44 Ellen Key gradual progress of her development so entirely without the influence of so-called heretical writ- ings. She never read Victor Rydberg, for in- stance, until after she had, of her own accord, abandoned her belief in the Divinity of Christ. Alone she sought light. For edification dur- ing these years she read the Bible, Colain's Meditations, and the sermons of the English- man Robertson, which she re-read many times. The works of Renan, Parker, and Ignell were in her father's library, but, not believing it right to subject herself to ex-parte influence, she did not read them. She never attended the ' ' Lord's Supper ' ' after her first communion, feeling, even at eighteen, that she could not fully participate in that act. After twenty, she also refused to act as sponsor at the bap- tism of infants, as their christening seemed to her to be blasphemy. Gradually her heart became severed from Christianity, and yet, up to the age of nearly forty, she still clung to the thought of a personal God, and a personal immortality. It was not until more than thirty years after the tragedy related, and when she had been attacked for radicalism and unbelief, that Ellen Key felt it to be a duty and a right to herself and to others openly to confess her