Because of the haste and confusion brought about by conflicting school tasks, I had not for many months found time to read my Bible; indeed I scarcely had time for a morning prayer.  
I still went to church regularly every Sunday; that is we all went there together. I reverenced¹ the family pew where we had assembled for so many years; and apart from that reason I hold it dear because it is associated in my memory with my mother.
 
It was at church, however, that my faith continued to receive its most damaging blows; it was there that religion seemed a cold and meaningless term to me. Usually the commentaries, the narrow human reasoning and dissection² took away from the beauty of the Bible and the Gospels, and deprived them of their grandly solemn and exquisite³ poetry. For a peculiar⁴ nature like mine it was very difficult to have any one touch upon holy subjects (in such a way as did the minister) without in some measure, in my opinion, desecrating⁵ them. The family worship, held every evening, awakened⁶ in me the only religious meditation⁷ that I now knew, for the voice that read or prayed was exceedingly dear to me, and that changed everything.
 
My untiring contemplation of nature, and the reflections that I indulged in in the presence of the fossils I had brought from the mountains and cliffs, and placed in my museum, indicated that there had been bred in me a vague and unconscious pantheism.
 
In short my deeply rooted and still-living faith was covered over with encumbering⁸ earth. At times it threw out a green shoot, but for the most part it lay like an entirely⁹ dead thing in the cold ground. Moreover, I was too much troubled to pray; my conscience, still restive¹⁰ and timid, gave me no rest during the time that I was on my knees,—I always felt remorse¹¹ gnaw¹² at me then because of the slovenly¹³ and half-done tasks, and because of the feelings of hate I had for the “Big Ape” and the “Bull of Apis,” emotions that I was obliged to hide and disguise until I shuddered¹⁴ at............