[To his mother while he was converting to Catholicism]
Dear Mother:
Your alarm about my “religion-hunting” traits which you assume to be inherited from the most questionable part of my ancestry [her father, Henry Seldon Hall], is largely unfounded. Letters are of course fatal things when it comes to imparting a situation with its shades of emphasis. I need scarcely point out that religious enthusiasm (in which I am lamentably weak) has rarely directed the erratic and leaping feet of the inebriated one along the slow and arduous path that leads from a meeting-house to the Church – I mean the Catholic and Universal Church, the visible body of Christ. Now religion-hunting even in its worst phases, is yet a testimony to the greatest fact about man, namely, that he is a creature and an image, and not sufficient unto himself. It is the whole bias of the mind that it seek Truth, and of the soul which inspires our very life, that it seek that which gave it. The great difficulty about Truth is that it is not simple except to those who can attain to see it whole. The very definition of an enthusiast is that he has seized a truth which he cannot and would not, if he could, relate to other truths of life. He is invariably unsympathetic and lacking in humanity. I have some elements of enthusiasm which have been more than occupied in hero-worship – e.g., Macaulay and Chesterton. Them days is gone forever, but I shall always think that my selection of heroes was fortunate. Both were calculated to suppress any tendency I had towards harping on one truth at a time. You may be sure that I shall take no inconsiderable step about entering the Roman Communion – I shall probably take some years, because I am completely uneducated for the step. I am not even serious enough to be “contemptuous” of the probable effect on my worldly prospects. I believe they would not be altered save for small colleges originally of religious origin – perhaps Acadia, certainly Wesley. The Provincial U’.s would be indifferent; religion being at such an ebb in our land at present as to be considered a negligible factor. However, I will not be a Catholic when I come to apply for posts. And I am waiting advice from Wheeler at present regarding what U.’s in Canada and U.S.A. to apply to, and how to apply to them. I therefore implore you to put aside your apprehensions. Religion is a personal matter and I shall not be visibly altered – tho I could wish for countless improvements – by such a change.