The Eclipse of Faith | Page 4

and a night of tempest
too, finds himself on the open heath. To employ his own words, "he
could not rest contented with one-sided theories or inconsequential
reasonings, and has pursued the argument to its logical termination."
He is ill at ease in mind, I hear, and not in robust health; and I am just
going to visit him.
I shall have some melancholy scenes with him; I feel that. Do you
remember, when we were in Switzerland together, how, as we wound
down the Susten and the Grimsel passes, with the perpendicular cliffs
some thousand feet above us, and a torrent as many feet below, we used
to shudder at the thought of two men, wrestling upon that dizzy verge,
and striving to throw each other over! I almost imagine that I am about
to engage in such a strife now, with the additional horror that the
contest is (as one may say) between father and son. Nay, it is yet more
terrible; for in such a contest there, I almost feel as if I could be
contented to employ only a passive resistance. But I must here learn to
school my heart and mind to an active and desperate conflict. I fear lest
I should do more harm than good; and I am sure I shall if I suffer
impatience and irascibility to prevail. I shall, perhaps, also hear from
those lips which once addressed me only in the accents of respect and
kindness, language indicative of that alienation which is the inevitable
result of marked dissimilarity of sentiment and character, and which,
according to Aristotle's most just description, will often dissolve the
truest friendship, at all events, extinguish (just as prolonged absence
will) all its vividness. So impossible is it for the full sympathies of the
heart to coexist with absolute antipathy of the intellect! Nay, I shall,

perhaps, have to listen to the language which I cannot but consider as
"impiety" and "blasphemy," and yet keep my temper. I half feel,
however, that I am doing him injustice in much of this; and I will not
"judge before the time." It cannot be that he will ever cease to regard
me with affection, though, perhaps, no longer with reverence; and I am
confident that not even scepticism can chill the natural kindness of his
disposition. I am persuaded that, even as a sceptic, he is very different
from most sceptics. They cherish doubts; he will be impatient of them.
Scepticism is, with them, a welcome guest, and has entered their hearts
by an open door; I am sure that it must have stormed his, and entered it
by a breach.
"No," my heart whispers, "I shall still find you sincere, Harrington;
scorning to take any unfair advantage in argument, and impatient of all
sophistry, as I have ever found you. You will be fully aware of the
moral significance of the conclusion at which you have arrived, --even
that there is no conclusion to be arrived at; and you will be
miserable,--as all must be who have your power to comprehend it."
Accept this, my dear brother, as a truer delineation of my wanderer
than my first thoughts prompted. But then all this will only make it the
more sad to see him. Still it is a duty, and it must be done.
I have not the heart at present to give more than the briefest answers to
the queries which you so earnestly put to me. No doubt you were
startled to find, from the French papers that reached you from Tahiti,
and on no less authority than that of the "Apostolic Letter of the Pope,"
and Cardinal Wiseman's "Pastoral," that this enlightened country was
once more, or was on the eve of becoming, a "satellite" of Rome.
Subsequent information, touching the course of the almost
unprecedented agitation which England has just passed through, will
serve to convince you, either that Pio Nono's supplications to the Virgin
and all the English saints, from St. Dunstan downwards, have not been
so successful as he flattered himself that they would have been, or that
the nation, if it be about to embrace Romanism, has the oddest way of
showing it. It has acquired most completely the Jesuitical art of
disguising its real feelings; or, as the Anglicans would say, of

practising the doctrine of "reserve." To all appearance the country is
more indomitably Protestant than before.
Nor need you alarm yourself--as in truth you seem too much inclined to
do--about the machinations and triumphs of the Tractarian party. Their
insidious attempts are no doubt a graver evil than the preposterous
pretensions of Rome, to which indeed they gave their only chance of
success. The evil has been much abated, however by those very
assumptions; for it is no longer