Elsewhere a manuscript note describes his varying attitude towards
Christianity:

'In the course of 1863 I ceased my attendance upon Holy Communion, and
fell into a sceptical frame of mind which lasted for several years,
was modified in 1874, and came to an end in 1875. I had been a very
strong believer, and in the loss of my belief in the supernatural, as
it is called--_i.e._, in the Divinity of our Blessed Lord--I kept an
unbounded admiration for His words, as recorded in the Sermon on the
Mount, and belief in duty towards others. From 1885 to 1888 the Holy
Sacrament was a profound blessing to me, but in 1905 I ceased again to
find any help in forms.'

To what he called in 1865 the essential Radicalism of Christ's teaching--
to-day it would be called Christian Socialism--he was always constant. It
was the guiding principle of that inner idealism which underlay his whole
life and which strengthened with his maturity. The world was for him 'a
Christian' world. But acceptance not so much of the dogma as of the
mystical faith of Christians would seem to have varied with him from time
to time, and to have varied also in its formal expression. His mind was
too positive, too much occupied in the detail of life, to have time either
for brooding meditation or for the metaphysics of religious inquiry; and,
at least in 1866, Christianity interested him mainly as one of the most
potent shaping forces of human society. The desire to follow out and
investigate at first hand certain of its modern manifestations helped to
direct the impulse for travel which was already prompting him.

The Long Vacation of 1865 had found him tramping, first with Warr in
Guernsey, afterwards alone 'through Brittany and Normandy and partly into
the provinces south of the Loire,' eloquent on the charms of travelling