But it is really not so.

Though he was brought up without any religious teaching, yet the severe and earnest influences of his childhood would have been impossible except in a religious country.

He was in fact brought up in an atmosphere (if I may borrow with a slight change a phrase of Professor Huxley's) of Puritanism minus Christianity.
It may be remembered farther that Mill says of himself, '_I am one of the very few examples of one who has not thrown off religious belief, but never had it_.'.