Still, I know very well, that though that
experiment of seeing the world might give acute pain for the time, it
would do good afterwards; and as I have never, that I remember,
gained any important good without incurring proportionate suffering,
I mean to try to take your advice some day, in part at least--to put
off, if possible, that troublesome egotism which is always judging
and blaming itself, and to try, country spinster as I am, to get a
view of some sphere where civilised humanity is to be contemplated.
'I smile at you again for supposing that I could be annoyed by what
you say respecting your religious and philosophical views; that I
could blame you for not being able, when you look amongst sects and
creeds, to discover any one which you can exclusively and implicitly
adopt as yours. I perceive myself that some light falls on earth
from Heaven--that some rays from the shrine of truth pierce the
darkness of this life and world; but they are few, faint, and
scattered, and who without presumption can assert that he has found
the _only_ true path upwards?
'Yet ignorance, weakness, or indiscretion, must have their creeds and
forms; they must have their props--they cannot walk alone. Let them
hold by what is purest in doctrine and simplest in ritual;
_something_, they _must_ have.
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