Page:Diary, reminiscences, and correspondence of Henry Crabb Robinson, Volume 1.djvu/25



Rh at Ebersdorf, or in the blessings which the old Catholic woman at Bischoffsheim poured upon Christian Brentano, or in the vesper service at the wayside inn in the Tyrol, or in the family worship at Ambleside, where "sweet Jessie" Harden "read the prayers." He thoroughly entered into the sentiment of the author of the "Religio Medici,"—"I cannot laugh at, but rather pity, the fruitless journeys of pilgrims, or condemn the miserable condition of friars; for though misplaced in circumstances, there is something in it of devotion. I could never hear the Ave Mary bell without an elevation, or think it a sufficient warrant, because they erred in one circumstance, for me to err in all—that is, in silence and contempt. Whilst, therefore, they directed their devotions to her, I offered mine to God, and rectified the errors of their prayers by rightly ordering mine own." Looking to the church of the future, he hoped there would be found in it "the greatest quantity of religion founded on devotional sentiment, and the least quantity of church government compatible with it, and consistent with order." The concluding paragraph of his obituary of his friend Anthony Robinson, written in 1827, is strikingly applicable to himself:—"Could Mr. Robinson be justly deemed a religious man? If religion be a system of confident conclusions on all the great points of metaphysical speculation, as they respect the universe and its author—man and his position in the one, and relation to the other—it must be owned Mr. Robinson laid no claim to the character. But if the religious principle be that which