ABSTRACT
Richard Murry was reminded of Job; and Murry himself was half-tempted to believe in a recompensing deity. At any rate, the event, in his own eyes, was the final vindication of his life-long faith in ‘the holiness of the heart’s affections’. The creative reciprocity between himself and his subject is what distinguishes Murry above all others as a critic. But Murry’s final conception of history as the progressive embodiment of Christ’s vision of human brotherhood, culminating in the free society, satisfied his imagination so completely that he was impatient, not only of Schweitzer’s elusive rationalization. Murry had reverted to the standpoint of Dostoevsky, simultaneously rejecting the last of his ontological affirmations – ‘The conditions of this world really forbid giving ontological status to the world of spirit’. This being the reality by which both empirical Christianity and Christian civilization had been inspired, it was to this, he submitted, that men must turn for the renewal of their inspiration.
