The life and letters of Benjamin Jowett, M. A., master of Balliol college, Oxford.

156 Lzfe of Benjamin Jowett [CHAP.V
To R. R. W. LINGEN.
BEAUMARIS, September 5, I846.. It is impossible that we can have the faith of our
fathers, because the light will be always breaking in upon
us.... Religion, it might be said, has become more a matter
of reason... more extended, less concentrated, not one
belief but an equilibrium of all the elements of belief.... A man may live in a happy valley with respect to
religion; the misfortune of which is, that he excommunicates
his neighbours; but if he looks out into the world East
and West, in hac immensitate longitudinum latitudinum, &c., of
speculative truth, it is impossible that his views of Christianity
should not be modified; and one man will think that he is
defiling the simplicity of Christ, and puffed up with knowledge
falsely so called, while another might fancy that there may
be here something of the wisdom which St. Paul or St. John,
living now, would have spoken among those that are perfect.
Think of how many unpleasant truths there are that remain
untold about Christianity and Christendom, and yet we all
give an implied assent to interpreting the Gospel by the course
of the world...
To A. P. STANLEY.
BEAUMARIS, September 6, I846.
What a grand fellow the new Pope 1 seems to be! What
say you to this as a politico-historical prophecy for 1856?
I mean, worthy to be the picture at the beginning of Moore's
Almanack and nothing more:-Italy an ecclesiastical Republic,
Pansclavismus with one arm reaching into Poland become an
independent province, and the other in Bohemia; two great
German kingdoms, Protestant and Catholic, the first advancing
on Denmark with a navy on the Baltic, the second looking
upon Switzerland as though it loved it; Spain a sort of
dependent on France, which should have moved onward to
the Rhine; America with towns and ports all along the
Pacific, and England steaming it over the whole world, a
great Steam Navigation Company with stations at Oceania,
1 Pio Nono.