I cannot tell whether these thoughts will be of any help to you.

But it is better, in my judgment, to remain a proselyte of the gate--resolute to remain there till one receives a genuine conviction of some truths beyond--than for imagined relief from the pain of suspense to take up by an act of will a complete system of belief, Catholic or Calvinistic, and insist to one's own soul that it is, was, and shall be the whole and complete truth.

Some people do this--deliberately blind their eyes, and because they never see again declare loudly that no one else can see.

Other people, less happy, find by experience that they cannot believe what they have taken to in this way, and fly for a change to the next theory and then to the next.

I remain for myself unconvinced of much which is generally called the essential part of things; but convinced with all my heart of what I regard as essential." Froude made no secret of his religious opinions and they may be collected from his numerous books, especially perhaps from The Oxford Counter-Reformation.