And again:
“I don’t trouble myself much about who goes ‘over to Rome’ and who does not. After all for each one,—‘To his own Master he stands or falls,’ and what we must ask of each is to act to the best of his lights.
But I think ‘subterfuging’ implies dim lights.”
Her own attitude grew steadily simpler, enriching the vital elements of her Mother’s creed with the wisdom and experience of her own life. As time went on she disliked increasingly to be classed with those whose attitude towards religion is one of indifference. Even before she left Edinburgh she had written to an old school friend, in acknowledgement of a book by another schoolfellow:
“To speak plainly then it strikes me as crude and superficial,—as the work of a person who has caught up passwords rather than of one who has struggled through the conflict of thought personally. It reminds me forcibly of the old proverb, ‘Qui pauca considerat facile pronuntiat.’ The deeper we go into problems, whether social or religious, the less possible it seems to me to pronounce about them offhand.
In theology you would, I suppose, rank me among the Agnostics, as I feel very strongly how little we know on such subjects, and that the truly scientific aspect of mind is one of suspension of judgment; but I have no sympathy at all with C.’s attacks on Christianity and the alleged motives of its advocates, and still less with her estimate of the character of Christ.
The programme of Socialism strikes me (so far as I understand it) as unworkable, because it ignores a great many of the facts of human nature; and I am sure you are right in thinking that the true path of progress lies in gradual improvement, and gradual removal of unjust restrictions, rather than in sudden violence and revolution.”
To a much more intimate friend she had written about the same time:
“Yes, I think —— is what I should call an Agnostic, but perhaps you from lordly heights of orthodoxy don’t appreciate that that differs ‘toto caelo’ from an atheist; and that it is one of the most offensive of errors,—and one frequently made from culpable carelessness,—to substitute the one for the other.”
Her appreciation of the Bible increased—and it had always been an exceptional appreciation;—but there are two quotations that stand out in one’s memory as belonging to her in a special sense. She always appropriated to herself with great fervour the prayer of Agur:—“Two things have I required of thee...: Remove far from me vanity and lies; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me; lest I be full and deny thee, and say, Who is the Lord? or lest I be poor and steal, and take the name of my God in vain.”