The value of life is not to be measured by length of days or success or tranquillity, but by the quality of our experience, and the degree in which we have profited by it.  In the light of such a truth as this, art seems to fade away as just a pleasant amusement contrived by leisurely men for leisurely men.

Then, further, one grows to feel that such easy happiness as comes to us may be little more than the sweetening of the bitter medicine, just enough to give us courage and heart to live on; that applies, of course, only to the commoner sorts of happiness, when one is busy and merry and self-satisfied.  Some sorts of happiness, such as the best kind of affection, are parts of the larger experience.

Then, if we take hold of such experience in the right way, welcoming it as far as possible, not resisting it or trying to beguile it or forget it, we can get to the end of our probation quicker; if, that is, we let the truth burn into us, instead of timidly shrinking away from it.

This seems to me the essence of true religion; the people who cling very close to particular creeds and particular beliefs seem to me to lose robustness; it is like trying to go to heaven in a bath-chair!  It retards rather than hastens the apprehension of the truth.  Here lies, to my mind, the unreality of mystical books of devotion and piety, where one is instructed to practise a servile sort of abasement, and to beg forgiveness for all one’s noblest efforts and aspirations.  Neither can I believe that the mystical absorption, inculcated by such books, in the human personality, the human sufferings of Christ, is wholesome, or natural, or even Christian.  I cannot imagine that Christ Himself ever recommended such a frame of mind for an instant.  What we want is a much simpler sort of Christianity.  If a man had gone to Christ and expressed a desire to follow Him, Christ, I believe, would have wanted to know whether he loved others, whether he hated sin, whether he trusted God.  He would not have asked him to recite the articles of his belief, and still less have suggested a mystical and emotional sort of passion for His own Person.  As least I cannot believe it, and I see nothing in the Gospels which would lead me to believe it.

In any case this belief in our experience being sent us for our far-off ultimate benefit has helped me greatly of late, and will, I am sure, help me still more.  I do not practise it as I should, but I believe with all my heart that the truth lies there.

After all, the truth is there; it matters little that we should know it; it is just so and not otherwise, and what we believe or do not believe about it, will not alter it; and that is a comfort too.

April 24, 1891.

After I had gone upstairs to bed last night, I found I had left a book downstairs which I was reading, and I went down again to recover it.  I could not find any matches, and had some difficulty in getting hold of the book; it is humiliating to think how much one depends on sight.