, 1831,) and I was obliged to
go to church, or exceedingly displease my father. I almost
always suffered much in church from a feeling of disunion with
the hearers and dissent from the preacher; but to-day, more
than ever before, the services jarred upon me from their
grateful and joyful tone. I was wearied out with mental
conflicts, and in a mood of most childish, child-like
sadness. I felt within myself great power, and generosity,
and tenderness; but it seemed to me as if they were all
unrecognized, and as if it was impossible that they should
be used in life. I was only one-and-twenty; the past was
worthless, the future hopeless; yet I could not remember ever
voluntarily to have done a wrong thing, and my aspiration
seemed very high. I looked round the church, and envied all
the little children; for I supposed they had parents who
protected them, so that they could never know this strange
anguish, this dread uncertainty. I knew not, then, that none
could have any father but God. I knew not, that I was not
the only lonely one, that I was not the selected Oedipus, the
special victim of an iron law. I was in haste for all to be
over, that I might get into the free air.
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