In the Church was no satisfaction. He had lost, as most educated ...

In the Church was no satisfaction. He had lost, as most educated men were losing, his hold on what had been the middle strand of all Christian creeds, faith in the divine person of Christ.

The natural way of escape was into the open mockery to which Clough's temperament inclined him / her,' or into such a pagan equanimity in face

of the unknown as

the agnostics of the next age practiced and proclaimed.

But to his generation, so powerful still was the appeal of lost faith, so

intricate the associations of right belief and right

conduct, that that way was closed.

Ruskin's final assurance, that it does not matter much to the universe what sort of person you are, was impossible to a generation impressed by its teachers with the infinite importance-and therefore self-importance-of the individual soul.

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