294 JAMES CLERK MAXWELL. [CHAP. X, 



immersed in a professional atmosphere, a world, in fact, 

 differing from the world of business or of fashion only in the 

 general colouring of its scenery. It has always seemed to 

 me that men who have fallen into this " religious world " 

 have completely failed in getting into the Church, seeing 

 that the Church professes to be an escape from the world, 

 and the only escape. And what holds of the Church ought 

 to hold of the clergy preeminently. So far my theory of the 

 Church not being a clerical world. Now I believe it not 

 only as a theory, but as a fact, that a man will find the 

 thing so if he will try it himself. 



The restraints and professional stiffness of sentiment are 

 not made for lawful members, but for those whom the truth 

 has not yet made entirely free. I have to tell my men that 

 all they see, and their own bodies, are subject to laws which 

 they cannot alter, and that if they wish to do anything they 

 must work according to those laws, or fail, and therefore we 

 study the laws. You have to say that what men are and 

 the nature of their actions depends on the state of their wills, 

 and that by God's grace, through union with Christ, the 

 contradictions and false action of those wills may be settled 

 and solved, so that one way lies perfect freedom, and the 

 other way bondage under the devil, the world, and the flesh, 

 and therefore you entreat them to give heed to the things 

 which they have heard. 



Now, no man accuses me of being stiff, because I try to 

 make what I say precise. Everybody knows that I believe 

 it, whether I am stating a well-established law or only a 

 half-verified conjecture. And I think that you have fully 

 more right to be respected, inasmuch as the nature of your 

 message implies the duty of preaching it, and the convictions 

 that may be arrived at are as cogent, being more clear, if less 

 distinct, than scientific truths. 



I have been reading Butler's Analogy again, specially 

 with reference to obscurities in style and language, and also 

 to distinguish the merits of the man, and what habits of 

 thought they depended on. Also Herschel's Essays, of which 

 read that on Kosmos, and Froude's History. One night I read 



