The following remarks that he gave vent to on the subject of orthodox Christianity and an Established Church are very striking, and after what has preceded might appear paradoxical and ridiculous.  But they are in reality absolutely consistent.

“When people tell me,” he said, “as you have been doing, that the old methods are passes, and compare the crude new ideas with them for effectiveness, as working theories, I snap my fingers mentally in their face.

“These new ideas may, and doubtless do, contain all the good of the world’s future, all the seed of progress in them—­but as working ideas!  A system that has been mellowed and coloured, that has insinuated itself year by year into all the irregularities and whimsical, capricious, unexpected chinks and crannies of human nature, accommodating itself gradually to all, to be torn out and have the bleeding sensitive gap filled with a hard angular heavy object thrust straight in from an intellectual workshop—­the idea is absolutely preposterous!”

A friend wrote to him once in great perplexity about the following problem:  as to whether, taking as he did, a purely agnostic view of life, he should continue to receive the Communion with his parents when at home; as to whether it was not a base concession to his own weakness; as to whether he should not stand by his principles.

“If you have any principles to stand by,” he wrote, “by all means stand by them; but if all you mean is throwing cold water on other people’s principles, my advice is to make no move.  Dissembling your own uneasiness in the matter and quieting their anxious scruples is one of those matters which seem so simple that heroism appears to have no part in it.  It would be so much nobler (we are tempted to think) to stand up and protest and denunciate; to throw gloom and dissension into a happy home and wreck (if you are the affectionate son I believe you to be) your own happiness, not to speak of usefulness.  It would be more arduous, I admit; not therefore nobler.  Your duty is most plain; you have no right to cause acute distress to several people, because you can not take exactly such an exalted view as they do, of an institution which, from the lowest point of view, is the dying request of a great and loving soul, to all who can feel his beauty or listen to his call, a beautiful pledge of family and national unity, and a touching symbol of all good things.”

To another friend, who wrote to him to say that his principles, though still religious, and faithful in general idea to the Christian creed, were in so many points different from the principles taught and demanded by the Church of England, that he felt he ought to take some definite step to show his state of mind, he wrote as follows: