existence? He shines. His light at once revivifies a blade
of grass and illumines a world. If thus it is with the created, may not
it be also with the Creator? There is something within me that answers
to this reasoning.

"If I have power to conceive the existence of God, to look up from my
nothingness unto His great height, to desire nearer insight into His
being, there must be in my soul something not unworthy of Him--something
that, partaking His divinity, instinctively turns to the source whence
it was derived. Shall I, suffering myself to be guided by this power,
seek less to doubt than to believe?

"I remember my first mathematical tutor once said to me, 'If you would
know anything, begin by doubting everything.' I did begin, but I have
never yet found an end."

"I will take your advice, my dear friend; advice given so humbly, so
womanly. Yet I think you deal with me wisely. I am a man who never could
be preached or argued into belief. I must find out the truth for myself.
And so, according to your counsel, I will again carefully study the
Bible, and especially the life of Jesus of Nazareth, which you believe
the clearest revelation which God has allowed of Himself to earth.
Finding any contradictions or obscurities, I will remember, as you say,
that Scripture was not, and does not pretend to be, written visibly and
actually by the finger of God, but by His inspiration conveyed through
many human minds, and of course always bearing to a certain extent the
impress of the mind through which it passes. Therefore, while the letter
is sometimes apparently contradictory, the spirit is invariably one and
the same. I am to look to _that_, first? Above all, I am to look to
the only earthly manifestation of Divine perfection--Jesus Christ, the
Saviour of all men? _I will_.

"You see how my mind echoes your words, my friend! I am becoming, I
think, more like you. All human affections are growing closer and dearer
unto me. I can look at my good and pious mother without feeling, as I
did at times, that she is either a self-deceiver or deceived. I do not
now shrink from my little daughter, nor think with horror that she owes
to me that being which may lead her one day to 'curse God and die.'
Still I cannot rest at Harbury. All things there torture me. As for
resuming my duties as a minister, that seems all but impossible. What an
accursed hypocrite I have been! If this search after truth should end
in a belief anything like