in a family circle, some of whose
members were habitually devout, and all of whom respected and stood up
for religion, and were imbued with the stirring ecclesiastical
traditions of their country, I felt that the religious side in any
quarrel had a sort of hereditary claim upon me. I believe I may venture
to say, that previous to this time I had never seen a religious man
badgered for his religion, and much in a minority, without openly taking
part with him; nor is it impossible that, in a time of trouble, I might
have almost deserved the character given by old John Howie to a rather
notable "gentleman sometimes called Burly," who, "although he was by
some reckoned none of the most religious," joined himself to the
suffering party, and was "always zealous and honest-hearted." And yet my
religion was a strangely incongruous thing. It took the form, in my
mind, of a mass of indigested theology, with here and there a prominent
point developed out of due proportion, from the circumstance that I had
thought upon it for myself; and while entangled, if I may so speak, amid
the recesses and under cover of the general chaotic mass, there
harboured no inconsiderable amount of superstition, there rested over it
the clouds of a dreary scepticism. I have sometimes, in looking back on
the doubts and questionings of this period, thought, and perhaps even
spoken of myself as an infidel. But an infidel I assuredly was not: my
belief was at least as real as my incredulity, and had, I am inclined to
think, a much deeper seat in my mind. But wavering between the two
extremes--now a believer, and anon a sceptic--the belief usually
exhibiting itself as a strongly-based instinct,--the scepticism as the
result of some intellectual process--I lived on for years in a sort of
uneasy see-saw condition, without any middle ground between the two
extremes, on which I could at once reason and believe.

That middle ground I now succeeded in finding. It is at once delicate
and dangerous to speak of one's own spiritual condition, or of the
emotional sentiments on which one's conclusions regarding it are often
so doubtfully founded. Egotism in the religious form is perhaps more
tolerated than in any other; but it is not on that account less perilous
to the egotist himself. There need be, however, less delicacy in
speaking of one's beliefs than of one's feelings; and I trust I need not
hesitate to say, that I was led to see at this time, through the
instr