Sara S. Hennell early published An Essay on the Skeptical Tendency of Butler’s Analogy, and a Baillie prize essay on Christianity and Infidelity:  An Exposition of the Arguments on Both Sides.  A work of much merit and thought appeared from her pen in 1860, under the title of Thoughts in Aid of Faith.  In this work she follows her brother, Strauss, Feuerbach and Spencer in an interpretation of religion, which constantly recalls the theories of George Eliot.  In a series of more recent books she has continued the same line of thought.  The early and intimate friendship of Marian Evans and Miss Hennell may explain this similarity of opinion, and the beliefs they held in common were doubtless developed to a greater or less extent even when the former lived in Coventry.

Another friend of this period was a German scholar by the name of Brabant, resident in England, a friend of Strauss, Paulus, Coleridge and Grote.  Grote described him as “a vigorous self-thinking intellect.”  A daughter of Dr. Brabant first undertook the translation of Strauss, and she it was who married Charles Hennell.  After this marriage Miss Evans offered to take to Dr. Brabant the place of his daughter, and did act as his housekeeper for some months.

Marian Evans was surrounded at the most impressible period of her life by this group of intellectual, free-thinking people, who seem to have fully indoctrinated her with their own opinions.  None of them had rejected Christianity or theism, but they were rationalists in spirit, and eager students of philosophy and science.  Here were laid the foundations of the doctrines she afterwards held so strongly, and even during this period very many of the theories presented in her books were fully developed.  Here her mind was thoroughly prepared for the teachings of Comte, Spencer and Lewes; and her early instructors had gone so far in their lessons that the later teachers had little to do more than to give system to her thoughts.

It was essential to George Eliot’s novel-writing that she was educated amidst religious influences, and that she earnestly accepted the religious teaching of her childhood.  Not less important was her humble home and her association with the common life of the people.  Through all her work these influences appear, coloring her thought, shaping her views of life, and increasing her sympathies and affections.  Her tender, enthusiastic love of humble life never lost any of its quickening power.  The faith of childhood was lost, but its memory was left in a warm appreciation of all phases of religious life and a heartfelt sympathy with all the sorrows and aspirations of men.