be confused, and finally petrified. Had this refined probing and
questioning deadened all sense of duty? Was this the end of my Absolute
Philosophy, that the intellect should usurp the place of the conscience
and the moral law? Shame to me that I could have paused to ask such
questions! yet any claim but one tittle less urgent I should have
bantered aside. I seemed to realize the torture described in the dream
of Dante,--two souls struggling together in one frail body. I had been
applauding good and condemning evil when it cost me nothing but the
sentiment; but when the fiery test came, my purpose cracked and
shrivelled before it. Yes, I conquered; but the scars that purchased the
victory have ached through my life.

There was but one calling wherein it seemed possible for me to earn my
bread; for how could I descend to chaffer in the market, to trim and
huckster through the world,--_I_, who had thought to condition the
Spirit of the Universe? But there were metaphors faintly shadowing
divine things, symbols adapted to the limitations of the popular mind,
and with these I might do an honest work for the souls of men. _Honest?_
Yes,--unless Augustine was a hypocrite, when he declared that he spoke
of the Unseen as unity in three persons, less to say something than not
to remain altogether silent. To a certain order of minds among the
clergy this is the daily cross,--the necessity of maintaining a fixed
position, and ever looking down from it to teach, instead of ever
yearning upward to be taught.

It is enough to say, that, supporting myself and my sister by
school-teaching, I achieved such courses of reading as are supposed to
qualify for enrolment among the liberal clergy of New England. Until the
time when my sister left me by marriage I was settled at N----, on the
Connecticut. Soon after this event, died old Dr. P---- of Foxden, and I
received a call to his vacant parish. I knew that the sort of society to
be found in that place would minister to my most urgent need. I craved
some intellectual clanship which should never seek to rise to an equal
spiritual companionship. For there was only one man to whom I might
speak freely, and from him my path ever diverged. How far apart the
years had led us! Sometimes there came a whisper that I had been
snatched from the hand of Satan, killer of souls; sometimes my only
opportunities of salvation seemed left in that sad, damp homestead. I
could never return to him; I could ne