"No, sir," I replied. "But I have thought long and anxiously on the subject of religion."

"He who has done that, will not long remain indifferent to his soul's salvation."

"Perhaps not, in general; but for myself, I care little about my soul or any thing else that belongs to me. I am not worth caring for. But I would know if I ought to regard this miserable life as the term of man's existence,-if there be indeed a God who holds the destinies of the universe, and to whom vice and virtue are not indifferent."

The

"I fear, my dear sir, that you have indulged in some unprofitable, not to say presumptuous speculations. We must not strive to be wise above what is written. world is full of mysteries and we cannot hope to unravel them all. We should seek to believe rather than to comprehend."

"I am not so vain as to hope to clear up all mysteries: but I must know what and wherefore I believe,-what and wherefore I worship. Even your master reproves those who worship they know not what,' and I must have a reason for the faith I avow."

"Take care that you do not rely too much on reason. Reason is a feeble and a false light, that dazzles but to blind. We should submit our reason to the word of God."

"Be my reason feeble and false as it may, it is my only light, and should I extinguish that I should be in total darkness. It is reason that distinguishes me from the brutes, and till I am willing to become a brute, I must insist on using it."

"Certainly, my dear sir. Use your reason, but bear in mind that it is reason's highest glory to listen to the voice of God. But I perceive that you are laboring under difficulties which this is neither the time nor the place to discuss. Do me the favor to call at my house to-morrow at ten o'clock, and I will try and relieve your mind of its embarrassments."

So saying, he turned away to address himself to his several subjects according to their several conditions. To one he whispered hope; in this ear he breathed consolation; in that he thundered rebuke and the startling terrors of the law. I remained till the meeting broke up, accompanied Elizabeth to her home almost in silence, and hurried to my own lodgings to meditate on the occurrences of the day, and the various topics which had come up. My mind was in

no enviable state. Love, doubt, desire to believe, and inability to believe, operating each by turns and all together, made me any thing but comfortable. I looked forward with some eagerness to the proposed interview with Mr. Wilson, but with little hope, it must be confessed, of any satisfactory result.

CHAPTER VI.-STRUGGLES.

We do not pass from belief to doubt, nor from doubt to disbelief without a long and severe struggle. Even after we have become confirmed unbelievers, there are many remembrances which rise up to make us weep that we are not what we were. In most cases, religion has been inwoven with all our earlier life. It has hallowed all the affections and associations which gather round the home of our childhood. Each spot, each object, each event dear to the memory, has its tale of religion. The sister who played with us, smiled when we were pleased, wept when we were grieved, above all the mother who stood between us and danger, and knelt with us in prayer, speak to us of religion, and endear it to our hearts. Whenever we break away from it, we seem to ourselves to be breaking away from the whole past, from all that we have loved, have hoped, feared, thought, enjoyed, or suffered, and to be rushing upon a new and untried existence. It is a fearful change which then comes over us. To be no longer what we have been, to lose sight of all that has been familiar to us, to enter upon we know not what, upon a state of being the issues of which we see not, and of which we can foretell nothing,—what is this different in reality from that event which men call death?

Over every one who once doubts the creed in which he has been reared, does this change come. The doubt once raised, the man has undergone a radical change. He can never be again what he was. The simple faith of his childhood never returns. He may attain to conviction, but the childlike confidence, the warm trustfulness is gone forever. From that time forth, he must battle his way in the dark, with doubts, perplexities, insolvable problems as best he may. And to all this, of which we have at first a forefeeling, think not that we bring ourselves to consent without a struggle.

Religion is life's poesy. It breathes a living soul into the universe, and gives us everywhere a bright and loving

spirit with which to hold sweet and mystic communings. On every object around us it sheds a mellow light, and throws a veil over all the stern and forbidding features of reality. Bitter is the day which raises that veil, and bids that mellowing light be withdrawn; when for the first time we look into the heavens, and see no spirit shining there, over the rich and flowering earth and see no spirit blooming there, abroad over a world of silent, senseless matter, and feel that we are-alone. I shall never forget that day; and I have no doubt that I shall see all the objects of sense, one after another, fade away and lose themselves in the darkness of death, with far less shrinking of soul, than I saw my childhood's faith depart, and felt the terrible conviction fastening itself upon me that all must go,-God, Christ, immortality, that which my fathers had believed, for which they had toiled, lived, suffered, died, which my mother had cherished and infused into my being with the milk from her breast,-all, all, even to the last and dearest article must vanish and be to me henceforth but as a dream which cannot be recalled.

The world may not give me credit for feeling so much, for the world may have misconceived my real character. It has allowed me the stronger, the harsher, but denied me the softer and more amiable qualities of our nature. It has supposed me incapable of generous sympathies and firm attachments. But the world has not known me: at least as I should have been, had it not been for the unfriendly circumstances of my earlier life which forced into notice much which in ordinary cases is concealed, and gave a disproportionate development to qualities, of which nature gave me indeed the gerin, but which she never intended should form the prominent traits of my character. My youth was one of hardship, privation and suffering. My life has been a continual warfare with principles and doctrines which I have found in power, but which have appeared to me false and mischievous. I have almost always stood alone, battling single-handed for the unpopular cause, the unfashionable party, the heretical truth. My hand has been against every man, and every man's hand has been against me. Yet have I ever yearned toward my race, and separated from them only with the keenest regret. I have ever been found on the side of the future, the first to seek out and recognise the sheep-skin and goat-skin-clad prophets of God; and yet have I ever stood in awe before the weird past, and beheld with

reverence all that over which the stream of ages has rolled, over which has ebbed and flowed the tide of human life through many generations.

We know little of what passes in the hearts of our most intimate friends, what concealed wells of deep feeling, and holy sentiment, and gushing sympathy there are in those even who appear to us careless, cold, and superficial. We all wear masks to one another, and it is not in our power to unmask ourselves even if we would. We are all better than our best friends believe us. Could we but lay open our hearts to one another, and be seen by each other as we really are, hatred would cease, man's contempt of man would find no place, brother would bring no railing accusation against brother, unholy strife would end, discord die away, and love, joy, and peace would reign. O, we know not what treasures of rich and holy feeling our ignorance of each other's better nature leads us to throw away, or to trample under our feet. He had a deep insight into human nature who made it the law of his morality that we should love our neighbors as ourselves.

I know that in all this I shall but excite a smile in the men of the world, who fancy that to sneer at human nature, and to distrust the capacities of the human soul, is a mark of superior wisdom, and especially in those who deem abhorrence of the infidel the most grateful incense to God; but I can assure these men of the world that I too have lived in the world, and have studied men not less than I have man; and can speak from experience as well as they. They may laugh at what they may please to call my fo'ly, but for myself, I can bear to be laughed at without losing my temper, and I am able in most cases to find something to commend, to love and reverence, even in those who deride me. They are better than they think themselves.

Religion I had loved from my infancy. In my loneliness, in my solitary wanderings, it had been my companion and my support. It had been my pleasure to feel that wherever I went the eye of my Father watched over me, and his infinite love embraced me. I was never in reality alone. A glorious presence went always with me. When I was thrown upon the world at a tender age without a friend, and left to buffet my way unaided, unencouraged, and felt myself cut off from all communication with my kind, I could hold sweet and mysterious communion with the Father of men; and when I smarted under a sense of wrong done me, I could

find relief in believing that God sympathized with me, and made my cause his own. God had been to me a reality, and though I had been nurtured in the tenets of the gloomiest and most chilling of Christian creeds, I had always seen him as a father, and as a father whose face ever beamed with paternal love. I could not then lose my faith, and see all my religious hopes and consolations escape in the darkness of unbelief, without feeling that I was giving up all that had hitherto sustained me, all that it was pleasant to remember, that could soothe in sorrow, strengthen under trial, inspire love, and give the wish or the courage to live.

CHAPTER VII.-AUTHORITY.

I called on Mr. Wilson at the hour appointed. I found him alone in his Library looking over the Système de la Nature. "I was trying to ascertain," he remarked, after the usual salutations, "what it is atheists find to allege against the existence of God. But here is merely the blind rage of an old man against an authority that should have sent him to the Bastille."

"But you would not," I interrupted, "rely on such arguments as are drawn from the Bastille, I presume?"

"No. Such arguments no longer comport with the spirit of the age. But I do wish men to feel that there is an authority to which they are accountable for their opinions not less than for their actions."

"Men are doubtless accountable to the truth for the opinions they entertain; but not, I take it, to one another."

"I allow no man to dictate to me what I shall believe or disbelieve; but I own that I feel myself bound to believe what God commands, and that I am guilty of rebellion if I do not."

"Not unless what he commands be true?"

"His commands are the highest conceivable evidence of truth."

"I do not perceive that."

"God is the God of truth, and what he commands to be believed must needs therefore be true."

"If he commands me to commit murder, am I to believe that murder is right?"

"Whatever he commands is right."

"Right because he commands it; or does he command it because it is right?"

"It is right because he commands it."