The dominant feature of his genius was its deeply
subjective and spiritual character. The accidents of a subject never
detained him for a moment from his search after the essential and the
abiding. Outward circumstances were of little interest to him. And in this
direction lay the main defect of his mind; it was too exclusively
Platonic, subjective and spiritual. Had his profound Germanic
intuitiveness of vision been tempered with a little more of our homely
Anglo-Saxon common sense, the combination would have been well-nigh
perfect.
What has just been said of his intellectual peculiarities will help us to
understand also his religious life. It was preeminently an inward life; a
fire in the very marrow of his being. As it was his own solitary and
independent reflection which first turned his feet toward Nazareth and
Calvary, so was it by deep and steady communion with his own heart that he
advanced in sanctity. The natural and unchanging atmosphere of his life
was that of faith and prayer. His religious experience was rooted in
peculiarly deep and pungent views of sin. Not that he had gross outward
offences to be ashamed of; but he felt the law of evil working within him,
disturbing his peace; and he longed for the serenity of a child of God.
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