more and more that the 'Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Faith', so
far from being incompatible with the most daring science, both
physical, metaphysical, and philological, or with the most extended
notions of inspiration, or with continual inrushes of new light from
above, assumes them, asserts them, and cannot be kept Catholic, or
true to itself, without the fullest submission to them. I speak as
a heartily orthodox priest of the Church of England; you will excuse
my putting my thoughts in a general and abstract form in so short a
letter. But if your son--(I will not say you--for your age must be,
and your acquirements evidently are--greater than my own) if your
son would like to write to me about these matters, I do believe
before God, who sees me write, that as one who has been through what
he has, and more, I may have something to tell him, or at least to
set him thinking over. I speak frankly. If I am taking a liberty,
you will pardon the act for the sake of the motive.

I am, dear Sir,
"Your obedient and faithful servant,
"C. KINGSLEY."


It would be a mistake to suppose that the creed in which I had been
brought up was or could be for ever cast away like an old garment.
The beliefs of childhood and youth cannot be thus dismissed. I know
that in after years I found that in a way they revived under new
forms, and that I sympathized more with the Calvinistic Independency
of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries than with the modern
Christianity of church or chapel. At first, after the abandonment
of orthodoxy, I naturally thought nothing in the old religion worth
retaining, but this temper did not last long. Many mistakes may be