RUSSELL LOWELL.

Evening Star, Issue 12884, 6 August 1906, Page 6

RUSSELL LOWELL.

Sir, —The report in to-night's issue of a lecture on the famous American recalls t<i me a paragraph from Greenslet's 'Life <»l Lowell,' just recently published. It deak with liia religious beliefs. "On the other hand, it was impossible for Lowell to find solace and support in the doctrine of any church. 'All religious formulations,' says Mr Howell, 'bored him,' and in bos last years he replied to the question 'ls there a moral government in the universe?' gravely and with a kind of pain: ' The scale is so vast, and we see such a little part of it.'" I quote the above by way of consolation to the many, apparently increasing many, who find themselves unable to accept all the absolute doctrinal teachings of the churches—teachings which, if strictly applied, would shut out any gleam of hope even for men of the stamp of Lowell. In the report of the lecture referred to above, Lowell is described as one of those mighty souls whose fervid moral zeal leverage the heavy world up, and that his Christianity was of the sternly practical kind. That he should be m> described in a lecture given before an evangelical church is a sign of the growth of an interpretation of Christianity and the Christian spirit broad enough to include within its folds noble men and women who could not be regarded as " saved" in the usual church meaning of that term, —I am, etc., Cosmos. August 4.