No man can save another’s soul,
Or pay another’s debt!
But I wish that you, in your distracted wandering after certainty, would turn your thoughts our way, and try to understand what the great Founder of our system has done, and will do, for the human race. I am sure that the study would bring you comfort, late or soon.
‘I am, as ever, my dear Bradley,
‘Your friend and well-wisher,
‘John Cholmondeley.
‘P.S.—What are you doing in Munich? I hear of curious doings this year at Ober-Ammergau, where that ghastly business, the Passion Play, is once more in course of preparation.’
Bradley read this characteristic epistle with a gloomy frown, which changed before he had finished to a look of bitter contempt; and, as he read, he seemed once more conscious of the babble of literary club-land, and the affected jargon of the new creeds of the future. Returning the letter to his pocket, he continued to smoke till it was almost too dark to see the wreaths of fume from his own pipe.
The night had completely fallen before he rose and proceeded on his way.