His religion had not intwined itself into his life; it was not shrined among his sacred memories or laid away in secret storehouses of thought.
"I have never felt the agony of a dying faith," he wrote to a friend who was sorely troubled, "so you will forgive me if I do not seem to sympathize very delicately with you, or if I seem not to understand the darkness you are in.

But I have been in deep waters myself, though of another kind.

I have seen an old ideal foully shattered in a moment, and a hope that I had held and that had consecrated my life for many years, not only crushed in an instant--that would have been bad enough--but its place filled by an image of despair ...

so you will see that I _can_ feel for you, as I _do_.
"Leading to the light is a sad, terribly sad, and wearying process; I have not won it yet, but I have seen glimpses which have dispelled a gloom which I thought was hopeless.

My dear friend, I _know_ that God will bring you out into a place of liberty, as He has brought me; in the day when you come and tell me that He has done so, the smile that will be on your face will be no sort of symbol, I know, of the unutterable content within.