‘I have been thinking much these holidays about the many who like yourself are full of difficulties and questions. One thing some of us are going to do, and I want you to join: make each week special prayers for the teachers in Colleges and High Schools,—(you will specially remember me), and ask that some means may be found of helping them....
‘Need you dwell upon that question of eternal death? Could you not say, “Father, I see not yet what Thou doest, but I trust Thee?” If the death of any of His creatures whom He loves is inevitable, then it does not make us believe Him unloving, we know how He yearns to serve us.’
To the same:—
‘March 1883.
‘I do not mean either to say that the carelessness of a time in which you did see and were able to realise divine things was nothing to do with the present trial. Who can judge another? I begged him not to be unhappy if your religious life took another form....
‘Yes, I was so glad to see your father. I feel I know him much better, and perhaps he knows me better.
‘I quite understand his strong language about the Church, only those evils are not inherent in it, but in our sinful nature, and similar ones appear even among the Brethren. The unreality does not depend upon the amount of ritual....’
To the same:—
‘April 1883.
‘I have very much enjoyed Professor Edward Caird’s Hegel. It is 3s. 6d., published by Blackwood. I am not quite sure it would help you, but think it would. I want you to get deeper, and to be very patient until God shows you more light. He is showing it to you, only until you and I are able to see more clearly He must wait. You have not suffered so much for nothing, but I trust you may one day help others. If you get Westcott on the Resurrection, read the end first on Positivism, there is much in it that is so Christian, and much in what is called Christianity which St. Paul would have called carnal. All that about the Lord’s glorified Body in St. John and St. Paul speak to us of a spirit glorified and no longer bound in any space, but a life-giving power, real, substantial....