nd St. John.
My imagination was stained by the effects of this doctrine up to the
year 1843; it had been obliterated from my reason and judgment at an
earlier date; but the thought remained upon me as a sort of false
conscience. Hence came that conflict of mind, which so many have felt
besides myself;--leading some men to make a compromise between two
ideas, so inconsistent with each other--driving others to beat out
the one idea or the other from their minds--and ending in my own
case, after many years of intellectual unrest, in the gradual decay
and extinction of one of them--I do not say in its violent death, for
why should I not have murdered it sooner, if I murdered it at all?

I am obliged to mention, though I do it with great reluctance,
another deep imagination, which at this time, the autumn of 1816,
took possession of me--there can be no mistake about the fact;--viz.
that it was the will of God that I should lead a single life. This
anticipation, which has held its ground almost continuously ever
since--with the break of a month now and a month then, up to 1829,
and, after that date, without any break at all--was more or less
connected, in my mind, with the notion that my calling in life would
require such a sacrifice as celibacy involved; as, for instance,
missionary work among the heathen, to which I had a great drawing for
some years. It also strengthened my feeling of separation from the
visible world, of which I have spoken above.

In 1822 I came under very different influences from those to which I
had hitherto been subjected. At that time, Mr. Whately, as he was
then, afterwards Archbishop of Dublin, for the few months he remained
in Oxford, which he was leaving for good, showed great kindness to
me. He renewed it in 1825, when he became Principal of Alban Hall,
making me his vice-principal and tutor. Of Dr. Whately I will speak
presently, for from 1822 to 1825 I saw most of the present Provost of
Oriel, Dr. Hawkins, at that time Vicar of St. Mary's; and, when I
took orders in 1824 and had a curacy at Oxford, then, during the long
vacations, I was especially thrown into his company. I can say with a
full heart that I love him, and have never ceased to love him; and I
thus preface what otherwise might sound rude, that in the course of
the many years in which we were together afterwards, he provoked me
very much from time to time, though I am perfectly certain that I
have provoked him a great deal mor