I tried again, and again; and again, and again I failed.

I did not pray.  I could not.  If God cared, I thought, He would help the innocent.  I was innocent in thought, and still I was not helped.  God did not care, for He helped me not.  Months had passed away, and I had taken no forward step.  I was still enslaved.  The preachers were wrong; God did not care for the beings He had made.

There was no God.

God meant “the good one.”  “God is eternally good, all-powerful, if there is a God.  But there is not,” I said.  Evil was rampant.  Every day vice triumphed, every day virtue suffered.  Goodness was not the strongest force.  Vice was conquering; evil powers were triumphant.  Why should any exception be made for me?  If there is a God, evil would be checked, destroyed; instead of which, it was conquering every day.  There could be no God; and if no God, good and evil were little more than names.  We were the sport of chance, and chance meant the destruction of anything like moral responsibility.  I could not help being constituted as I was, neither could Voltaire help his nature.  One set of circumstances had surrounded his life, another mine, and our image and shape were according to the force of these circumstances.  As for a God who loved us, it was absurd.

And yet who gave us love—­made us capable of loving?  Was love the result of chance, which was in reality nothing?  And again, whence the idea of God, whence the longing for Him?  Besides, did not the longing for Him give evidence of His being?

But I will not weary the reader with my mental wanderings; they are doubtless wearisome enough, and yet they were terribly real to me Although I have used but a few pages of paper in hinting at them, they caused me to lie awake through many a weary night.

Still no help came.

I went to a church one Sunday night.  There was nothing of importance that struck me during the service, save the reading of one of the lessons.  It was the story of the youth who was possessed with a devil, which the disciples could not cast out.  The minister was, I should think, a good man, for he read it naturally, and with a great deal of power; and when he came to the part where Jesus came and caused the evil spirit to come out of him, my heart throbbed with joy.  Was there hope for me?  Was Jesus Christ still the same wonderful power?  Was He here now—­to help, to save?

That was at the end of three months.

I went home and prayed—­prayed to be delivered from the evil power which chained me.

I might as well have turned my thoughts in another direction for all the good I could see it did me.  The old numbing feeling still possessed me.  My little spark of faith began to die.  It was foolishness to think of God, I said.

A week later, I walked in Hyde Park.  An evil influence seemed to draw me in the direction of the Marble Arch.  I had not gone far, when I met Voltaire.  I knew then that I was more in his power than ever.  He did not speak—­he only looked; but it was a look of victory, of power.