However, it brought things to a crisis at once.  His college friend looked equally surprised and pleased at his appeal.

“I trust,” said he, with becoming solemnity, “that all this is merely a temporary reaction from having believed too much; the languor and dejection which attend the morrow after a night’s debauch.  I assure you that I rejoice rather than grieve to hear that you have curtailed your orthodoxy.  It has been just my own case, as you know:  only I flatter myself, that, perhaps having less subtilty than you, I have not passed the ‘golden mean’ between superstition and scepticism,—­between believing too much and believing too little.”

I looked up for a moment.  I saw a laugh in Harrington’s eyes, but not a feature moved.  It passed away immediately.

“I tell you,” said he, “that I believe absolutely no one religious dogma whatever; while yet I would give worlds, if I had them, to set my foot upon a rock.  I should even be grateful to any one, who, if he did not give me truth, gave me a phantom of it, which I could mistake for reality.”  He again spoke with an earnestness of tone and manner, which convinced me that, if there were any dissimulation, it cost him little trouble.

“If you merely meant,” said Fellowes, “that you do not retain any vestige of your early ‘historical’ and ‘dogmatical’ Christianity, why, I retain just as little of it.  Indeed, I doubt,” he continued, with perhaps superfluous candor, “whether I ever was a Christian”; and he seemed rather anxious to show that his creed had been nominal.

“If it will save you the trouble of proving it.” said Harrington, “I will liberally grant you both your premises and your conclusion, without asking you to state the one or prove the other.”

“Well, then, Christian or no Christian. there was a time, at all events, when I was orthodox, you will grant that; when I should hate been willing to sign the Thirty-nine Articles:  or three hundred and thirty-nine; or the Confession of Faith:  or any other compilation, or all others; though perhaps, if strictly examined, I might have been found in the condition of the infidel Scotch professor, who, being asked on his appointment to his Chair, whether the ’Confession of Faith’ contained all that he believed, replied, ’Yes, Gentlemen, and a great deal more.’  I have rejected all ‘creeds’; and I have now found what the Scripture calls that ’peace which passeth all understanding.’”

“I am sure it passes mine,” said Harrington, “if you really have found it, and I should be much obliged to you if you would let me participate in the discovery.”

“Yes,” said Fellowes, “I have been delivered from the intolerable burden of all discussions as to dogma, and all examinations of evidence.  I have escaped from the ‘bondage of the letter,’ and have been Introduced into the ‘liberty of the spirit.’”

“Your language, at all events, is richly Scriptural,” said Harrington; “it is as though you were determined not to leave the ‘letter’ of the Scripture, even if you renounce the ‘spirit’ of it.”