I speak frankly. If I am taking a liberty,
you will pardon the act for the sake of the motive.
I am, dear Sir,
"Your obedient and faithful servant,
"C. KINGSLEY."
It would be a mistake to suppose that the creed in which I had been
brought up was or could be for ever cast away like an old garment.
The beliefs of childhood and youth cannot be thus dismissed. I know
that in after years I found that in a way they revived under new
forms, and that I sympathized more with the Calvinistic Independency
of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries than with the modern
Christianity of church or chapel. At first, after the abandonment
of orthodoxy, I naturally thought nothing in the old religion worth
retaining, but this temper did not last long. Many mistakes may be
pardoned in Puritanism in view of the earnestness with which it
insists on the distinction between right and wrong. This is vital.
In modern religion the path is flowery. The absence of difficulty
is a sure sign that no good is being done. How far we are from the
strait gate, from the way that is narrow which leadeth unto life,
the way which is found only by few! The great doctrines of
Puritanism are also much nearer to the facts of actual experience
than we suppose.
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