But my mind is like a troubled sea, whereon the winds of doubt blow continually, with waves of dead hopes and religious beliefs washing far away behind, and nothing before but the weary seeming of phantasmal shores. At times this faith that I cherish comes down upon me like the hushful fall of snow-flakes, calming and soothing all into peace; and again, it may be, it appears as a dark thunder-cloud, full of secret lightnings and portentous mutterings. And, too, sometimes I seem to waken into thought with a start, and to behold nothing but the blind tyranny of pure materialism, and the unutterable sorrow and hopelessness of life, and the bitter blackness of the end, which is annihilation. But such phases are generally transient, and, like a drowning man buffeting the overwhelming waves, I can often rise above them and behold the vastness and the Glory of the Light of Other Life.
And this brings me to a question which is at present troubling many others besides myself. I mean the question of the immortality of the individual. I do not know how you regard it yourself, but you must be aware that the drift of modern thought is antagonistic to personal immortality, and that many of our best and most intelligent thinking men and women abjure it as unworthy of their high conception of Humanity....
But is Humanity all? Has Humanity fashioned itself out of primal elements, arisen and marched down the long, strange ways of Time—still marching, with eyes fixed on some self-projected Goal—without ever a spiritual breath blowing upon it, without ever the faintest guidance of any divine hand, without ever a glance of sorrowful and yearning but yet ineffably hopeful love from some Being altogether beyond and transcending it? Is it, can it be so? But in any case, whether with the Nirvana of the follower of Buddha, the absorption of the soul in the soul of God of the Deist and Theist, or with the loss of the individual in the whole of the Race of the Humanitarian, I cannot altogether agree. It may be the “old Adam” of selfishness; it may be poverty of highest feeling and insufficiency of intellectual grasp; but I cannot embrace the belief in the extinction of the individual....
23d October, 1880.
I am glad you like my short paper in the Sectarian Review and I think that you understand my motive in writing it. It is no unreasoning reverence that I advocate, no “countenancing beliefs in worn-out superstitions,” as you say; no mercy to the erring, but much mercy to and sympathy with the deceived. I do not reverence the Bible or the Christian Theology in themselves, but for the beautiful spirituality which faintly but ever and again breathes through them, like a vague wind blowing through intricate forests; and so far I reverence the recognition of this spiritual breath in the worship of those whose views are so very different from my own....
I have been writing a good deal lately—chiefly verse. There is one thing which I am sure will interest you: some time ago I wrote a sonnet called “Religion,” the drift of which was to show the futility of any of the great creeds as creeds, and two or three weeks ago showed it to my friend Mr. Belford Bax. It seems to have made considerable impression upon him, for, after what he calls “having absorbed it,” he has set it to very beautiful recitative music. There are some fine chords in the composition, preluding the pathetic melody of the finale; and altogether it has given me great pleasure. But what specially interests me is that it is the first time (as far as I am aware) of a sonnet in any language having been set to music. The form of this kind of verse is of course antagonistic to song-music, and could only be rendered by recitative. Do you know of any instance having occurred? The sonnet in question will appear in The Examiner in a week or two.
Lo, in a dream, I saw a vast dim sea
Whose sad waves broke upon a barren shore;
The name of this wan sea was Nevermore,
The land The Past, the shore Futility:
Thereon I spied three mighty Shadows; three
Weary and desolate Shades, of whom each wore
A crown whereon was writ Despair. To me
One spoke, and said, “Lo, I am He
In whom the countless millions of the East