means something, and it will do. But this flowery, misty,
dreamy humanitarianism,--I say humanitarianism, because I don't
know what that is, and I don't know what the thing I am driving
at is, so I put the two unknown quantities together in a
mathematical hope that minus into minus may give plus,--this
milk-and-watery muddle of dreary negations, that remits the
world to its original fluidic state of chaos, I spew it out of
my mouth. It was not on such pap our Caesars fed that made
them grow so great. I believe that the common people of early
New England were such lusty men, because they strengthened
themselves by gnawing at their tough old creeds. Give one
something to believe, and he can get at it and believe it; but
set out butting your head against nothing, and the chances are
that you will break your neck. Take a good stout Christian,
or a good sturdy Pagan, and you find something to bring up
against; but with nebulous vapidists you are always slumping
through and sprawling everywhere.

Of course, I do not mean that sincere and sensible people never
change nor modify their faith. I wish to say, for its
emphasis, if you will allow me, that they never do anything
else; but generally the change is a gradual and natural one,--
a growth, not a convulsion,--a reformation, not a revolution.
When it is otherwise, it is a serious matter, not to be lightly
done or flippantly discussed. If you really had a religious
belief, it threw out roots and rootlets through all your life.
It sucked in strength from every source. It intertwined itself
through love and labor, through suffering and song, about every
fibre of your soul. You cannot pull it up or dig it up, or in
any way displace it, without setting the very foundations of