Darwin's faith in Christianity had already dwindled away and from around 1849 he had stopped going to church. During Annie's long illness Darwin had read books by Francis William Newman, a Unitarian evolutionist who called for a new post-Christian synthesis and wrote that "the fretfulness of a child is an infinite evil". For three years Darwin had deliberated about the Christian meaning of mortality, opening a vision of tragically circumstantial nature. On 30 April he wrote a brief and intensely emotional memoir of Annie for himself and Emma.