‘Within our own Church, we are over-careful to soothe enthusiasm, and somewhat helpless in directing it. In judging foreign Churches, or other ages, we talk of a “misguided zeal for what they consider the glory of God,” “the fantastic rigours by which men render themselves callous to the sufferings of others,” “the extinction of the domestic affections to aggrandise one ambitious Church,” words which may be true or not, as they are applied, but which, as commonly used, are rather rashly bandied about, considering all the hints and recommendations that Scripture contains.[343] We can be warm enough in our censures of those who would call down fire from Heaven, or sit at the right hand of Christ, but have perhaps too much fellow-feeling with him who went away sorrowful when he found he must not only obey the law, but sell his property. The book now before us is, most unquestionably, not of the peculiar Church of England character, but of that cast which we are somewhat apt to depreciate, or to look on as a romantic unreality…. ‘In his Private Journal, which was written chiefly in 1826, when he was about twenty-four, the feeling round which all others seem to group themselves, is a craving after an ideal happiness, real and attainable, though not yet, of which all our refined perceptions of beauty, nobility, and holiness are but indications and foretastes, and in which, as our character becomes equal to our capacities, they must eventually converge. With this is joined, as perhaps its necessary condition, a sensitive and pure taste for all that is beautiful or lofty to sight or mind; high, though unpractised, poetical powers; and an earnest appreciation of the reverence due to holy things, even to our own higher thoughts and deeper emotions. ‘This itself explains why these powers and feelings, lying, it seems, deepest, were unknown, almost unsuspected, by more than two or three of his nearest friends. His acquaintance more readily perceived and appreciated an unusually deep and true mode of dealing with mathematical questions; a subtlety, boldness and ingenuity of reasoning; a frank and accurate apprehension of the full force of an adverse argument; and a definiteness of conception and expression which seemed to cut through an intricate question, throwing off, rather than grappling with objections, with a clearness which one could hardly believe not to be sophistry.