ugh a few years later I can no more realise than I can
now realise your father's blessed assurance of heaven. I know vaguely that
it was a time of unspeakable agony for me, a rending asunder, as it were,
of soul and body. The doctrine was bred into my bones; I saw the folly of
it intellectually, but the emotional comfort of it was the very
quintessence of my life. The struggle came upon me alone and I was without
help or guidance. Into those few years of boyish vacillation, I see now
that the whole tragedy of more than a century of human experience was
thrust. One day I sat in church listening to a sermon of appealing
eloquence: "And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the
world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were
evil." Was I too deliberately turning my back on the light? I hid my face
and cried. That was the end. I came out of the church free, but I had
suffered too much. Something passed from my life that day which nothing
can replace; for perfect faith, like love, comes to a man but once.

1 was empty of comfort and without resting-place for my spirit. Then said
I: Look you, belief in this religion as dogma is gone; why not hold fast
to its imaginative beauty! If revelation is a fraud, at least the
intricacies of this catholic faith have grown up from the long yearning of
the human heart, and possess this inner reality of corresponding with our
spiritual needs. And for several years I wrought at Christian symbolism,
trying to build up for my soul a home of poetical faith so to speak. But
in the end this could not satisfy me; I knew that I was cherishing a sham,
a pretty make-believe after the manner of children. Better the blindness
of true religion than this illusion of the imagination. And I was now a
grown man.

Then by some inner guidance I turned to India. How shall I tell you what I
found in the philosophies of that land! One thing will surprise you.
Instead of pessimism I found in India during a certain period of time a
happiness, an exultation of happiness, such as the world to-day cannot
even imagine. And I found that this happiness sprang from no pretended
revelation but from a profound understanding of the heart. Do this, said
the books, and you will feel thus, and so step by step to the consummation
of ecstasy. I read and was amazed; I understood and knew that I too, if my
will were strong, might slip from bondage and be blessed. But I saw
further that the pa