the lowest school of Evangelical literalism--a school which in after
life both my brother and myself came to regard as the main obstacle
to the complete overthrow of unbelief; we therefore looked upon it
with something stronger than aversion, and for my own part I still
deem it perhaps the most insidious enemy which the cause of Christ
has ever encountered. But of this more hereafter.

My mother, as I said, threw her whole soul into the work of our
religious education. Whatever she believed she believed literally,
and, if I may say so, with a harshness of realisation which left very
little scope for imagination or mystery. Her plans of Heaven and
solutions of life's enigmas were direct and forcible, but they could
only be reconciled with certain obvious facts--such as the
omnipotence and all-goodness of God--by leaving many things
absolutely out of sight. And this my mother succeeded effectually in
doing. She never doubted that her opinions comprised the truth, the
whole truth, and nothing but the truth; she therefore made haste to
sow the good seed in our tender minds, and so far succeeded that when
my brother was four years old he could repeat the Apostles' Creed,
the General Confession, and the Lord's Prayer without a blunder. My
mother made herself believe that he delighted in them; but, alas! it
was far otherwise; for, strange as it may appear concerning one whose
later life was a continual prayer, in childhood he detested nothing
so much as being made to pray and to learn his Catechism. In this I
am sorry to say we were both heartily of a mind. As for Sunday, the
less said the better.

I have already hinted (but as a warning to other parents I had
better, perhaps, express myself more plainly), that this aversion was
probably the result of my mother's undue eagerness to reap an