He was in the right mood for it on
completion of the Mass in D, and it is rather singular that he did not
undertake it instead of the Symphony. Religious questions were occupying
his mind more and more in these years. It must be admitted that his
religion was as peculiar to himself as was his music. He affiliated with
no church, although baptized as a Catholic, and brought up in that
church; but the frequent appeals to the Divinity in his journals, show
his belief in, and reliance on, a higher power. He formulated his own
religion as did Thoreau. The man who could write, "Socrates and Jesus
were patterns to me" lived a correct life in its essentials. His
asceticism, his unselfishness, the sympathy which he continually showed
for others, his unworldliness,--what else is this but the gist of New
Testament teaching? Like a tree nourished on alien soil, which yet
produces fairer and better fruit than the native ones, and becomes the
parent of a new variety, this man achieved his high development of
character by being a law unto himself like the anchorites of old.
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