I EMPLOYED the compelled and most unwelcome leisure of severe indisposition in reading _The Confessions of a Fair Saint_ in Mr. Carlyle’s recent translation of the _Wilhelm Meister_, which might, I think, have been better rendered literally _The Confessions of a Beautiful Soul_. This, acting in conjunction with the concluding sentences of your letter, threw my thoughts inward on my own religious experience, and gave immediate occasion to the following Confessions of one who is neither fair nor saintly, but who, groaning under a deep sense of infirmity and manifold imperfection, feels the want, the necessity, of religious support; who cannot afford to lose any the smallest buttress, but who not only loves Truth even for itself, and when it reveals itself aloof from all interest, but who loves it with an indescribable awe, which too often withdraws the genial sap of his activity from the columnar trunk, the sheltering leaves, the bright and fragrant flower, and the foodful or medicinal fruitage, to the deep root, ramifying in obscurity and labyrinthine way-winning— In darkness there to house unknown, Far underground, Pierced by no sound Save such as live in Fancy’s ear alone, That listens for the uptorn mandrake’s parting groan! I should, perhaps, be a happier—at all events a more useful—man if my mind were otherwise constituted. But so it is, and even with regard to Christianity itself, like certain plants, I creep towards the light, even though it draw me away from the more nourishing warmth. Yea, I should do so, even if the light had made its way through a rent in the wall of the Temple. Glad, indeed, and grateful am I, that not in the Temple itself, but only in one or two of the side chapels, not essential to the edifice, and probably not coëval with it, have I found the light absent, and that the rent in the wall has but admitted the free light of the Temple itself. I shall best communicate the state of my faith by taking the creed, or system of _credenda_, common to all the Fathers of the Reformation—overlooking, as non-essential, the differences between the several Reformed Churches, according to the five main classes or sections into which the aggregate distributes itself to my apprehension. I have then only to state the effect produced on my mind by each of these, or the _quantum_ of recipiency and coincidence in myself relatively thereto, in order to complete my Confession of Faith. I. The Absolute; the innominable Αὑτοπάτωρ et _Causa Sui_, in whose transcendent I AM, as the Ground, _is_ whatever _verily_ is:—the Triune God, by whose Word and Spirit, as the transcendent Cause, _exists_ whatever _substantially_ exists:—God Almighty—Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, undivided, unconfounded, co-eternal. This class I designate by the word Στάσις. II. The Eternal Possibilities; the actuality of which hath not its origin in God: _Chaos spirituale_:—’Απόστασις.