CHAPTER III YOUTH AND THE FIRST YEARS IN STOCKHOLM WHEN Ellen Key was old enough to be confirmed and was sent to Stockholm for a course of instruction, she had already passed through a stage of personal religious development. In regard to this, she writes as follows: "I read the Bible as a 'storybook,' loved Jesus, knew my Catechism worst of all, listened to my father's reading of Martensen's sermons on Sundays, hated God ever since at ten I read of Jesus' suffering, and, after seeing a man die who ought to have lived, I denied Him and worshipped Nature alone. Having thus been led to doubt God, because of the death of a young man whose wife and little children were left destitute, she wanted explicit proof of God's existence or non- existence. She wrote in the sand: "God is DEAD, " thinking that if He existed. He would send her a stroke of lightning or some other sure sign to punish her blasphemy. In The 38