‘Now, as regards the _a priori_ argument; it is just the fundamental thing. Did you read my Browning paper? See, it is just _the_ thought that comes out in “Saul.” We, if we love ourselves, we _must_ believe in God’s love. He must be better if He is greater in every other way; it cannot be that we excel Him in the power of love, which is the highest gift of all. We can’t think that He does not care for His children, that He has left them orphans. ‘I think one can see too that He in whom dwelt the Divine Spirit without measure, yet who was truly man, and who therefore grew as man in insight as we do, felt that utter faith grow, tower up, as that intense love, that utter self-devotion which He felt within, _told_ Him of His oneness with God; as He prayed that we might be one, even as He was one with the Father. ‘And He, trusting the Father, knew He could _not_ be deceived by that Father; and we knowing Him, know He could not deceive us.... So I come _a priori_ to belief in the story of that Life, and when I get to it by inward reasons, I am able first to look at the outward [reasons], which to many are enough without the inward, but are not to me. It was in this way too Kant got back to belief in Christianity. I read it was the moral law within which taught him, and all St. John’s teaching seems to me to be that we must feel the Spirit within ere we can recognise the Christ without. But then He does give freely of His Spirit,—if we seek, we shall find. He knocks at the door of man’s heart, “If _any one_ will hear He will come in.” ‘My child, do remember those comforting words, “If ye were blind ye should have _no sin_, but now ye say, we see; therefore your sin remaineth.” So blindness is no sin in itself, if is lazy, conceited ignorance that is sin. ‘I wish you could be in the House of Rest from Friday to Monday, and have all Saturday of the Quiet Days. I wish you could have one talk with Mr. Wilkinson before he leaves.’ To the same:— ‘_January 1883._