Onward to Strauss,
Transcendentalism--and Mr. John Chapman's Catholic Series is the
appointed path, and God help them!--I speak as one who has been
through, already, much which I see with the deepest sympathy
perplexing others round me; and you write as a man who has had the
same experience. Whether or not we agree in our conclusions at
present, you will forgive me for saying, that every week shows me
more and more that the 'Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Faith', so
far from being incompatible with the most daring science, both
physical, metaphysical, and philological, or with the most extended
notions of inspiration, or with continual inrushes of new light from
above, assumes them, asserts them, and cannot be kept Catholic, or
true to itself, without the fullest submission to them. I speak as
a heartily orthodox priest of the Church of England; you will excuse
my putting my thoughts in a general and abstract form in so short a
letter. But if your son--(I will not say you--for your age must be,
and your acquirements evidently are--greater than my own) if your
son would like to write to me about these matters, I do believe
before God, who sees me write, that as one who has been through what
he has, and more, I may have something to tell him, or at least to
set him thinking over.
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