DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.63221#0156
118
THE FRENCH RENAISSANCE
words about it. Impatient at a preacher who constantly
harped upon death, she said that such talk was the last
refuge of clergymen when they were at an end of their
resources and did not know how to make any effect on
their audience. And when men of mind discussed Eternal
Life in her presence, she would shake her head sadly: “ All
that may be true,” she would say, “but we have to remain
a long time underground before we reach it.” The love of
speculation was strong in her, but her love of good actions,
her reverent humility, were stronger. The creed that used
fewest forms and dwelled most upon practical Christianity
was the one that appealed to her. “ The least word in the
Scriptures is too good for me,” she said, “and the clearest
is full of obscurity. Alas, what choice can I make between
them, seeing that I cannot even understand why they differ ? ”
This is the saying of a modest and moderate person—one
who would not easily sever old ties. The heart is conserv-
ative, and the heart was Margaret’s weakness as well as her
strength. She was born to purify an old order rather than
to found a new one.
She was bent on the conversion of her brother and her
mother—hitherto latitudinarians, but not pious as she was.
Louise seems, for a short while, to have inclined towards the
New Ideas, but her beliefs were beliefs of the brain; feelings
had nothing to do with them. Scorn of the Monks and a
taste for satire played a much larger part in her creed.
“My son and I,” she wrote in her Journal, “begin by the
grace of God to know the hypocrites, black, white and
grey, and the hypocrites of all colours. . .. The Lord pre-
serve us from them, for in all human nature there is no
THE FRENCH RENAISSANCE
words about it. Impatient at a preacher who constantly
harped upon death, she said that such talk was the last
refuge of clergymen when they were at an end of their
resources and did not know how to make any effect on
their audience. And when men of mind discussed Eternal
Life in her presence, she would shake her head sadly: “ All
that may be true,” she would say, “but we have to remain
a long time underground before we reach it.” The love of
speculation was strong in her, but her love of good actions,
her reverent humility, were stronger. The creed that used
fewest forms and dwelled most upon practical Christianity
was the one that appealed to her. “ The least word in the
Scriptures is too good for me,” she said, “and the clearest
is full of obscurity. Alas, what choice can I make between
them, seeing that I cannot even understand why they differ ? ”
This is the saying of a modest and moderate person—one
who would not easily sever old ties. The heart is conserv-
ative, and the heart was Margaret’s weakness as well as her
strength. She was born to purify an old order rather than
to found a new one.
She was bent on the conversion of her brother and her
mother—hitherto latitudinarians, but not pious as she was.
Louise seems, for a short while, to have inclined towards the
New Ideas, but her beliefs were beliefs of the brain; feelings
had nothing to do with them. Scorn of the Monks and a
taste for satire played a much larger part in her creed.
“My son and I,” she wrote in her Journal, “begin by the
grace of God to know the hypocrites, black, white and
grey, and the hypocrites of all colours. . .. The Lord pre-
serve us from them, for in all human nature there is no