From John Hall Gladstone   Nov. 28th. /51

Stockwell | Nov. 28th. /51.

My dear Dr. Tyndall,

So pleased was I with the spirit of your last letter¹ that I was near replying to it immediately in order to assure you more fully than heretofore of my deep-felt sympathy with your feelings; but more pressing engagements interfered, and now above a month has past

I like much your remarks about the religion of the head, and the religion of the heart. How strikingly do we often see the two displayed in the characters of different Christians! And I think I can admire your cast of mind, akin to that of the apostle John, the more because I feel myself to resemble rather the apostle Paul. As far as a man’s own self is concerned the religion of the heart is of course the all-important; but if Christianity is to be studied and taught, we must have also the religion of the head. God has given us the means of attaining both. He has given us the Bible, where, in a series of narratives and miraculously attested declarations, certain doctrines (undiscoverable by mere human reason) are revealed; and he has given us examples of renewed men, both in the Bible and out of it, and the Holy Spirit, to teach us the sentiments of religion. The religion of the head and the religion of the heart ought surely to be combined: in fact I doubt whether either can exist in any high degree of perfection without the other. Religious knowledge of itself is apt, as you see very clearly, to run into formality and become petrified; but religious feeling of itself is equally liable to become fantastic and unstable. Love is certainly what God requires of us; but I think the more thoroughly we know him, and believe what he has said of himself, the more we shall love him. It is our beloved Saviour himself who said – ‘This is life eternal, that they should know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent’.²

Pray excuse me, my Christian brother,³ if I have seemed here to sermonise; I could not write what I wanted so well in another manner. And these are certainly important considerations, especially (it appears to me) in the present day, when, perhaps from far too exclusive an attention having been paid to the ‘form’, thinking men are now disposed to make light of scientific theology, and attempt to arrive at truth merely through ‘sentiment’. I fear there is a secret mistrust either of God himself, or of the evidence of revelation, at the bottom of this: at any rate in dealing with our fellow creatures the genuineness of that affection would be questioned which should lead a man to avoid examining the lineaments and character and wishes of the beloved object, and confine his regards to the ideal of his imagination.

Well, it is delightful to trace the workings of the same divine power on minds differently constituted: this is part of the charm of Christian fellowship. All the Lord’s children have a genuine resemblance amidst their specific differences: and you and I can both love and enjoy and glorify Him, and feel ourselves even whilst in the land of our pilgrimage ‘complete in him’;⁴ and ‘what we know not now we shall know hereafter’.⁵

As to scientific news I suppose you hear what is going on, even though in so outlandish a place as Queenwood. The English savants seem to have spent the summer in gazing at the Exhibition,⁶ and to have little in the way of discovery to announce. However something will I dare say be forthcoming. The Chemical Society meets now in very smart rooms of its own, and has had large presents to its museum.⁷ Liebig has now got to work again at Giessen, the better I believe for his English visit.

If I did not know that it takes much shorter time to read a letter than to write it, I should fear I had thoroughly tired you, but believe me My friend

Yours sincerely | J. H. Gladstone.

Dr. Tyndall.

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