Christianity disappeared from my
firmament; but, in the immediately previous years, I had been a reader
of Swedenborg, and I held immovably an intuition of immortality,--or,
if the term intuition be denied me, the conviction that immortality
was the foundation of human existence, grounded in my earliest
thoughts, and as clear as the sense of light,--and this never failed
me. In this respect Swedenborg helped my reason in its struggle,
though I could never see my way to the entire acceptance of his
doctrine.

My dogmatic theological education had been entirely incidental, for my
mother never discussed dogmas or doctrines, but the simple duties and
promises of religion, and my intelligence had never been, therefore,
so kept captive as to make release grateful. Christianity had never
been a doctrinal burden to me, or any form of belief inconsistent in
my mind with true Christianity. In my mother's thought there was only
one thing utterly profane, and that was self-righteousness. And there
happened to me in this conjuncture, what has in my later life been
often seen, that the modification of religious views imposed on us by
the superior force of another mind--a persuasion of what seems to be
truth as it is only seen by others' vision--could not hold its own
against the early convictions, and that a revulsion to the old faith
was sooner or later inevitable and generally healthy. The epidemic
passed, and, though it gave me great distress for the time, it made my
essential religious convictions stronger in the end. It is, I think,
Max Mueller who says that no man can escape from the environment of his
early religious education. I have seen, in my experience of life and
men, many curious proofs of that law, men who have lived for many
years in the most absolute rejection of all religions, returning in
their old age to the simple faith of childhood, ending as they began.
The change of religious convictions which holds its own against all
influences is that which comes from the healthy evolution of our own
thought. At any rate, in my own case, the rationalistic revolution
completed its circle and brought me back to that simple faith to
remain in which is a reproach to no man, and the departure from which,
to be healthy, must be made on lines conformed to our better natures.
I felt the better for my excursion into new regions, and the freedom
of movement I acquired I never lost.

As I am telling the story of a phase of human li