He liked to _know_ himself a benefactor.

Such a man may well be of noble nature, but he is a mere dabbler in nobility.
Faber delighted in the thought that, having repudiated all motives of personal interest involved in religious belief, all that regard for the future, with its rewards and punishments, which, in his ignorance, genuine or willful, of essential Christianity, he took for its main potence, he ministered to his neighbor, doing to him as he would have him do to himself, hopeless of any divine recognition, of any betterness beyond the grave, in a fashion at least as noble as that of the most devoted of Christians.

It did not occur to him to ask if he loved him as well--if his care about him was equal to his satisfaction in himself.
Neither did he reflect that the devotion he admired in himself had been brought to the birth in him through others, in whom it was first generated by a fast belief in an unselfish, loving, self-devoting God.
Had he inquired he might have discovered that this belief had carried some men immeasurably further in the help of their fellows, than he had yet gone.

Indeed he might, I think, have found instances of men of faith spending their lives for their fellows, whose defective theology or diseased humility would not allow them to hope their own salvation.
Inquiry might have given him ground for fearing that with the love of the _imagined_ God, the love of the indubitable man would decay and vanish.

But such as Faber was, he was both loved and honored by all whom he had ever attended; and, with his fine tastes, his genial nature, his quiet conscience, his good health, his enjoyment of life, his knowledge and love of his profession, his activity, his tender heart--especially to women and children, his keen intellect, and his devising though not embodying imagination, if any man could get on without a God, Faber was that man.