the
ground of simplicity, purity, selfishness. Heaven is the possibility of
fresh acts of self-sacrifice, of a fuller life of unselfishness. You are
a man and a minister in so far as you are unselfish. You cannot learn
unselfishness save from the one Source. Definite habits of real
devotion--these we must make and keep to and renew and increase. Then we
shall gradually find that we are less dependent on self--that even in the
busiest scenes we dare not act on our own responsibility--that, be the
act ever so small and trifling, when we are in difficulty we shall
naturally, inevitably, spontaneously turn to that place whence help alone
can come. But it is a wonderful help again and again to feel that we
have been {98} alone with Him, that we are not working on our own
responsibility, that He is the 'Living Will' that rises and flows
'through our deeds and makes them pure.'

_To D. D. R._

8 Alexandra Gardens, Ventnor: Jan. 2, 1894.

While holding as firmly and unreservedly to the belief that a revelation
is a possibility that has actually been realised, I am becoming more
aware of the partial and limited view which any single individual can
have of the significance of such a revelation; and with this conviction
comes a desire not to hinder by any words or prejudices of mine the
education of one to whom I owe more than I at present know. Yet, as I
believe that no individual life is beyond the wise ordering of a Divine
economy, I am sure that he must have lessons to learn from me as well as
I to learn from him. Hence I dare not refrain from suggesting to
him--often in answer to questions that he puts to me--sides of truth
which, as I believe, I have been allowed to apprehend. The knowledge of
truth (in however small a degree) is a trust that we hold for the sake of
others. What I fear for him and for you--for you even more than for
him--is not that you will form wrong opinions on religious or ethical
subjects, but that you will lack that moral earnestness that forces a
man, whether he will or not, to look the facts of life in the face, that
deadly earnestness that refuses to allow us to contemplate creeds as
works of art, but forces us to ask whether these things be so. Life as a
whole must be faced. What has induced men to {99} believe this and that
tenet? Why have men craved for a knowledge of an unseen Being? Why have
systems of priestcraft arisen? How is it that those who most revolt
against such s