"The doctrine of immortality so unhesitatingly avowed (?) affects me as nothing from Theodore Parker on the same subject ever did. The love and joy in God flowing out of it is so spontaneous and kindling as to make me long to say,--I now no longer _hope_ only, but _I am sure_. In any case I do rejoice that others can so believe, and I pray that if this be a mere cloud over _my_ eyes, it may at length be taken away. Not that I have any deficiency of _happiness_ from this, but I have a great deficiency of _power_, and I am painfully out of sympathy with others by it. "I want to cultivate, if I knew how, rather more free communication with those who supremely love God as the Good One, and who will bear with me! I much need this, if I could get it. But however shut up I may seem, believe that a fire of love for you burns in my heart. With warm regards to Mrs. Martineau, "Your affectionate friend, "F. W. Newman." I should like to quote here words illustrative of this side of Newman's personality, that side which reveals him "at once passionate and spiritual," longing to attain to religious truth, and not railing against the forms of dogma which have led other men into "the kingdom of heaven," as was his too frequent habit. These words were written by him when he seemed to himself to have reached some measure of spiritual intuition, and there is great beauty in them:-- "None can enter the kingdom of heaven without becoming a little child. But behind and after this, there is a mystery revealed to but few, namely, that if the soul is to go on into higher spiritual blessedness it must become a _woman_. Yes, however manly thou be among men, it must learn to love being dependent; must lean on God, not solely from distress or alarm, but because it does not like independence or loneliness.... God is not a stern judge, exacting every tittle of some law from us.... He does _not_ act towards us (spiritually) by generalities... but His perfection consists in dealing with each case by itself as if there were no others."