down on a rude bench and rested his head on his hands as if he had come to some disagreeable, and perhaps terrible conclusion.  And so indeed he had.  The uneasy suspicions which had been floating in his mind in a state of solution were suddenly crystallized by this untoward event.  The absurdity of a man’s having tramped twenty miles through an almost unbroken wilderness to preach the gospel to a garter snake, burst upon him with a crushing force.  This grotesque denouement of an undertaking planned and executed in the loftiest frame of religious enthusiasm, shook the very foundation of his faith.

“It is absurd, it is impossible, that an infinite Spirit of love and wisdom could have planned this repulsive adventure!  I have been misled!  I am the victim of a delusion!” he said to himself, in shame and bitterness.

To him, Christianity had been not so much a system of doctrines based upon historical proofs, as emotions springing from his own heart.  He believed in another world not because its existence had been testified to by others, but because he daily and hourly entered its sacred precincts.  He had faith in God, not because He had spoken to apostles and prophets, but because He had spoken to David Corson.  Having received direct communication from the Divine Spirit, how could he doubt?  What other proof could he need?

Suddenly, without warning and without preparation, the foundation upon which he had erected the superstructure of his faith crumbled and fell.  He had been deceived!  The communications were false!  They had originated in his own soul, and were not really the voice of God.

Through this suspicion, as through a suddenly-opened door, the powers of hell rushed into his soul and it became the theater of a desperate battle between the good and evil elements of life.  Doubt grappled with faith; self-gratification with self-restraint; despair with hope; lust with purity; body with soul.

He heard again the mocking laughter of the quack, and the stinging words of his cynical philosophy once more rang in his ears.  What this coarse wretch had said was true, then!  Religion was a delusion, and he had been spending the best portion of his life in hugging it to his bosom.  Much of his youth had already passed and he had not as yet tasted the only substantial joys of existence,—­money, pleasure, ambition, love!  He felt that he had been deceived and defrauded.

A contempt for his old life and its surroundings crept upon him.  He began to despise the simple country people among whom he had grown up, and those provincial ideas which they cherished in the little, unknown nook of the world where they stagnated.

During a long time he permitted himself to be borne upon the current of these thoughts without trying to stem it, till it seemed as if he would be swept completely from his moorings.  But his trust had been firmly anchored, and did not easily let go its hold.  The convictions of a lifetime began to reassert themselves.  They rose and struggled heroically for the possession of his spirit.