There, again, is the constitutional shrinking, through a
kind of metaphysical prejudice, from the concrete--that fear of the
actual--in this case, of the Church of history; to which the
admissions, which form so large a part of these volumes, naturally
lead. Assenting, on probable evidence, to so many of the judgments
of the religious sense, he failed to see the equally probable
evidence there is for the beliefs, the peculiar direction of men's
hopes, which complete those judgments harmoniously, and bring them
into connection with the facts, the venerable institutions of the
past--with the lives of the saints. By failure, as we think, of that
historic sense, of [34] which he could speak so well, he got no
further in this direction than the glacial condition of rationalistic
Geneva. "Philosophy," he says, "can never replace religion." Only,
one cannot see why it might not replace a religion such as his: a
religion, after all, much like Seneca's.
"I miss something," he himself confesses, "common worship, a positive
religion, shared with other people. Ah! when will the Church to
which I belong in heart rise into being?" To many at least of those
who can detect the ideal through the disturbing circumstances which
belong to all actual institutions in the world, it was already there.
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