sorry for, but everything to rejoice in and be thankful for. I
have never taken pleasure in seeming to be able to move a party, and
whatever influence I have had, has been found, not sought after. I have
acted because others did not act, and have sacrificed a quiet which I
prized. May God be with me in time to come, as He has been hitherto! and
He will be, if I can but keep my hand clean and my heart pure. I think I
can bear, or at least will try to bear, any personal humiliation, so
that I am preserved from betraying sacred interests, which the Lord of
grace and power has given into my charge[7]."

[7] To the Pamphlets published in my behalf at this time I should add
"One Tract more," an able and generous defence of Tractarianism and No.
90, by the present Lord Houghton.

CHAPTER III.

HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS FROM 1839 TO 1841.

And now that I am about to trace, as far as I can, the course of that
great revolution of mind, which led me to leave my own home, to which I
was bound by so many strong and tender ties, I feel overcome with the
difficulty of satisfying myself in my account of it, and have recoiled
from the attempt, till the near approach of the day, on which these
lines must be given to the world, forces me to set about the task. For
who can know himself, and the multitude of subtle influences which act
upon him? And who can recollect, at the distance of twenty-five years,
all that he once knew about his thoughts and his deeds, and that, during
a portion of his life, when, even at the time, his observation, whether
of himself or of the external world, was less than before or after, by
very reason of the perplexity and dismay which weighed upon him,--when,
in spite of the light given to him according to his need amid his
darkness, yet a darkness it emphatically was? And who can suddenly gird
himself to a new and anxious undertaking, which he might be able indeed
to perform well, were full and calm leisure allowed him to look through
every thing that he had written, whether in published works or private
letters? yet again, granting that calm contemplation of the past, in
itself so desirable, who could afford to be leisurely and deliberate,
while he practises on himself a cruel operation, the ripping up of old
griefs, and the venturing again upon the "infandum dolorem" of years in
which the stars of this lower heaven were one by one going out? I could
not in cool blood, nor except upon the im