I am half glad and half sorry to hear of your harmonium. Public worship is a terribly difficult thing, and it is well at times that we should realise its difficulties, and have it stripped bare of many helpful accessories. Yet worship in a village church impresses me. As in a college chapel, I realise then the continuity of the race. An old church tells me of generations of men who lived my life, to whom the present was everything, and the dead almost nothing, who never could seriously believe that some day the world would whirl and follow the sun without them. It tells me more than most things of what St. Paul means when he said that we were all making one perfect man. And I am humbled and thankful to know that I in my generation can do something towards the Christ 'that is to be.' Read the Old Testament itself. Nothing will {123} atone for lack of knowledge of the Bible. Robertson Smith's and Adam Smith's books (especially the latter's) on the Old Testament Prophets ought to prove useful. . . . When I call a man by his Christian name, I usually make it a rule to pray for him. I shall do so in your case. I will try to pray every day. I wonder whether you would sometimes pray for me: I believe immensely in the power of prayer. It is the greatest favour I can ask of you, and I know I have no right to prefer the request; but it would be kind of you if you could occasionally. One needs all the help one can get in this strange life up here. Now I will end. I have written you a strange, unreserved letter. Forgive me. How I wish this dreadful war was at an end! U----'s going was a blow to me; but I am sure he did the right thing. I admire and love that man. . . . _To G. J. C._ Castleton, Swanage: 1900. . . . You will not have misinterpreted my silence. I could not answer your letter until I had secured a time for quiet thought and for prayer. When I try to write, I feel the uselessness of words. I am doing better when I am praying for you than when I am writing to you. Yet I must write. . . . It is strange that God should have made us thus. To those whom He honours most He gives largest capacity for love, and therefore largest capacity for suffering. It is still more strange that we would not wish to be {124} without the love in spite of the agony which it brings. It must be because All loves are shadows cast By the beautiful eternal hills Of Thine unbeginning past.