As a great literary creator, George Eliot holds a singular position in reference to religious beliefs.  To most literary artists religion is a vital part of life, which enters as a profound element into their teachings or into their interpretations of character and incident.  Religion deeply affects the writings of Tennyson, Browning and Ruskin; its problems, its hopes, its elements of mystery and infinity touch all their pages.  In an equal degree, though with a further departure from accredited beliefs, and with a greater effect from philosophical or humanitarian influences, has it wrought itself into the genius of Goethe, Carlyle and Hugo.  Even the pages of Voltaire, Shelley and Heine have been touched by its magic influence; their words glow with its great interests, and bloom into beauty through its inspiration.  None of these is more affected by religion than George Eliot has been; nor does it form a greater element in their writings than in hers.

What is singular about George Eliot’s position is, that she both affirms and denies; she is deeply religious and yet rejects all religious doctrines.  No writer of the century has given religion a more important relation to human interests or made it a larger element in his creative work; and yet no other literary artist has so completely rejected all positive belief in God and immortality.  In her books she depicts every phase of religious belief and life, and with sympathy and appreciation.  A very large proportion of her characters are clergymen or other religious persons, who are described with accuracy and sympathy.  Her own faith, the theory of religion she accepts, is not given to any of her characters.  What she believes, appears only in her comments, and in the general effect which life produces on the persons she describes.  She believed Christianity is subjectively true, that it is a fit expression of the inner nature and of the spiritual wants of the soul.  She did not propagate the pantheism of Spinoza or the theism of Francis Newman, because she did not regard them as so near the truth as the Christianity of Paul.  As intellectual theories they may have been preferable to her, but from the outlook of feeling which she ever occupied, Paul was the truer teacher, and especially because his teachings are linked with the spiritual desires and outpourings of many generations.  The spontaneous movements of the human mind, which have taken possession of vast numbers of people through long periods of time, have a depth of meaning which the speculations of no individual theorizer can ever possess.  Especially did she regard Christianity as a pure and noble expression of the soul’s inner wants and aspirations.  It is an objective realization of feeling and sentiment, it gives purpose and meaning to man’s cravings for a diviner life, it links generation to generation in a continued series of beautiful traditions and noble inspirations.  Her intellectual view of the subject was expressed to a friend in these words: