"The doctrine of immortality so unhesitatingly avowed (?) affects me as
nothing from Theodore Parker on the same subject ever did. The love and
joy in God flowing out of it is so spontaneous and kindling as to make me
long to say,--I now no longer _hope_ only, but _I am sure_. In any case I
do rejoice that others can so believe, and I pray that if this be a mere
cloud over _my_ eyes, it may at length be taken away. Not that I have any
deficiency of _happiness_ from this, but I have a great deficiency of
_power_, and I am painfully out of sympathy with others by it.

"I want to cultivate, if I knew how, rather more free communication with
those who supremely love God as the Good One, and who will bear with me! I
much need this, if I could get it. But however shut up I may seem, believe
that a fire of love for you burns in my heart. With warm regards to Mrs.
Martineau,

"Your affectionate friend,

"F. W. Newman."


I should like to quote here words illustrative of this side of Newman's
personality, that side which reveals him "at once passionate and
spiritual," longing to attain to religious truth, and not railing against
the forms of dogma which have led other men into "the kingdom of heaven,"
as was his too frequent habit. These words were written by him when he
seemed to himself to have reached some measure of spiritual intuition, and
there is great beauty in them:--

"None can enter the kingdom of heaven without becoming a little child. But