of God at all, and after
believing only began to receive God's help--a heresy all but as dreary
and barren as the former. No one dreamed of saying--at least such a
glad word of prophecy never reached Rothieden--that, while nobody can
do without the help of the Father any more than a new-born babe could of
itself live and grow to a man, yet that in the giving of that help the
very fatherhood of the Father finds its one gladsome labour; that for
that the Lord came; for that the world was made; for that we were born
into it; for that God lives and loves like the most loving man or woman
on earth, only infinitely more, and in other ways and kinds besides,
which we cannot understand; and that therefore to be a man is the soul
of eternal jubilation.

Robert consequently began to take fits of soul-saving, a most rational
exercise, worldly wise and prudent--right too on the principles he
had received, but not in the least Christian in its nature, or even
God-fearing. His imagination began to busy itself in representing the
dire consequences of not entering into the one refuge of faith. He made
many frantic efforts to believe that he believed; took to keeping the
Sabbath very carefully--that is, by going to church three times, and to
Sunday-school as well; by never walking a step save to or from church;
by never saying a word upon any subject unconnected with religion,
chiefly theoretical; by never reading any but religious books; by never
whistling; by never thinking of his lost fiddle, and so on--all the time
feeling that God was ready to pounce upon him if he failed once; till
again and again the intensity of his efforts utterly defeated their
object by destroying for the time the desire to prosecute them with
the power to will them. But through the horrible vapours of these vain
endeavours, which denied God altogether as the maker of the world, and
the former of his soul and heart and brain, and sought to worship him as
a capricious demon, there broke a little light, a little soothing, soft
twilight, from the dim windows of such literature as came in his way.
Besides The Pilgrim's Progress there were several books which shone
moon-like on his darkness, and lifted something of the weight of that
Egyptian gloom off his spirit. One of these, strange to say, was Defoe's
Religious Courtship, and one, Young's Night Thoughts. But there was
another which deserves particular notice, inasmuch as it did far more
than merely interest or