For I think that notwithstanding his charity and devotion he
never quite got away from the shell of things, never cracked it
and set his teeth in the kernel which alone can feed our souls.
His keen intellect, to take an example, recognised every one of
the difficulties of our faith and flashed hither and thither in
the darkness, seeking explanation, seeking light, trying to
reconcile, to explain. He was not great enough to put all this
aside and go straight to the informing Soul beneath that strives
to express itself everywhere, even through those husks which are
called the World, the Flesh and the Devil, and as yet does not
always quite succeed.

It is this boggling over exteriors, this peering into pitfalls,
this desire to prove that what such senses as we have tell us is
impossible, is in fact possible, which causes the overthrow of
many an earnest, seeking heart and renders its work, conducted on
false lines, quite nugatory. These will trust to themselves and
their own intelligence and not be content to spring from the
cliffs of human experience into the everlasting arms of that
Infinite which are stretched out to receive them and to give them
rest and the keys of knowledge. When will man learn what was
taught to him of old, that faith is the only plank wherewith he
can float upon this sea and that his miserable works avail him
nothing; also that it is a plank made of many sorts of wood,
perhaps to suit our different weights?

So to be honest, in a sense I believe myself to be my father's
superior, and I know that he agreed with me. Perhaps this is
owing to the blood of my Scotch mother which mixed well with his
own; perhaps because the essential spirit given to me, though