hrist that I could not
think of Him in flannels or a gymnasium suit. At that time I should have
considered such an idea blasphemous--whatever that meant. As soon as
religious services ceased to be compulsory for me, I only attended them
as a concession to others. The prime object of the prayers and lessons
did not appear to be that they might be understood. So far as I could
see, common sense and plain natural feelings were at a discount. A long
heritage of an eager, restless spirit left me uninterested in
"homilies," and aided by the "dim religious light," I was enabled to
sleep through both long prayers and sermons. Justice forces me to add
that the two endless hours of "prep" lessons after tea had very much the
same effect upon me.

At the request of my mother I once went to take a class at the Sunday
School. These were for the "poor only" in England in those days.
Little effort was expended on making them attractive. I recall nothing
but disgust at the dirty urchins with whom I had to associate for half
an hour. An incident which happened on the death of one of the boys at
my father's school interested me temporarily in religion. The boy's
father happened to be a dissenter, and our vicar refused to allow the
gates of the parish churchyard to be opened to enable the funeral
cortege to enter. My chum had only a legal right to be buried in the
yard. The coffin had therefore to be lifted over the wall and as the
church was locked, father conducted the service in the open air. His
words at the grave-side gave a touch of reality to religion, and still
more so did his walking down the aisle out of church the following
Sunday when the vicar referred to the destructive influence of
anything that lent colour to dissent. Later when father threw up the
school for the far more onerous and less remunerative task of chaplain
at the London Hospital, even I realized that religion meant something.
Indeed, it was that tax on his sensitive, nervous brain that brought
his life to its early close. No man ever had a more generous and
soft-hearted father. He never refused us any reasonable request, and
very few unreasonable ones, and allowed us an amount of
self-determination enjoyed by few. How deeply and how often have I
regretted that I did not understand him better. His brilliant
scholarship, and the friends that it brought around him, his ability
literally to speak Greek and Latin as he could German and French, his
exceptionally deve