In a like spirit, another clerical novelist, of a more recent type, and whose distinctive evangel is Muscular Christianity, introduces a “double-first” candidate for orders who reminds him of Mr. Bye-Ends in Bunyan: “And yet,” comes the charitable clause conditional, “I believe the man was really in earnest. He was really desirous to do what was right, as far as he knew it; and all the more desirous, because he saw, in the present state of society, what was right would pay him. God shall judge him, not I. Who can unravel the confusion of mingled selfishness and devotion that exist even in his own heart, much less in that of another?” In Mr. Thackeray’s instance, exception has been taken, on ethical grounds, by no vulgar critic, to his habit of shrinking from moral estimate as well as moral judgment, in dealing with his characters. Into that distinction not without a difference, this is not the place (nor this the pen) to enter. But the critic in question—for some years a main support of the _National Review_—recognises this avoidance of moral judgment as springing from kindly feeling, from the just and humble sense we all should have that our own demerits make it unseemly for us to ascend the judgment-chair, and from a wide appreciation of the variety and obscurity of men’s real motives of action.[24] _PART-KNOWLEDGE._ 1 CORINTHIANS xiii. 9. “We know in part,” said the apostle; who, therefore, prophesied in part; always with the assurance that when that which is perfect is come, then shall that which is in part be done away. Meanwhile, we see through a glass darkly, through a medium obscurely—“now I know in part.” If so it was with him that once was caught up into the third heavens, much more with his readers. For we are but of yesterday, and know nothing. “Behold, God is great, and we know Him not.” At the height of our knowledge we can but fall back upon the old saying, “Lo, these are parts of His ways; but how little a portion is heard of Him!” And when we consider the heavens, the work of His hands; the moon and the stars, which He hath ordained; the earth beneath, the ocean round about, the waters under the earth, the pent-up fires within it,—verily He is a God that hideth Himself still, and that revealeth but a portion of His work, clouds and darkness covering the rest. His thoughts are very deep; and what is man that he should know them, or the son of man that he should find them out unto perfection? From the topmost pinnacles attained by science he can see but the utmost part of them, and cannot see them all.