of doughty controversy between the churches, as between the parties; but
love of the Union and the Lord was the bedrock of every confession.

Inevitably an impressionable and imaginative mind opening to such sights
and sounds as it emerged from infancy must have been deeply affected. Until
I was twelve years old the enchantment of religion had complete possession
of my understanding. With the loudest, I could sing all the hymns. Being
early taught in music I began to transpose them into many sorts of rhythmic
movement for the edification of my companions. Their words, aimed directly
at the heart, sank, never to be forgotten, into my memory. To this day I
can repeat the most of them--though not without a break of voice--while too
much dwelling upon them would stir me to a pitch of feeling which a life of
activity in very different walks and ways and a certain self-control I have
been always able to command would scarcely suffice to restrain.

The truth is that I retain the spiritual essentials I learned then and
there. I never had the young man's period of disbelief. There has never
been a time when if the Angel of Death had appeared upon the scene--no
matter how festal--I would not have knelt with adoration and welcome; never
a time on the battlefield or at sea when if the elements had opened to
swallow me I would not have gone down shouting!

Sectarianism in time yielded to universalism. Theology came to seem to my
mind more and more a weapon in the hands of Satan to embroil and divide the
churches. I found in the Sermon on the Mount leading enough for my ethical
guidance, in the life and death of the Man of Galilee inspiration enough to
fulfill my heart's desire; and though I have read a great deal of modern
inquiry--from Renan and Huxley through Newman and Doellinger, embracing
debates before, during and after the English upheaval of the late fifties
and the Ecumenical Council of 1870, including the various raids upon the