But he had almost decided to go back at once, he wrote in the next
letter. He saw now, and indeed all along he had felt deep down in his
soul, that he was doing wrong in staying there; that there was nothing
really in Oxford to help him. If Foley only knew all the circumstances
he would understand. And, in any case, it was not wholesome to be always
living in the past.
And in Oxford you _were_ in the past; the dead were about you
everywhere; you dwelt in the buildings they had built, you read their
books, you thought their thoughts, and the weight of their dreary
traditions crushed down on you, forcing your life into the shape of
theirs. Surely there was something evil and haunted about the place! And
during all those dripping autumn days, Sutton's one thought had been a
longing to be back again under the keen skies of his prairie-home; life
was new and hopeful there, unshadowed by the gloom of antiquity and
death....
But soon after Sutton wrote that he had had a talk with Dr. Joseph. "He
advises me by all means to stay here. He says that all I am getting at
Oxford will certainly be very useful to me when I go back. I never had
an idea how strong our position is; I wish you might have a talk with
him sometime, when you return. He explains that religion is progressive;
that there is no real antagonism between the new and the old; the one
has grown out of the other by a natural evolution. Indeed he laughed at
the idea of being afraid of the Past; one ought to enjoy it, not fear
it, he said. Then when I asked him if there wasn't a danger in the new
criticism, and too much reasoning about things, he said that there never
could be any real danger in following one's best reason, and that we
need not be the least afraid of what it will lead us to."