My dogmatic theological education had been entirely incidental, for my mother never discussed dogmas or doctrines, but the simple duties and promises of religion, and my intelligence had never been, therefore, so kept captive as to make release grateful. Christianity had never been a doctrinal burden to me, or any form of belief inconsistent in my mind with true Christianity. In my mother's thought there was only one thing utterly profane, and that was self-righteousness. And there happened to me in this conjuncture, what has in my later life been often seen, that the modification of religious views imposed on us by the superior force of another mind--a persuasion of what seems to be truth as it is only seen by others' vision--could not hold its own against the early convictions, and that a revulsion to the old faith was sooner or later inevitable and generally healthy. The epidemic passed, and, though it gave me great distress for the time, it made my essential religious convictions stronger in the end. It is, I think, Max Müller who says that no man can escape from the environment of his early religious education. I have seen, in my experience of life and men, many curious proofs of that law, men who have lived for many years in the most absolute rejection of all religions, returning in their old age to the simple faith of childhood, ending as they began. The change of religious convictions which holds its own against all influences is that which comes from the healthy evolution of our own thought. At any rate, in my own case, the rationalistic revolution completed its circle and brought me back to that simple faith to remain in which is a reproach to no man, and the departure from which, to be healthy, must be made on lines conformed to our better natures. I felt the better for my excursion into new regions, and the freedom of movement I acquired I never lost.