I did not feel as I feel now when first I came to this parish. For,
as I have said, I am now getting old very fast. True, I was thirty
when I was made a vicar, an age at which a man might be expected to
be beginning to grow wise; but even then I had much yet to learn.

I well remember the first evening on which I wandered out from the
vicarage to take a look about me--to find out, in short, where I
was, and what aspect the sky and earth here presented. Strangely
enough, I had never been here before; for the presentation had been
made me while I was abroad.--I was depressed. It was depressing
weather. Grave doubts as to whether I was in my place in the church,
would keep rising and floating about, like rain-clouds within me.
Not that I doubted about the church; I only doubted about myself.
"Were my motives pure?" "What were my motives?" And, to tell the
truth, I did not know what my motives were, and therefore I could
not answer about the purity of them. Perhaps seeing we are in this
world in order to become pure, it would be expecting too much of any
young man that he should be absolutely certain that he was pure in
anything. But the question followed very naturally: "Had I then any
right to be in the Church--to be eating her bread and drinking her
wine without knowing whether I was fit to do her work?" To which the
only answer I could find was, "The Church is part of God's world. He
makes men to work; and work of some sort must be done by every
honest man. Somehow or other, I hardly know how, I find myself in
the Church. I do not know that I am fitter for any other work. I see
no other work to do. There is work here which I can do after some
fashion. With God's help I will try to do it well."

This resolution brought me some relief, but still I was depressed.
It was depressing weather.--I may as well say that I was not married