Queenwood. Sunday morng.
My Dear Dr Gladstone
I dont know what to say to you that will not be ‘flat stale and unprofitable’. The day before your letter2 reached me I had planned in my mind to send you a memoir3 purely to shew that I had not forgotten you; but now that your letter has come it demands something else at my hands
It is perhaps a singular fact that I read the works of christian men, if they be experimental not doctrinal, with the deepest interest and I either see or fancy I see clear resemblances between their experiences and my own. I have been accustomed to watch the operations of my own mind and the fluctuations of faith and moral principle within me. This habit of mine has led me into many little secrets of my own nature which I find the greatest help in interpreting the experiences of others. I value the bible chiefly on this account; in the spirit of the woman of Samaria I may exclaim regarding it ‘it is a book which tells me all things whatever I did’4 But not only in the bible and in books of accredited genius do I take pleasure; I fancy I see profound wisdom at times in the writings of many whom the world term fanatics. I cannot help fancying at the same time however that the fanatic is wise without knowing it – his wisdom consists in the faithful transcription of experiences the roots of which lie deep in human nature. In all this I feel pleasure, but when I come to talk about myself I feel as if every word I uttered was accompanied by a diminution of what I may term my spiritual strength – This is perhaps owing to want of practice, though I sometimes think it must have a deeper ground. It sometimes makes me appear uncommunicative and if I ever appear so to you I hope you will refer it to its proper cause. – You can, I dare say, fancy a man doing an upright act in secret and saying to himself ‘nobody shall know that I have done it’ and that such an act thus housed up in a man’s own heart may contribute materially to his private strength and goodness whereas had he recited it this source of power would vanish – I do not mean to draw any parallel between my experiences and such an act further than the general analogy that the keeping of them to myself seems a kind of necessary fuel to me. When I contemplate the character of Jesus christ for example I find myself possessed of feelings which as far as I am concerned are better untold. There are I think two kinds of religion in the world; the religion of the head and the religion of the heart – The former is the religion we meet with in books of controversy; and ‘schemes’ of redemption as far as I have studied them contain a perilous infusion of the same – The writings of Saint Paul I am free to admit are strongly impregnated with the same kind of religion. A perfect illustration of the religion of the heart I find in the writings of Saint John – in the psalms of David and other portions of the bible, and these I confess are the portions which woo me most strongly – they woo me because they appeal to my own consciousness and they break the rigid barrier which any mere intellectual scheme would draw around me – They talk of faith and love both of which are beyond logic.5 What you call ‘objective faith’ I call form – The intellect needs an image when it would contemplate the deeper workings of the soul – it throws a kind of drapery over essences just as the philosopher when he contemplates magnetism resorts to a ‘fluid’;6 but the force is not the fluid, neither is the religion the form. I grant the right of men to represent their religious experiences by symbols – nay I see the necessity of this – But I am careful of making my symbol immortal; I feel the possibility of substituting another for it equally as good and hence I should be sorry to attempt to force my peculiar mode of presenting religious matters to my mind upon others. I am afraid that the various phases of our present christianity are so many symbols become rigid; and that the quarrels and dissensions of good men are to be traced to the unwitting substitution of the outward sign for the inward fact. I think you are tired of me by this time so I shall now stop –7 most faithfully yours J. Tyndall.
RS MS/743/1/182
[12 October 1851]: Tyndall is replying to Gladstone’s letter of 29 September (0537), thus this letter was written in October. The wording of the first paragraph suggests an earlier rather than a later date (5 or 12 rather than 19 or 26 October). Gladstone’s reply (letter 0576, 28 November) suggests he received Tyndall’s letter in mid-October. On the available evidence, 12 October is the most likely date, but we cannot rule out other Sundays in October.
your letter: letter 0537.
send you a memoir: possibly the paper on bismuth; Tyndall finished writing it and sent it to Francis around the time of receiving Gladstone’s letter (see letters 0538 and 0539).
the woman of Samaria . . . ever I did’: reference to biblical story in which a woman said of Jesus he ‘told me all things that ever I did’ (John 4:29).
They talk … beyond logic: Tyndall crossed out two versions of this sentence. One version used the phrase ‘defy intellectual investigation’.
The intellect needs an image … ‘fluid’: Tyndall again uses a physical analogy to make a philosophical point: both religion and physics grasp truth through metaphors. His reference to ‘drapery’ is an allusion to the Carlylean conception of theology as a form clothing the inexpressible essence of religion.
–: Because Tyndall was at the bottom of his sheet he did not have space to write his signature on a new line.
Please cite as “Tyndall0546,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on 29 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/tyndall/letters/Tyndall0546