into the membership of the Presbyterian Church while at Oglethorpe College;
and though in after years his creed became broader than that
imposed by the Church he had joined on its clergy, he could not outgrow
the simple faith and consecration which are all it requires of its membership.
His college notebook records his earnestness;

==
"Liberty, patriotism, and civilization are on their knees
before the men of the South, and with clasped hands and straining eyes
are begging them to become Christians."
==

How naturally his large faith in God finds expression
in his "Marshes of Glynn"; or his reverent discipleship
of the great Artist and Master in his "Ballad of the Trees and the Master",
or his "The Crystal", which was Christ. Yet, with not a whit less
of worshipfulness and consecration, there grew in him a repugnance
to the sectarianism of the Churches which put him somewhat out of sympathy
with their formal organizations. He wrote, in what may have been
a sketch for a poem:

==
"I fled in tears from the men's ungodly quarrel about God.
I fled in tears to the woods, and laid me down on the earth.
Then somewhat like the beating of many hearts came up to me out of the ground;
and I looked and my cheek lay close to a violet. Then my heart took courage,
and I said:

`I know that thou art the word of my God, dear Violet:
And Oh, the ladder is not long that to my heaven leads.