The word “safety” brings us to the real meaning of the word “religious” as we use it. I supposed Him to exist only within the walls of a church-in fact, of our church-and I also supposed that God and safety were synonymous. And since I had been born in a Christian nation, I accepted this Deity as the only one. I use “religious” in the common, and arbitrary, sense, meaning that I then discovered God, His saints and angels, and His blazing Hell. I underwent, during the summer that I became fourteen, a prolonged religious crisis.
