“I am now going to reply to that part of your letter in which you testify your surprise at the change which has taken place in my manner of thinking, a change which appears to have struck you in the last letters which I wrote to my father. You cry out against the severity of the principles which I have laid down; and add that, without being a prophet, you boldly predict my giving way before long to enthusiasm and all manner of bodily austerities, led on by the principles I have assumed. “I am the less astonished, my dear brother, that you should thus speak, because it is the language of ninety-nine Christians of the present day out of every hundred, and because I myself for a long time thought like you on this point. In a certain sense, indeed, I always thought highly of religion, though at the bottom no one perhaps had less of it than I. My infancy was vicious, and my youth still more so. At eighteen I fell into what may properly be termed ‘enthusiasm;’ for though I lived in many habitual sins, yet because I was regularly present at public worship, not only on the Sunday, but during the week, I imagined myself religious. I made long prayers morning and evening, as well as frequently during the day. I devoted to the study of the prophecies, and to books of a religious character, all the time I could spare from my other studies. “My feelings were easily excited, but my heart was rarely affected, and I was destitute of a sincere love to God, and consequently to my neighbour. All my hopes of salvation rested on my prayers, devotions, and a certain habit of saying, ‘Lord, I am a great sinner; pardon me for the sake of Jesus Christ.’ In the meantime I was ignorant of the fall and ruin in which every man is involved, the necessity of a Redeemer, and the way by which we may be rescued from the fall by receiving Christ with a living faith. I should have been quite confounded if any one had asked me the following questions: ‘Do you know that you are dead in Adam? Do you live to yourself? Do you live in Christ and for Christ? Does God rule in your heart? Do you experience that peace of God which passeth all understanding? Is the love of God shed abroad in your heart by the Holy Spirit?’ I repeat it, my dear brother, these questions would have astonished and confounded me, as they must every one who relies on the form of religion, and neglects its power and influence.