child means to keep hold, so to speak, of the direct handclasp; to remain in touch with the centre; not to go wandering after this clever notion and that.
If one could maintain this simplicity, supreme bona fides, sincerity of mood and temper, and care about one’s religion mainly and especially with reference to those features in it which are truly and strictly religious, I believe the gain would be great. And gradually and naturally, I suppose, there would come about a certain discrimination between what is necessary in religion, and what is more or less superfluous, and, if emphatically insisted on, tends even to become harmful. But I most firmly believe that to a sound and sincere religious temper much that may in itself be superfluous can fall into its place and be in no way dangerous. I do not think controversy is useful, but mischievous. Yet a sense of sanity and
