THIRD RESIDENCE AT CAPE TOWN. 139 



which is to come, a rest within the ark of Christ's holy 

 Church ; and yet I see little chance of my being outwardly 

 admitted for years to come, perhaps not while I live. Never- 

 theless I agree with the Church of which you are now a member 

 in every essential point, and disagree with the " people," to whom 

 nominally I still belong, on every point but one, and that is the 

 unlawfulness and immoral tendency of oaths. In other respects, 

 I am almost but not quite a member of what you call " the 

 Church." I give the term a wider sweep, for I include within 

 " the Church " all of every sect who receive the Athanasian 

 creed, which I hold to contain the three great ideas within 

 which there is ever Christianity, without which no Christianity 

 can exist. I think I have high " authority for this view, not 

 only Athanasius himself, but my much-regarded friend, the 

 venerable Hooker, the author of " Laws of Church Polity," a 

 book which the more I know the more I admire. But as yet 

 I am not prepared to go the full length with him. You, being a 

 woman, were won to the Church by simple love. You loved 

 much, and therefore you liked without examination what you 

 did not understand, and this was a very proper proceeding on 

 your part. You were fully persuaded in your mind, and that is 

 the main point. But I require to be convinced of the ins and 

 outs of all the theory of Church belief, before I consent to 

 believe her. I must put my finger into the print of the nails, and 

 thrust my hand into her side before I join her as you have 

 done, notwithstanding the blessing that rests on those who 

 believe in simplicity. Unless I be fully persuaded of a thing, 

 it is useless for me to pretend to believe it by yielding an 

 assent, and therefore I am disposed to wait " till the day dawn, 

 and the dayspring descend from on high." In so waiting, I hope 

 I am not resting an unsafe reliance on a full reception of the 

 doctrine which the Church believes. Her articles and certain 

 others of her pretensions appear to me unscriptural ; but, like 

 you, I love every syllable of her divine Liturgy, some of the 

 state services excepted. However, as I said before, the time is 

 not yet come that I can join with her. My reasons for not 

 doing so are entirely unconnected with any temporal con- 

 venience, for if I thought the time had really arrived, I hope I 

 should be granted strength to enter her fold to-morrow and dare 

 the issue. But a letter cannot convey all I feel on the subject. 



