It appears to me that, so far as I can measure the movement of my
brother's mind, when he decided first to take Orders his religion was of
a mystical and Êsthetic kind; and I do not think that there is any
evidence that he really examined the scientific and agnostic position at
all. His heart and his sense of beauty were already engaged, and life
without religion would have scented an impossibility to him. When he
took Orders, his experience was threefold. At the Eton Mission he was
confronted by an Anglicanism of a devout and simple kind, which
concentrated itself almost entirely on the social aspect of
Christianity, on the love of God and the brotherhood of man. The object
of the workers there was to create comradeship, and to meet the problems
of conduct which arose by a faith in the cleansing and uplifting power
of God. Brotherly love was its first aim.

I do not think that Hugh had ever any real interest in social reform, in
politics, in causes, in the institutions which aim at the consolidation
of human endeavour and sympathy. He had no philosophic grasp of history,
nor was he a student of the psychology of religion. His instincts were
all individualistic and personal; and indeed I believe that all his life
he was an artist in the largest sense, in the fact that his work was
the embodiment of dreams, the expression of the beauty which he
constantly perceived. His ideal was in one sense a larger one than the
technically artistic ideal, because it embraced the conception of moral
beauty even more ardently than mere external beauty. The mystical
element in him was for ever reaching out in search of some Divine
essence in the world. He was not in search at any time of personal
relations. He attracted more affection than he ever gave; he rejoiced
its sympathy and kindred companionship as a flower rejoices in sunshine;
but I think he had little taste of the baffled suffering which
accompanies all deep human passion. He once wrote "God has preserved me