How the aforesaid
Union is to be brought about, I'm sure I don't know, for I am pretty
certain that the Episcopalians won't give up their bishops, and the
Presbyterians won't have them on any account. However, that's
neither here nor there--at least it does not affect the fact that
Wordsworth is a first-rate man, and a fine preacher. I dare say you
know he is a nephew or grand-nephew of the Poet. He is a most
venerable old man, and worth looking at, merely for his exterior.
He is so feeble with age that he can with difficulty climb the three
short steps that lead into the pulpit; but, once in the pulpit, it
is another thing. There is no feebleness when he begins to preach.
He is one of the last voices of the old orthodox school, and I wish
there were hundreds like him. If ever a man believed in his
message, Wordsworth does. And though I cannot follow him in his
veneration for the Thirty-nine Articles, the way in which he does
makes me half wish I could. . . . It was full of wisdom and the
beauty of holiness, which even I, poor sceptic and outcast, could
recognise and appreciate. After all, he didn't get it from the
Articles, but from his own human heart, which, he told us, was
deceitful and desperately wicked.
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