What I have said is from the bottom of my heart, and put forward without the smallest reservation of any kind: and I have said it thus, because in duty bound to do it; and having, too, the comfort of the fullest persuasion that even if your judgment should disallow it, your affection would pardon it. It is possible, indeed, that the (as it seems to me) awful consideration which I have last put forward may have been misstated or misapprehended. Would God it may be so! happy should I be to find either by reason or revelation that the principles of this world were other than I have estimated them to be, and consequently that their fate would be other likewise. I may be under darkness and delusion, having consulted with none in this matter; but till it is shown that I am so, I am bound by all the most solemn ties, ties not created in this world nor to be dissolved with it, but eternal and changeless as our spirits and He who made them, to regulate my actions with reference to these all-important truths—the apostasy of man on the one hand, the love of God on the other. Of my duties to men as a social being, can any be so important as to tell them of the danger under which I believe them to lie, of the precipice to which I fear many are approaching, while thousands have already fallen headlong, and others again, even while I write, are continuing to fall in a succession of appalling rapidity? Of my duties to God as a rational and responsible being, especially as a being for whom in common with all men the precious blood of Christ has been given, can any more imperatively and more persuasively demand all the little I can give than this, the proclaiming that one instance of God's unfathomable love which alone so transcends as almost to swallow up all others? while those others thus transcended and eclipsed are such as would be of themselves by far the highest and holiest obligations man could know, did we not know this.
Thus I have endeavoured to state these truths, if truths they are, at least these convictions, to you, dwelling upon them at a length which may perhaps be tedious and appear affected, simply as I trust, in order to represent them to your mind as much to the life as possible, I mean as nearly as possible in the light in which they have again and again appeared, and do habitually appear, to my own, so as to give you the best means in my power of estimating the strength or detecting the weakness of those grounds on which the conclusions above stated rest. (I have not mentioned the benefit I might hope myself to derive from this course of living compared with others; and yet this consideration, though here undoubtedly a secondary one, is, I believe, more weighty than any of those which can be advanced in favour of an opposite determination.)
For some time I doubted whether to state reasons at all: fearing that it might appear presumptuous; but I resolved to do it as choosing rather to incur that risk, than the hazarding an appearance of reserve and desire to conceal my real sentiments from one who has a right to see into the bottom of my heart.
Yet one trespass more I must make on your patience. It may perhaps seem that the inducements I have stated are of an unusual character, unsubstantial, romantic, theoretical, and not practical. Unusual, indeed, they are: because (though it is not without diffidence that I bring this sweeping charge—indeed, I should not dare to bring it were it not brought elsewhere) it is a rare thing in this world even where right actions are performed to ground them upon right motives. At least, I am convinced that there are fundamental errors on this subject very prevalent—that they are in general fixed far too low, and that the height of our standard of practice must ever be adapted more or less to that of principle. God only knows whether this be right. But hence it has been that I have endeavoured, I trust not improperly, to put these motives forward in the simplicity of that form wherein they seem to me to come down from the throne of God to the hearts of men; and to consider my prospects and obligations, not under all the limitations which a highly artificial state of society might seem to impose upon them, but direct and undiluted; not, in short, as one who has certain pursuits to follow, certain objects of his own to gain, and relations to fulfil, and arrangements to execute—but as a being destined shortly to stand before the judgment seat of God, and there give the decisive account of his actions at the tribunal whose awards admit of no evasion and of no appeal.
That I have viewed them in this light I dare not assert; but I have wished and striven to view them so, and to weigh them, and to answer these questions in the same manner as I must answer them on that day when the trumpet of the archangel shall arouse the living and the dead, and when it will be demanded of me in common with all others, how I have kept and how employed that which was committed to my charge. I dare not pretend that I could act even up to the standard here fixed, but I can eye it though distant, with longing hope, and look upwards for the power which I know is all-sufficient, and therefore sufficient to enable even such an one as myself to reach it.
Viewing, then, these considerations in such a light as this, I can come to no other conclusion, at least unaided, than that the work of spreading religion has a claim infinitely transcending all others in dignity, in solemnity, and in usefulness: destined to continue in force until the happy moment come when every human being has been made fully and effectually acquainted with his condition and its remedies—when too, as it seems to me, it will be soon enough—of course, I lay down this rule for myself, provided as I am to the extent of my wants and very far beyond them—to devise other occupations: now it behoves me to discharge the overwhelming obligation which summons me to this.
I have scarcely mentioned my beloved mother in the whole of this letter; for though little has ever passed between us on this subject through the medium of language, and nothing whatever, I believe, since I last spoke with you upon it, yet I have long been well aware of the tendency of her desires, long indeed before my own in any degree coincided with them.
I await with deference and interest the communication of your desires upon this subject: earnestly desiring that if I have said anything through pride or self-love, it may be forgiven me at your hands, and by God through his Son; and that if my statements be false, or exaggerated, or romantic, or impracticable, I may, by His mercy and through your instrumentality or that of others, be brought back to my right mind, and taught to hold the truth of God in all its sobriety as well as in all its force.—And believe me ever, my beloved and honoured father, your affectionate and dutiful son,
Wm. E. Gladstone.