those who have passed through such a process as that through which I
myself passed; those who have had in some form or other an enthusiastic
stage in their history, when the story of Genesis and of the Gospels
has been rewritten, when God has visibly walked in the garden, and the
Son of God has drawn men away from their daily occupations into the
divinest of dreams.

I have known men--most interesting men with far greater powers than any
which I have possessed, men who have never been trammelled by a false
creed, who have devoted themselves to science and acquired a great
reputation, who have somehow never laid hold upon me like the man I
have just mentioned. He failed altogether as a minister, and went back
to his shop, but the old glow of his youth burns, and will burn, for
ever. When I am with him our conversation naturally turns on matters
which are of profoundest importance: with others it may be
instructive, but I leave them unmoved, and I trace the difference
distinctly to that visitation, for it was nothing else, which came to
him in his youth.

The effect which was produced upon my preaching and daily conversation
by this change was immediate. It became gradually impossible for me to
talk about subjects which had not some genuine connection with me, or
to desire to hear others talk about them. The artificial, the merely
miraculous, the event which had no inner meaning, no matter how large
externally it might be, I did not care for. A little Greek
mythological story was of more importance to me than a war which filled
the newspapers. What, then, could I do with my theological treatises?

It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that I immediately became
formally heretical. Nearly every doctrine in the college creed had