RESIDENCE IN LONDON. 45 



was relinquished, he remained till the last a regular wor- 

 shipper. How completely his religious interests crowned 

 his life, and supplied him with a point of view from which 

 to look on social affairs, may be seen from a passage in 

 a letter to his mother, at the close of 1848. 



To Mrs. Carpenter, Bristol. 



London, December 31, 1848. 

 We can never forget this year. How vast and wonderful 

 have been its convulsions, and yet how insignificant at present 

 seem its results. Yet I cannot but believe that it is only the 

 commencement of a more enlightened and progressive state, 

 and that the demonstrations of popular force which it has ex- 

 hibited will prevent for the future anything like a return to the 

 arbitrary systems of the past. And one most hopeful sign has 

 been that there has been nowhere any reaction against religion, 

 as in the first French Revolution. I cannot but think that the 

 increased freedom of action in Germany will contribute to much 

 more practical freedom of religious inquiry. It is wonderful 

 how difficult that people have found it to carry their speculative 

 freedom into action, owing as it would seem to a certain torpor 

 of that part of their psychical nature which brings abstract prin- 

 ciples into actualities. I have been very much struck with this in 

 reading an article on Gfrorer's " Origin of Christianity " in the 

 last Prospective Review. The article interested me very much, 

 and gave me clearer views as to the philosophy of the Alexan- 

 drian school than I had before. I have been much dwelling on 

 the idea I mentioned to you that the Gospel of John was com- 

 posed by John of Ephesus (the probable writer of the Epistles), 

 from material supplied by the Apostle John ; and the more I 

 trace in it the pervading influence of the Neo-Platonic philo- 

 sophy, the more unlikely does it seem to me that the simple- 

 minded aposde, whose Jewish and material mind is so strongly 

 displayed in the Apocalypse, should himself have penned such 

 a finished and metaphysical composition. 



For some time past the Temperance movement had 

 been exciting more and more of Dr. Carpenter's interest. 



