world, or our sojourn here upon it; but it has pleased God so to
place us, and it must please me also. I ask you, what is human
life? Is not it a maimed happiness--care and weariness,
weariness and care, with the baseless expectation, the strange
cozenage of a brighter to-morrow? At best it is but a froward
child, that must be played with and humored, to keep it quiet
till it falls asleep, and then the care is over."[13]

[13] Op. cit., pp. 314, 313.



This is a complex, a tender, a submissive, and a graceful state
of mind. For myself, I should have no objection to calling it on
the whole a religious state of mind, although I dare say that to
many of you it may seem too listless and half-hearted to merit so
good a name. But what matters it in the end whether we call such
a state of mind religious or not? It is too insignificant for
our instruction in any case; and its very possessor wrote it down
in terms which he would not have used unless he had been thinking
of more energetically religious moods in others, with which he
found himself unable to compete. It is with these more energetic
states that our sole business lies, and we can perfectly well
afford to let the minor notes and the uncertain border go. It
was the extremer cases that I had in mind a little while ago
when I said that personal religion, even without theology or
ritual, would prove to embody some elements that morality pure
and simple does not contain. You may remember that I promised
shortly to point out what those elements were. In a general way
I can now say what I had in mind.