From this point he speedily recedes. By the next day he is "lost
almost in the flesh"; "fallen into an identity with my body," and
notes that for some time he has "done little in study, but feel that
I have lived very much." What hinders him he supposes to be
"contemplating any certain amount of study which I ought to
accomplish--looking to it as an end. Why should I not be satisfied
when I am living, growing? Did Christ and His apostles study
languages? I have the life--is not that the end?"

"April 28.--What shall I say? Am I wrong? Should I submit and give
myself up to that which does not engage my whole being? To me the
Church is not the great object of life. I am now out of it in the
common meaning. I am not subject to its ordinances. Is it not best
for me to accept my own nature rather than attempt to mould it as
though it were an object? Is not our own existence more than this
existence in the world?

"I read this morning an extract from Heine upon Schelling which
affected me more than anything I have read for six months. The
Church, says Schelling in substance, was first Petrine, then Pauline,
and must be love-embracing, John-like. Peter, Catholicism; Paul,
Protestantism; John, what is to be. The statement struck me and
responded to my own dim intuitions. Catholicism is solidarity;
Protestantism is individuality. What we want, and are tending to, is
what shall unite them both, as John's spirit does--and that in each
individual. We want neither the authority of History nor of the
Individual; neither Infallibility nor Reason by itself but both
combined in Life. Neither Precedent nor Opinion, but Being--neither a
written nor a preached Gospel, but a living one. . . .