'To what purpose,' said I to her one day, after I had laboured through Butler's Analogy, and Macknight's Truth of the Gospel History,--'to what purpose should I perplex myself with these books, when you own that some of the best Christians you have ever known were persons who had never thought of reasoning upon the evidences of their faith?'--'Because, my dear,' answered Miss Mortimer, 'the exercise of your highest natural faculties upon your religion is calculated to fix it in your mind, and endear it to your affections. It is true, that piety as pure and as efficient as any I ever knew, I have witnessed in persons who had no leisure, and perhaps no capacity for reasoning themselves into a conviction of the historical truth of Christianity. The author of faith is not bound to any particular method of bestowing his gift. He may, and I believe often does, compensate for the means which he withholds; but this gives no ground to suppose that he will make up for those which we neglect.'
Through Miss Mortimer's persuasion, I steadily persevered in this line of study; and, if my understanding possesses any degree of soundness or vigour, it is to be attributed to this discipline. My education, if the word signify learning what is afterwards to be useful, was now properly beginning; and every day added something to my very slender stock of information. My friend, who was herself no mean proficient in general literature, encouraged me to devote many of my leisure hours to books of instruction and harmless entertainment; and our evenings were commonly enlivened by reading history, travels, or criticism.
Leisure, like other treasures, is best husbanded when it is least abundant; and it was no longer entirely at my command. I still retained enough of the spirit of Ellen Percy, to hold dependence in rather more than Christian scorn,--yet to be ashamed of openly contributing to my own subsistence. In how many shapes does our ruling passion assail us! If we resist it in the form of vice, it will even put on the semblance of virtue. I firmly believed at that time, that a virtuous motive alone induced me to escape, by means of my own labour, from all necessity for applying to the funds of Miss Mortimer; and I forgot to enquire into the reason why my work was always privately done, and privately disposed of.