The Creed of a Layman; Apologia Pro Fide Mea (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1907 edition. Excerpt: ... TV A SOCRATIC DIALOGUE 1876 The following Dialogue appeared in the "Contemporary Review" May 1876, vol. xxvii. It was an answer to an article by Mark Pattison, Rector of Lincoln. It occasioned a prolonged controversy with John Ruskin, who wrote on it in "Fors Clavigera," May 1876, vol. vi., reissued in the "Complete Ruskin," vol. xxix., where the correspondence relating to it, both public and private, is reproduced. The answer to Mr. Ruskin appeared in the "Fortnightly Review," July 1876, "Past and Present," and is reproduced in the "Choice of Books," 1886. Persons: Sophistes, a College Don Phjedrus, a barrister from town (At Oxford: The Walks round Magdalen College in May) Sophistes. Ah most positive of men, what happy chance brings you back to our studious groves? 'Tis pleasant to find you meditating here, in the old haunts amid the May blossoms. Pluedrus. Nay, son of sweetness and light, there is no place in which I feci more truly at home. I often fancy that the genius loci touches us strangers more deeply than it can you residents who have it always with you. I have but just slipped out from the roar of the London torrent--a Niagara perpetually falling and then passing on in foam--and I find myself here in a very Lotus island of peace and thought. S. You mean a land where it is always--the middle of last week. P. No, not I; what I love in Oxford is that sense of spiritual retirement, even more than its immemorial charm. It seems to me one of those spots where there lingers in the air a loyalty to ideas. And surely it has been the cradle of two revivals of our time, the craving for the real, both in history and religion. S. A Daniel come to judgment We would fain believe all this; but we have our own Niagara of everlasting examinations, ...