In a letter to Coleridge, written in 1797, the year after his first great affliction, he says:
"Coleridge, I have not one truly elevated character among my acquaintance; not one Christian; not one but undervalues Christianity. Singly, what am I to do? Wesley—[have you read his life?]—was not he an elevated character? Wesley has said religion was not a solitary thing. Alas! it is necessarily so with me, or next to solitary. 'Tis true you write to me; but correspondence by letter and personal intimacy are widely different. Do, do write to me; and do some good to my mind—already how much 'warped and relaxed' by the world!"
In a letter written about three months previously, he had not scrupled to blame Coleridge at some length for audacities of religious speculation, which seemed to him at war with the simplicities of pure religion. He says:
"Do continue to write to me. I read your letters with my sister, and they give us both abundance of delight. Especially they please us two when you talk in a religious strain. Not but we are offended occasionally with a certain freedom of expression, a certain air of mysticism, more consonant to the conceits of pagan philosophy than consistent with the humility of genuine piety."
Then, after some instances of what he blames, he says:
"Be not angry with me, Coleridge. I wish not to cavil; I know I cannot instruct you; I only wish to remind you of that humility which best becometh the Christian character. God, in the New Testament, our best guide, is represented to us in the kind, condescending, amiable, familiar light of a parent; and, in my poor mind, 'tis best for us so to consider him as our heavenly Father, and our best friend, without indulging too bold conceptions of his character."
About a month later, he says:
"Few but laugh at me for reading my Testament. They talk a language I understand not; I conceal sentiments that would be a puzzle to them."
We see by this last quotation where it was that Lamb originally sought for consolation. We personally can vouch that, at a maturer period, when he was approaching his fiftieth year, no change had affected his opinions upon that point; and, on the other hand, that no changes had occurred in his needs for consolation, we see, alas! in the records of his life. Whither, indeed, could he fly for comfort, if not to his Bible? And to whom was the Bible an indispensable resource, if not to Lamb? We do not undertake to say, that in his knowledge of Christianity he was everywhere profound or consistent, but he was always earnest in his aspirations after its spiritualities, and had an apprehensive sense of its power.
Charles Lamb is gone; his life was a continued struggle in the service of love the purest, and within a sphere visited by little of contemporary applause. Even his intellectual displays won but a narrow sympathy at any time, and in his earlier period were saluted with positive derision and contumely on the few occasions when they were not oppressed by entire neglect. But slowly all things right themselves. All merit, which is founded in truth, and is strong enough, reaches by sweet exhalations in the end a higher sensory; reaches higher organs of discernment, lodged in a selecter audience. But the original obtuseness or vulgarity of feeling that thwarted Lamb's just estimation in life, will continue to thwart its popular diffusion. There are even some that continue to regard him with the old hostility. And we, therefore, standing by the side of Lamb's grave, seemed to hear, on one side, (but in abated tones, ) strains of the ancient malice—"This man, that thought himself to be somebody, is dead—is buried—is forgotten!" and, on the other side, seemed to hear ascending, as with the solemnity of an anthem—"This man, that thought himself to be nobody, is dead—is buried; his life has been searched; and his memory is hallowed forever!"