And if he asked himself Is religion needed? he could give but one answer. The world around him, the world within him, were his witnesses. Human nature is not so constituted that it can afford to dispense with its strongest motive to morality. ‘Is it said,’ he writes, ‘that the belief in God does not make men moral? To say so is to deny the influence of belief upon action altogether. Why do men act in one way rather than in another? Because of their beliefs. Belief is the sole curb of passion. A man’s creed determines soon or late his deeds. Man, so far as he is a rational being, must be guided by his reasonable expectations of consequences, _i.e._ by his beliefs. What absurdity, then, to imagine that a belief in man’s responsibility for his actions--public or obscure--for his words, for his very thoughts, to an Infallible, Eternal and Almighty Judge, is not an infinitely potent cause of moral action! The man of belief and the man of unbelief stand on different platforms. It is the former who provides, the latter who accepts, the sanctions of morals. Infidelity may appeal to public opinion as a restraining force; but what created public opinion? Faith.’ Then he seeks to meet the objection that religion does not always moralise human lives. ‘It is true, but what if it is? Motives do not always produce their natural results; they may be counteracted by other motives or by passions stronger for a time than themselves, for man is not simply rational, he is a creature of emotion, impulse, passionate desire. The sea, high-swollen by gales, overleaps its walls, dashes its salt spray for a brief while above the cliff. Are the walls then useless? were it well to pull them down? Better to strengthen them, deepen them, heighten them. No; religion may be false, but it has no substitute.’ It is clear that when he wrote these words--and they were never cancelled--he longed to believe; he realised the beauty, the blessedness of belief. Would that beauty and blessedness be always his? He saw the storm descending upon him from afar, and he cowered before it. He ‘feared as he entered into the cloud.’ Men talk sometimes of ‘giving up’ religious belief; but no belief that is worth possessing was ever ‘given up;’ it is torn away by some cruel power irresistible, and the soul is left lacerated, bleeding from the wound. To Gerald Eversley (if he had ever known them) would have come home those wonderful lines which show that Goethe passed through deeper spiritual waters than he was fain to confess: Wer nie sein Brod mit Thränen ass, Wer nie die kummervollen Nächte Auf seinem Bette weinend sass, Er kennt Euch nicht, Ihr himmlischen Mächte. Ihr führt ins Leben uns hinein, Ihr lasst den Armen schuldig werden, Dann überlasst Ihr ihn der Pein, Denn alle Schuld rächt sich auf Erden. Let us try to follow him in his wanderings.