know, and substitutes trust for either knowledge or despair,
was perpetually widening. 'I take my stand on conscience and the moral
life!' was the upshot of it all. 'In them I find my God! As for all
these various problems, ethical and scientific, which you press upon me,
my pessimist friend, I, too, am bewildered; I, too, have no explanations
to offer. But I trust and wait. In spite of them--beyond them--I have
abundantly enough for faith--for hope--for action!'

We may quote a passage or two from some letters of his written at this
time to that young Armitstead who had taken his place at Murewell
and was still there till Mowbray Elsmere should appoint a new man.
Armitstead had been a college friend of Elsmere's. He was a High
Churchman of a singularly gentle and delicate type, and the manner
in which he had received Elsmere's story on the day of his arrival at
Murewell had permanently endeared him to the teller of it. At the same
time the defection from Christianity of a man who at Oxford had been to
him the object of much hero-worship, and, since Oxford, an example of
pastoral efficiency, had painfully affected young Armitstead, and he
began a correspondence with Robert which was in many ways a relief
to both. In Switzerland and Italy, when his wife's gentle inexorable
silence became too oppressive to hi