<RA>Queenwood | 17th. Aug. 1851
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<LTR>My dear Dr. Gladstone
I cannot pretend to reply to your friendly letter1 which reached me an hour ago. My intellect is so to speak polarized2 at present – directed upon objects which differ considerably from those treated of in your letter. Of course every scientific man feels himself clogged in this way at intervals, yet through all clogs and all hindrances your letter has reached my warmest sympathies. I thank you for it most heartily.
I believe undoubtingly that the religion of both of us is fundamentally the same3 – that the same primitive material so to speak is cast into different moulds. There are some things in your form which I see I could not accept and I sincerely believe that the adoption of my form upon your part would fail to make you a better or a happier man.
I reverence the bible from my soul and have often drawn strength and encouragement from it. Here I am sure our experience will agree. I recognize your right to adopt the scheme of redemption touched upon in your letter; but I cannot say that I find the scheme suited to my case. – Well I know that the life of religion is not inseparably bound up with this scheme – nay I should even go so far as to say that religion may pronounce itself in its most exalted form in places and circumstances where the scheme was never heard of.
But you will ask me what is my scheme? Anything I have to say upon this subject must be referred to a future day when my mind is more attuned to the subject than it is at present – Well I know the difficulty of an answer; for the operations of God’s spirit upon the heart of man are scarcely to be stated intellectually. This is not a solitary experience of my own – You know who has said ‘The wind bloweth where it listeth and thou hearest the sound thereof but canst not tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth – so it is with every one who is born of the spirit’.4
Whenever I find myself in a condition favourable to the act I will write to you, and I shall ever be glad to hear from you. I do not want to modify your views, for if they elevate your heart and raise your life to pure and noble practices they do not want modification. I think our chief want is not a modification of our religious theories but strength and courage to act up to the knowledge we possess. This I believe is the only way of access to still higher knowledge – the practice of that which we possess. A religion founded upon logic is for the curious and argumentative, but not for the man who is in earnest about the matter. – I will now stop, excuse this unworthy acknowledgement of your truly friendly act and believe me
most faithfully yours | John Tyndall
Dr Gladstone.
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<INFO>RS MS/743/1/6
RI MS JT/1/TYP/1/402–4035
your friendly letter: letter 0511.
My intellect is … polarized: another use of a physical metaphor to describe a state of mind (see letter 0505, n. 6).
religion . . . the same: the continuing correspondence shows Gladstone puzzling over the extent to which they had the same beliefs or religion. Tyndall believed that religious words clothed a profound mystery. In using the same words, Gladstone invested them with more literal meanings in the tradition of a more orthodox Christian theology.
‘The wind . . . the spirit’: the words of Jesus to Nicodemus, John 3:8. there are only minor variations between the KJV and Tyndalls’ quotation: he omitted a few commas; he wrote ‘cometh or whither’ instead of ‘cometh, and whither’, and ‘one who is born’ instead of ‘one that is born’. But see n. 5.
TYP/1/402-403: the LT typescript of this letter reveals LT’s editing processes (see ‘Editorial Principles’). ‘Hearest’ was originally typed as ‘heareth’ and changed by hand; the revised quote is correct.
Please cite as “Tyndall0513,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on 29 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/tyndall/letters/Tyndall0513