The first literary task which Miss Nightingale set herself under this impulse took the form of a series of magazine articles, in which she hoped to embody the leading ideas contained in the voluminous _Suggestions for Thought_ already described (Vol. I. p. 470). "During the ten years and more that I have known you," wrote Mr. Jowett (Oct. 31, 1872), "you have repeated to me the expression 'Character of God' about 1000 times, but I can't say that I have any clear idea of what you mean." Why did she not try and explain? In an earlier letter (Feb. 28, 1871) Mr. Jowett had suggested "the form of short papers or essays." She now wrote three of them (of which the first two were published)--entitled respectively "A 'Note' of Interrogation," "A Sub-Note of Interrogation: What will our Religion be in 1999," and "On what Government night will Mr. Lowe bring out our New Moral Budget? another Sub-Note of Interrogation." In the first Paper, Miss Nightingale in a questioning and allusive style defined her conception of God as a God of Law, whose character may be learnt from social and moral science, and defended such a conception against some current ideas of Christian churches on the one side, and against the too cold and impersonal creed, as she thought, of Positivism on the other. The affinity of her doctrine at some points with the creed of Positivism is obvious; but she held as an axiom that the existence of law implied a law-giver; and "it is a very different thing," she wrote elsewhere,[132] "fighting against evil for our own sakes or fighting for the sake of the Law-Giver who arms us--fighting with or without a Commander." The scope of the second Paper is harder to describe, for it throws out a large number of criticisms and suggestions on life, morals, and philosophy in no very closely related order. The general idea, however, is that the purification of religion requires not destructive criticism but reconstruction and a re-ordering of modern life on the lines of social service; in which latter connection Miss Nightingale paid a glowing tribute to the pioneer of East-end "settlers."[133] These two Papers, though they attempt to cover too much ground in a small space, abound in happy things by the way. We are told, for instance, that Matthew Arnold's _Literature and Dogma_ is "marred by a tendency not to fight like a man but to scratch like a cat." The doctrine of eternal punishment is criticized in the words of the pauper who said to his nurse after seeing the chaplain, "It does seem hard to have suffered so much here, only to go to everlasting torments hereafter." The creed of some contented politicians is hit off by saying that they talk of "the 'masses,' as if they were Silurian strata." The third of Miss Nightingale's Papers is the hardest to describe, because it is the most crowded of the series. Its practical purpose may be said in the language of later politics to be a plea for