Our kind remembrances to Mr. Lane. We are busy, as city people cannot
conceive of, in getting the indoors and outdoors to rights.
To Rev. Henry W. Bellows.
SHEFFIELD, Nov. 26, 1847. MY DEAR FRIEND,--I have thought much of what
you said the other morning; and though I expect to see you gain in a
fortnight, I cannot let the interval pass without a few words. The new
interest in your mind, as far is it is spiritual, and the new measures
you propose to adopt in your church, so far as I understand them,
have my entire sympathy. But I demur to your manner of stating the
speculative grounds of this change in your feeling and view. Certainly
my mind is, and has been or a long time, running in a direction
contrary to your present leanings. I cannot think that human nature
is o low and helpless as you seem to think, nor that the gospel is so
entirely the one and exclusive remedy. And yet I agree, too, with much
(in its practical bearing) of what you say, in the direction that your
mind is taking. I have often insisted in the pulpit that the people
do not yet understand Christianity; its spiritual nature, however,
rather than its positive facts, its simple love and disinterestedness
rather than its supernaturalism, were to me the points where they
have failed. . . . fully admit, too, the need of progress in our
denomination, but I do not believe in any grand new era to be [197]
introduced into its history by the views you urge, or any other views.
All good progress must be gradual. If there is a revolution in your
mind, does it follow that that must be the measure for others, for your
brethren, for the denomination, in past or present time?
Your sympathies are wide; the tendency to outward action is strong in
you; your generous nature opens the doors of your mind to light from
every quarter; need is, to carry on a strong discriminating work in a
mind like yours. With your nature, so utterly opposed to everything
sluggish and narrow, you have need of a large and well-considered
philosophy, "looking before and after," and settling all things in
their right places, and questioning every new-coming thought with
singular caution, lest it push you from your propriety or consistency.
In truth, you quite mistake me when you say that I have not studied
your mind. I have watched its workings with the greatest interest,
often with admiration, and sometimes--may I say?--with anxiety. There
was a time when I greatly feared that you would go the lengths of
Parker. The turn in your mind to what I deem healthier views took place
about the time I went abroad; and the relief your letters gave me
while I was in Europe, you can hardly have suspected. Now, it seems to
me, you are liable to go to the opposite extreme. The truth is, your
intellectual insight seems to me greater than your breadth of view,
your penetration greater than your comprehension; and the consequence
has been a course of thought, as I believe you are aware, somewhat
zigzag.
Have I not thought of you, my dear fellow? I guess I have; and among
other things I have so thought of you that I now entirely confide in
the magnanimity of [198] your mind to receive with candor all this, and
more if I should say it,--saying it, as I do, in the truest love and
cherishing of you.
My love to E. and all the phalanstery.
As ever, yours,