Outside the Church the same religious unrest has had several noteworthy results, perhaps the most remarkable of these being a negative one: I mean, the aggressive attitude and movement of what is popularly known as scientific thought. Amongst its leaders have been, and are, some of the best, as well as the ablest, men of our time, who have had, as they deserved to have, a very striking influence. But the tone of scientific men towards religion has been uniformly impatient or contemptuous, not seldom petulant. “Why go on troubling yourselves and mankind about that of which you can know nothing?” they have said. “This ‘eternal’ or ‘inner’ life of which you prate is wholly beyond your ken. We can prove to you that much of your so-called theology rests on unsound premises. Be content to work and learn with us in the material world, of which alone you can get to know anything certain.” That challenge has shaken the foundations of much which called itself faith in our day. I never could discover that my brother was ever seriously troubled by it. Dissertations on the Mosaic cosmogony, theories of the origin of species, speculations on the antiquity of man, and the like, interested, but never seemed to rouse in him any of the alarm or anger which they have excited in so many good Christians. Granting all that they tend to prove, they deal only with the outward garment, with the visible universe, and the life which must be lived in it, leaving the inner and real life of mankind quite untouched.
He was, however, neither so tolerant of, nor I think so fair to, the stirring of thought within the Church, which has resulted in criticisms supposed to be destructive of much that was held sacred in the last generation. His keen sense of loyalty was offended by anything which looked like an attack coming from within the ranks, and so he shared the feeling so widely, and I think wrongly, entertained by English Churchmen, that the right of free thought and free speech on the most sacred subjects should be incompatible with holding office in the Church.
As to his own convictions on such subjects, he was extremely reserved, owing to a tendency which he believed he had detected in himself to religious melancholy, which he treated simply as a disease. But no one who knew him at all could ever doubt that a genuine and deep religious faith was the basis of his character, and those who knew him best testify unanimously to its ever increasing power. “I don’t know if you were ever told,” his sister writes, “of the singular desire dying people had that George should be with them. You know how reserved he was, and he would always think that people would prefer some one who talked more to them, but I think it was his great gentleness and strength which made the dying feel him such a comfort. He never volunteered; but when sent for, as was often the case, always went to them, and read and prayed constantly with them as long as they lived. There was one poor young man who died of consumption, and George was constantly with him to the last. The father was a very disreputable character, and George seldom saw him. But some time after the young man’s death, the father met George in the fields, and threw himself on his knees to bless him for his love for his dead son. George came home much shocked that the man should have knelt to him. One old man, whom he used to go to for weeks and weeks during his long last illness, really adored him, and, when George was away for a short time, prayed that he might live till he saw him again. And George was back before he died.”