Page:Diary, reminiscences, and correspondence of Henry Crabb Robinson, Volume 1.djvu/24



xx if they had never learned it before, how much deeper and stronger is the common human heart, which binds us all in one, than those intellectual differences which are the witness of our weakness and infallibility, and sometimes the expression of our obstinacy and self-will." It was, indeed, no small privilege to hear the passing topics of the day, and the chief questions of literature, talked over by able men of such widely differing points of view, and in a spirit of mutual respect and kindness. And the host, who was as free in the expression of his own opinions as he was ready to listen to the opinions of others, seldom failed to bring to bear on the question under consideration some recollection from Weimar or Highgate, a walk with Wordsworth at Rydal, or an evening with Charles Lamb.

To those who were not intimate with Mr. Robinson, what he says respecting religion may sometimes be puzzling. There are occasions when his words seem to imply that with him belief was rather hoped for than an actual possession. He thought there was more real piety in the exclamation of the anxious father in the Gospels, "Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief," than in the confident and self-satisfied assertion of the longest creed. His sympathy in opinions was with those who have exercised the fullest liberty of thought. He had traversed far and wide the realms of theological speculation, and in every part he had found sincere and devout men. But he was always interested and touched by genuine religious feeling, wherever he found it—whether in the simple and fervent faith of the Moravians