JOHN STUART MILL'S PIOUS DEVOTION TO HIS WIFE'S MEMORY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVIII, Issue 6213, 15 October 1881, Page 6

JOHN STUART MILL'S PIOUS DEVOTION TO HIS WIFE'S MEMORY.

[From "Latter Day Teachers. Six Lectures." By E. A. Armstrong, B.A. We find him writing : "Because I know that she woukl have wished it, I endeavour to make the best of what life I have left, and to work on for her purposes with such diminished strength as can be derived from thoughts of her and communion with her memory." And again, "Her memory is to me a religion, and her approbation the standard by which, summing up as it does all worthiness, I endeavour to regulate my life." Did ever pen inscribe more touching words? The babe who lisped Greek at three ; the boy who at twelve looked through the impartial spectacles of scientific curiosity at the world's religious beliefs, and held them to be no more than so many scientific specimens ; the student who had refused to acknowledge that this world shows signs of creative goodness ; the reformer who trusted to the intellects of living men to make a poor world better; the philosopher who in the plenitude of his wisdom spurned all objective religious faith as simply paralysing or distorting noble effort, as now the hair is whitening, and the lines are forming deep about the eyes, weeps at a woman's grave, sits at the window whence he can view her tomb, proclaims to the world that she was almost more than woman, the proper object cf a high soul's unmeasured homage, and embraces in her memory and in her will that from which he had boasted his emancipation, that which he had declared such a mischief in the world ; that which, in other souls, he had consistently analysed, discredited, rejected, an object for that strange, undefinable, vague, mighty, constraining, irresistible emotion, the supreme passion of the hiyhest among our race, Religion*. Yes, this was religion—religion however poor, however fragile, however inadequate for the highest ends ot religion. For religion is allegiance and devotion to that which we feel to be immensely better, nobler, holier than ourselves—allegiance riveting the affections, devotion propelling to sacred purposes, and inspiring with stores of strength the springs of unselfish action. And religion, true and ennobling as far as it went, however defective, however incapable of being shared with others, John Stuart Mill found at last in communion with the idealised memory of his beloved and vanished wife.