TO R. W. CHURCH.
Sunday evening, February 25, 1866.
The number of the “Guardian” followed closely upon your note of the 9th instant, and I have just risen from the reading of your review of “Ecce Homo.” I knew nothing of this remarkable book, beyond having seen the title. The notice in the “Spectator” had escaped me, or rather, through a change in the order of circulation in our book club, that number of “Spectator” has not yet come round to me. But I have to thank you heartily for calling my attention to it, and especially for sending me your own published and well-considered thoughts of it. I greatly admire your analysis of the book, and what I thus learn of it greatly impresses me. I shall procure it without delay. I long, not only to read it myself, but to put it into the hands of some friends. Such a production is timely, and will be very useful. I hope the unknown writer will go on, and as he goes on bring out, in the same fresh and untechnical way, all the essentials of Christian belief. Even if he does not, it will have great value as it is; and one will be curious to see how he can fail to raise the superstructure which this foundation seems to be designed to bear. I have long thought it very important that these subjects and the whole range of connected questions need to be treated by a layman from an unprofessional point of view, and quite apart from theological language or conventional modes of thought, say by a lawyer of a judicial turn of mind, or by a physicist or naturalist, who understands and feels the scientific difficulties, and the prevalent state of mind, especially among scientific people, which most divines persist in ignoring.
As soon as I get this book, and have attentively read it, I shall probably wish to speak of it again to you. If I find that it does not receive notice in this country, I will see that attention is in some way called to it. But I should think it likely to attract attention in this country at once.
I have never thanked you for your letter of December 6, and for the hope, faint though it be, that you may come over and see us some day. Pray don’t give over the thought, and some day you may chance to bring it about. Cambridge is not a bad point from which to sally forth in little explorations of American life....
We have much anxiety as to what we can do with the South now we have got it; and our President Johnson is not a Lincoln. The breach which has just occurred, and which may cause great trouble, has been feared for some time; and the blame is to be assigned in part to the indiscretion and impracticability of a few of the advanced Republican leaders. We have survived worse scenes and darker prospects, and shall surmount these troubles, I trust, in time. But here things cannot always be done in the wisest way....
I imagine Earl Russell is safe for a year or two, since no other minstry could well be found to replace him. I should like, before long, to see Gladstone at the helm.
TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.
... The small parcel from Andersson[62] has come. From him I have a nice oil copy of the portrait of Linnæus,[63] painted by Madame Andersson.
Chapman[64] is here, excellent, loyal man all through; hates copperheads; is soon going back, so that you can write him at Apalachicola for Junci. I have told him what you are at with the genus.