The religious tendencies of George Eliot’s mind are rather to be noted in her conception of renunciation than in her beliefs about God and immortality.  These latter beliefs were of a negative character as she entertained them, but her doctrine of renunciation was of a very positive nature.  The central motive of that belief was not faith in God, but faith in man.  It gained all its charm and power for her out of her conception of the organic life of the race.  Her thought was, that we should live not for self, but for humanity.  What so many ardent souls have been willing to do for the glory of God she was willing to do for the uplifting of man.  The spirit of renunciation with her took the old theologic form of expression to a considerable extent, associated itself in her thought with the lofty spiritual consecration and self-abnegation of other ages.  So ardently did she entertain this doctrine, so fully did she clothe it with the old forms of expression, that many have been deceived into believing her a devoted Christian.  A little book was published in 1879 for the express purpose of showing that “the doctrine of the cross” is the main thought presented throughout all George Eliot’s books. [Footnote:  The Ethics of George Eliot’s Works.  By the late John Crombie Brown.  Edinburgh:  William Blackwood and Sons. 1879.] This book was read by George Eliot with much delight, and was regarded by her as the only criticism of her works which did full justice to her purpose in writing them.  She is presented in that book as the writer of fiction who “stands out as the deepest, broadest and most catholic illustrator of the true ethics of Christianity; the most earnest and persistent expositor of the true doctrine of the cross, that we are born and should live to something higher than love of happiness.”  “Self-sacrifice as the divine law of life, and its only true fulfilment; self-sacrifice, not in some ideal sphere sought out for ourselves in the vain spirit of self-pleasing, but wherever God has placed us, amid homely, petty anxieties, loves and sorrows; the aiming at the highest attainable good in our own place, irrespective of all results of joy or sorrow, of apparent success or failure—­such is the lesson” that is conveyed in all her books.  George Eliot is presented as a true teacher of the doctrine which admonishes us to love not pleasure but God, to forsake all things else for the sake of obedience and devotion, to shun the world and to devote ourselves perpetually to God’s service.  The Christian doctrine of renunciation has always bidden men put their eyes on God, forget everything beside, and seek only for that divine life which is spiritual union with the Eternal.