So saying, he suddenly left the room.  Some part of the mystery I felt was unravelled.  Alas! the logic of the head,—­how fatally fortified by the logic of the heart!  And so, thought I to myself, even Harrington too is in part the dupe of that cunning spirit of delusion which in various forms is resolved to cast God and a Redeemer and Immortality out of the universe, in compliment to man’s wonderful elevation, purity, unselfishness, and philanthropy!  One man tells me, with Shaftesbury, that he does not want any “immortal hopes,” or any such “bribes” of “prudence” to make him virtuous or religious,—­delicate, noble-minded creature!—­that he can serve and love God equally well, though he were sure of being annihilated to-morrow morning!  Another declares that he would not accept heaven itself if purchased by a single pang, voluntary or involuntary, endured by any other being in God’s universe?  Another swears that such is his sympathetic benevolence, that he “would not accept that same heaven if he thought any other being was to be shut out of it”; I wonder whether he condescends to accept any blessing now, while a single fallow-creature remains destitute of it?  A fourth (a lady too) declares “there is no theory God, of an author of nature, of an origin of the universe which is not utterly repugnant to her faculties, which is not (to her feelings) so irreverent as to make her blush, so misleading as to make her mourn”; and now Harrington, instead of being thankful for his glimpse of happiness, and yielding to the better instincts and convictions it partly awakened, and learning patience, submission, and faith under his shattered hopes, is taken captive on the same weak side; and (all unconscious that he shares in the prophet’s feeling, “I do well to be angry”) fancies that his present gloom is more truly in unison with the condition of the universe, and that he is bound to be most philanthropically misanthropical.  O, well does the Book say of this heart of ours, “Deceitful above all things”!  Such are our mingled follies and wickedness, so ludicrous, so sorrowful, are the features presented in this great tragi-comedy,—­the life of man, —­that it is impossible to play consistently either Democritus or Heraclitus. ____

July 9.  Mr. Fellowes returned this morning.  We had a very pleasant day,—­theology being excluded.  In the evening my companions were again pleased to disturb my occupations; but it was only a short skirmish.  Fellowes was endeavoring to enlighten his friend respecting the mysteries of “belief” and “faith,” as expounded by some of his favorite writers:  he contended, (making that sheer separation between “the intellectual” and “spiritual,” which so many of the spiritual school affect.) not only that there may be correct belief without true faith, which, in an intelligible sense, few will deny; but that there may be a true faith with a false belief’, or even with none,