"You are my man," said he; "mind that
I am to have you when I want you." There was no date and
no address, but the postmark was Bradfield in the north
of England. Does it mean nothing? Or may it mean
everything? We must wait and see.
Good-bye, old man. Let me hear equally fully about
your own affairs. How did the Rattray business go off?
V.
MERTON ON THE MOORS, 5th March, 1882.
I was so delighted, my dear chap, to have your
assurance that nothing that I have said or could say upon
the subject of religion could offend you. It is
difficult to tell you how pleased and relieved I was at
your cordial letter. I have no one to whom I can talk
upon such matters. I am all driven inwards, and thought
turns sour when one lets it stagnate like that. It is a
grand thing to be able to tell it all to a sympathetic
listener--and the more so perhaps when he looks at it all
from another standpoint. It steadies and sobers one.
Those whom I love best are those who have least
sympathy with my struggles. They talk about having
faith, as if it could be done by an act of volition.
They might as well tell me to have black hair instead of
red. I might simulate it perhaps by refusing to use my
reason at all in religious matters. But I will
never be traitor to the highest thing that God has given
me. I WILL use it. It is more moral to use it and
go wrong, than to forego it and be right.
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