“Remonstrance were absurd, where misconception is so total as yours. My infidelity is simply that I worship Christ, thanking every one who gives me any glimpse that enables me to get nearer Christ’s meaning. In this light, what you say of a hidden sense or drift in the parables interests me profoundly; but the more I think of the question of interest, the more I feel persuaded that Christ distinguished the use from the abuse. Tradition, almost certainly authentic, imputes to Him the saying γίνεσθε τραπεζιται δόκιμοι (see M. Arnold’s article in March Contemporary), and I don’t see how there can be honourable bankers,—men, living honourably by banking,—if all taking of interest is wrong. You speak of my ‘supreme confidence’ in my own opinions. I absolutely have confidence only in the resolution to keep my eyes open for light and, if I can help it, not to be to-day exactly where I was yesterday. I have not only read, but lived in, (as a very atmosphere) the works of men whom you say I went to because somebody said it was fine to do so. They have taught me some comprehensiveness, some tolerance, some moderation in judging even the mob. They have taught me to consume my own smoke, and it is this consumption of my own smoke which you seem to have mistaken for confidence in my opinions. Which prophet, from Moses to Carlyle, would not you confess to have been sometimes in the wrong? I said that I worship Christ. In Him I realize, so far as I can realize, God. Therefore I speak not of Him. But the very key-stone of any arch of notions in my mind is that inspiration is one of the mightiest and most blessed of forces, one of the most real of facts, but that infallibility is the error of errors. From no prophet, from no book, do I take what I please and leave what I please; but, applying all the lights I have, I learn from each as wisely as, with my powers and my lights, is possible for me. “Affectionately yours.” I have received, “with the respects of the author,” a pamphlet on the Crystal Palace; which tells me, in its first sentence, that the Crystal Palace is a subject which every cultivated Englishman has at heart; in its second, that the Crystal Palace is a household word, and is the loftiest moral triumph of the world; and in its third, that the Palace is declining, it is said,—verging towards decay. I have not heard anything for a long time which has more pleased me; and beg to assure the author of the pamphlet in question that I never get up at Herne Hill after a windy night without looking anxiously towards Norwood in the hope that ‘the loftiest moral triumph of the world’ may have been blown away.