And in the same book he repeatedly uses the expression ‘Providence,’ evidently in its natural meaning, to express the ultimate force at work behind the march of ‘evolution.’ Indeed, in conversation with me on this subject, he often said how much higher a conception of the creative mind, the new Darwinian ideas seemed to him to have introduced, as compared with those contained in what is called the argument from contrivance and design. On the subject of personal immortality, too, I do not think that Bagehot ever wavered. He often spoke, and even wrote, of ‘that vague sense of eternal continuity which is always about the mind, and which no one could bear to lose,’ and described it as being much more important to us than it even appears to be, important as that is; for, he said, ‘when we think we are thinking of the past, we are only thinking of a future that is to be like it.’ But with the exception of these cardinal points, I could hardly say how much Bagehot’s mind was or was not affected by the great speculative controversies of later years. Certainly he became much more doubtful concerning the force of the historical evidence of Christianity than I ever was, and rejected, I think, entirely, though on what amount of personal study he had founded his opinion I do not know, the Apostolic origin of the fourth Gospel. Possibly his mind may have been latterly in suspense as to miracle altogether, though I am pretty sure that he had not come to a negative conclusion. He belonged, in common with myself, during the last years of his life, to a society in which these fundamental questions were often discussed; but he seldom spoke in it, and told me very shortly before his death that he shrank from such discussions on religious points, feeling that, in debates of this kind, they were not and could not be treated with anything like thoroughness. On the whole, I think, the cardinal article of his faith would be adequately represented even in the latest period of his life by the following passage in his essay on Bishop Butler:—