Having explored van Gogh’s complex spiritual struggle through his depictions of the Old Nuenen Church Tower, a return to Melancholy concludes our understanding with new revelations. As the viewer notices the dark figure’s sorrowful gaze towards the distant building, it becomes clear that this image fulfills all the negative points van Gogh makes about the Church in his other 
works – the tower is cold, unreachable, deteriorating, and ultimately temporal and without life. The artist’s sadness at this realization is painfully visible in the figure’s rounded shoulders and turned-back head. Just as the woman here reaches down to pick up her skirts with her left hand and walk away, back in the direction of her snowy footprints, so too did van Gogh give up on the organized Church to attempt to find the consoling God for whom he so desperately longed. This consoling Christ, dejected yet comforting, was drastically different from van Gogh’s idea of the Church and resonated with the artist’s view of himself. In his life, he consistently lived a meager existence yet continued to attempt to help others, imitating Christ’s example as he understood it. An elderly pastor who lived close to Vincent during his early, distinctly religious period reported that van Gogh “wanted to obey the words of Christ as closely as possible. He saw it as his duty to follow the first Christians, to sacrifice everything he could spare” (Bonte qtd. in Hulsker 78). While Pastor Bonte clearly admired van Gogh’s selfless spirit, this self-imposed “duty” caused a great deal of suffering for the artist. Not only did he give up anything that could have provided comfort, but he was also misunderstood by most people in his eccentric religious fanaticism, increasing the uncertainty and sorrow that would penetrate his Nuenen church tower works. Madame Bonte – the wife of the aforementioned pastor – recorded Vincent’s statement of religious confusion at the Church’s rejection of his attempted Christ-like life: “Nobody has understood me. They think I’m a madman because I wanted to be a true Christian. They turned me out like a dog, saying that I was causing a scandal, because I tried to relieve the misery of the wretched. I don’t know what I’m going to do” (qtd. in Tralbaut 66). In saying these words, van Gogh revealed his bewilderment about the organized Church, and the pain it had caused him. Dejected, rejected, and confused, van Gogh longed to be comforted by the Christ he had attempted to follow. In the same way, each time he portrayed a person in his Nuenen church tower works – figures which represented himself through his art – these people are always turned away, alone, and pushed away from the church building in some way. At last, van Gogh’s unorthodox God-following lifestyle had been rejected, and through his Nuenen church tower works, he would reject the Church in return. Like the Christ he endeavored to imitate, van Gogh suffered dogmatic religion’s ostracism, forcing him to seek God’s consolation elsewhere.