544. LETTERS TO DARWIN AND OTHERS. [1866, 
friends. Such a production is timely, and will be 
very useful. I hope the unknown writer will go on 
and as he goes on bring out, in the same fresh and 
untechnical way, all the essentials of Christian belief. 
Even if he does not, it will have great value as it is; 
and one will be curious to see how he can fail to raise 
the superstructure which this foundation seems to be 
designed to bear. I have long thought it very im- 
portant that these subjects and the whole range of 
connected questions need to be treated by a layman 
from an unprofessional point of view, and quite apart 
from theological language or conventional modes of 
thought, say by a lawyer of a judicial turn of mind, 
or by a physicist or naturalist, who understands and 
feels the scientific difficulties, and the prevalent state 
of mind, especially among scientific people, which 
most divines persist in ignoring. 
As soon as I get this book, and have attentively 
read it, I shall probably wish to speak of it again to 
you. If I find that it does not receive notice in this 
country, I will see that attention is in some way 
called to it. But I should think it likely to attract 
attention in this country at once 
I have never thanked you for your letter of Decem- 
ber 6, and for the hope, faint though it be, that you 
may come over and see us some day. Pray don’t give 
over the thought, and some day you may chance to 
bring it about. Cambridge is not a bad point from 
which to sally forth in little explorations of American 
life, . 
We have much anxiety as to what we can do with 
the South now we have got it; and our President 
Johnson is not a Lincoln. The eek which has just 
occurred, and which may cause great trouble, has 
