Union was then the only university of importance not under some form of denominational control, and for this reason had, perhaps, more than the usual share of extreme liberalism, or atheism, as it was at that time considered amongst the students; and one of my classmates, a man a couple of years older than myself, and of far more than the average intellectual power, made an active propaganda of the most advanced opinions.  He also introduced Philip James Bailey’s “Festus” to our attention, and for a time I was carried away by both.  The great revulsion from my previous straitened theological convictions was the cause of infinite perplexity and distress.  Up to that time nothing had ever shaken me in my orthodox persuasions, and the necessity of concealing from my mother and family my doubts and halting faith in the old ideas made it all the more perplexing.  I had to fight out the question all alone.  It was impossible to follow my classmate so completely as to accept his conclusions and become the materialist that he was, and so find a relative repose; and the conflict became very grave.  The entire scheme of Christianity disappeared from my firmament; but, in the immediately previous years, I had been a reader of Swedenborg, and I held immovably an intuition of immortality,—­or, if the term intuition be denied me, the conviction that immortality was the foundation of human existence, grounded in my earliest thoughts, and as clear as the sense of light,—­and this never failed me.  In this respect Swedenborg helped my reason in its struggle, though I could never see my way to the entire acceptance of his doctrine.

My dogmatic theological education had been entirely incidental, for my mother never discussed dogmas or doctrines, but the simple duties and promises of religion, and my intelligence had never been, therefore, so kept captive as to make release grateful.  Christianity had never been a doctrinal burden to me, or any form of belief inconsistent in my mind with true Christianity.  In my mother’s thought there was only one thing utterly profane, and that was self-righteousness.  And there happened to me in this conjuncture, what has in my later life been often seen, that the modification of religious views imposed on us by the superior force of another mind—­a persuasion of what seems to be truth as it is only seen by others’ vision—­could not hold its own against the early convictions, and that a revulsion to the old faith was sooner or later inevitable and generally healthy.  The epidemic passed, and, though it gave me great distress for the time, it made my essential religious convictions stronger in the end.  It is, I think, Max Mueller who says that no man can escape from the environment of his early religious education.  I have seen, in my experience of life and men, many curious proofs of that law, men who have lived for many years in the most absolute rejection of all religions, returning in their old age to the simple faith of childhood,