Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet by Charles Kingsley

Sunrise, they say, often at first draws up and deepens the very mists which it is about to scatter: and even so, as the excitement of my first conviction cooled, dark doubts arose to dim the new-born light of hope and trust within me. The question of miracles had been ever since I had read Strauss my greatest stumbling-block -- perhaps not unwillingly, for my doubts pampered my sense of intellectual acuteness and scientific knowledge; and "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. " But now that they interfered with nobler, more important, more immediately practical ideas, I longed to have them removed -- I longed even to swallow them down on trust -- to take the miracles "into the bargain" as it were, for the sake of that mighty gospel of deliverance for the people which accompanied them. Mean subterfuge! which would not, could not, satisfy me. The thing was too precious, too all-important, to take one tittle of it on trust.

I could not bear the consciousness of one hollow spot -- the nether fires of doubt glaring through, even at one little crevice. I took my doubts to Lady Ellerton -- Eleanor, as I must now call her, for she never allowed herself to be addressed by her title -- and she referred me to her uncle --