Yet surely if God is truth, none sincerely aspire to him, who dread to lose their present opinions in exchange for others truer.--I had not then read a sentence of Coleridge, which is to this effect: "If any one begins by loving Christianity more than the truth, he will proceed to love his Church more than Christianity, and will end by loving his own opinions better than either." A dim conception of this was in my mind; and I saw that the genuine love of God was essentially connected with loving truth as truth, and not truth as our own accustomed thought, truth as our old prejudice; and that the real saint can never be afraid to let God teach him one lesson more, or unteach him one more error. Then I rejoiced to feel how right and sound had been our principle, that no creed can possibly be used as the touchstone of spirituality: for man morally excels man, as far as creeds are concerned, not by assenting to true propositions, but by loving them because they are discerned to be true, and by possessing a faculty of discernment sharpened by the love of truth. Such are God's true apostles, differing enormously in attainment and elevation, but all born to ascend. For these to quarrel between themselves because they do not agree in opinions, is monstrous. _Sentiment_, surely, not _opinion_, is the bond of the Spirit; and as the love of God, so the love of truth is a high and sacred sentiment, in comparison to which our creeds are mean. Well, I had been misjudged; I had been absurdly measured by other men's creed: but might I not have similarly misjudged others, since I had from early youth been under similar influences? How many of my seniors at Oxford I had virtually despised because they were not evangelical! Had I had opportunity of testing their spirituality? or had I the faculty of so doing? Had I not really condemned them as unspiritual, barely because of their creed? On trying to reproduce the past to my imagination, I could not condemn myself quite as sweepingly as I wished; but my heart smote me on account of one. I had a brother, with whose name all England was resounding for praise or blame: from his sympathies, through pure hatred of Popery, I had long since turned away. What was this but to judge him by his creed? True, his whole theory was nothing but Romanism transferred to England: but what then? I had studied with the deepest interest Mrs. Schimmelpenninck's account of the Portroyalists, and though I was aware that she exhibits only the bright side of her subject, yet the absolute excellencies of her nuns and priests showed that Romanism _as such_ was not fatal to spirituality. They were persecuted: this did them good perhaps, or certainly exhibited their brightness. So too my brother surely was struggling after truth, fighting for freedom to his own heart and mind, against church articles and stagnancy of thought. For this he deserved both sympathy and love: but I, alas! had not known and seen his excellence.