woman,--I ought to say to myself, "There is nothing beyond this." But
people will not rest there; they are not content, and they are for ever
chasing a shadow which flies before them, a something external which
never brings what it promises.

I said that Christianity was essentially the religion of the unknown
and of the lonely; of those who are not a success. It was the religion
of the man who goes through life thinking much, but who makes few
friends and sees nothing come of his thoughts. I said a good deal more
upon the same theme which I have forgotten.

After the service was over I went down into the vestry. Nobody came
near me but my landlord, the chapel-keeper, who said it was raining,
and immediately went away to put out the lights and shut up the
building. I had no umbrella, and there was nothing to be done but to
walk out in the wet. When I got home I found that my supper,
consisting of bread and cheese with a pint of beer, was on the table,
but apparently it had been thought unnecessary to light the fire again
at that time of night. I was overwrought, and paced about for hours in
hysterics. All that I had been preaching seemed the merest vanity when
I was brought face to face with the fact itself; and I reproached
myself bitterly that my own creed would not stand the stress of an
hour's actual trial.

Towards morning I got into bed, but not to sleep; and when the dull
daylight of Monday came, all support had vanished, and I seemed to be
sinking into a bottomless abyss. I became gradually worse week by
week, and my melancholy took a fixed form. I got a notion into my head
that my brain was failing, and this was my first acquaintance with that
most awful malady hypochondria. I did not know then what I know now,