As I stood behind the coffin of my little son the other day, with my mind bent on anything but disputation, the officiating minister read, as a part of his duty, the words, “If the dead rise not again, let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.”  I cannot tell you how inexpressibly they shocked me.  Paul had neither wife nor child, or he must have known that his alternative involved a blasphemy against all that was best and noblest in human nature.  I could have laughed with scorn.  What! because I am face to face with irreparable loss, because I have given back to the source from whence it came, the cause of a great happiness, still retaining through all my life the blessings which have sprung and will spring from that cause, I am to renounce my manhood, and, howling, grovel in bestiality?  Why, the very apes know better, and if you shoot their young, the poor brutes grieve their grief out and do not immediately seek distraction in a gorge.

Kicked into the world a boy without guide or training, or with worse than none, I confess to my shame that few men have drunk deeper of all kinds of sin than I. Happily, my course was arrested in time—­before I had earned absolute destruction—­and for long years I have been slowly and painfully climbing, with many a fall, towards better things.  And when I look back, what do I find to have been the agents of my redemption?  The hope of immortality or of future reward?  I can honestly say that for these fourteen years such a consideration has not entered my head.  No, I can tell you exactly what has been at work.  “Sartor Resartus” led me to know that a deep sense of religion was compatible with the entire absence of theology.  Secondly, science and her methods gave me a resting-place independent of authority and tradition.  Thirdly, love opened up to me a view of the sanctity of human nature, and impressed me with a deep sense of responsibility.

If at this moment I am not a worn-out, debauched, useless carcass of a man, if it has been or will be my fate to advance the cause of science, if I feel that I have a shadow of a claim on the love of those about me, if in the supreme moment when I looked down into my boy’s grave my sorrow was full of submission and without bitterness, it is because these agencies have worked upon me, and not because I have ever cared whether my poor personality shall remain distinct for ever from the All from whence it came and whither it goes.

And thus, my dear Kingsley, you will understand what my position is.  I may be quite wrong, and in that case I know I shall have to pay the penalty for being wrong.  But I can only say with Luther, “Gott helfe mir, Ich kann nichts anders.”

I know right well that 99 out of 100 of my fellows would call me atheist, infidel, and all the other usual hard names.  As our laws stand, if the lowest thief steals my coat, my evidence (my opinions being known) would not be received against him. [The law with respect to oaths was reformed in 1869.]