Jean Paul Richter, Autobiography, lecture III., The Lord's Supper, in: Levan; or, The Doctrine of Education (London: George Bell and Sons, 1891), pp. 62-63:
On this evening there came, too, a mild, light, clear heaven of peace over my soul, an unutterable never-returning blessedness in feeling myself quite clean, purified and freed from sin; in having made with God and man a joyful far-reaching peace, and still, from these evening hours of mild and warm soul-rest, I looked onward to the heavenly enthusiasm and rapture at the altar next morning.
O blessed time! when one has stripped off the unclean past, and stands pure and white, free and fresh in the present, and thus steps forth courageously into the future. But to whom but children can this time return? In the happy time of childhood this complete peace of soul is more easy to gain, because the circle of sacrifices which it demands is smaller and the sacrifices themselves less important, while the complicated and widened circumstances of later years, either through deficiencies or delay in complete resignation, admit the heavenly rainbow of peace only incomplete and not rounded to a perfect circle, as in the time of youth. In the twelfth year enthusiasm can render one perfectly pure, but not so in age. The youth, too, and the maiden with all their fiery impulses have less to overcome in their circle, and have an easier and shorter way to the highest moral purity, than that which the man or woman have to traverse with their colder and more selfish strivings, through the wilderness of troubles, cares, and toils. The true man is, at some period in his earliest time, a diamond of the first water, crystal clear, and without colour, then he becomes one of second quality and glitters with many colours, until at last he darkens into a coloured stone.
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