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RELIGION. 



tinually rose before my mind and would not be banished, — 

 is it credible that if God were now to make a revelation to 

 the Hindoos, he would permit it to be connected with the 

 belief in Vishnu, Siva, &c., as Christianity is connected with 

 the Old Testament ? This appeared to me utterly incred- 

 ible. 



'' By further reflecting that the clearest evidence would be 

 requisite to make any sane man believe in the miracles by 

 which Christianity is supported, — and that the more we know 

 of the fixed laws of nature the more incredible do miracles 

 become, — that the men at that time were ignorant and credu- 

 lous to a degree almost incomprehensible by us, — that the 

 Gospels cannot be proved to have been written simultaneous- 

 ly with the events, — that they differ in many important de- 

 tails, far too important, as it seemed to me, to be admitted as 

 the usual inaccuracies of eye-witnesses ; — by such reflections 

 as these, which I give not as having the least novelty or value, 

 but as they influenced me, I gradually came to disbelieve in 

 Christianity as a divine revelation. The fact that many false 

 religions have spread over large portions of the earth like 

 wild-fire had some weight with me. 



" But I was very unwilling to give up my belief ; I feel 

 sure of this, for I can well remember often and often invent- 

 ing day-dreams of old letters between distinguished Romans, 

 and manuscripts being discovered at Pompeii or elsewhere, 

 which confirmed in the most striking manner all that was 

 written in the Gospels. But I found it more and more diffi- 

 cult, with free scope given to my imagination, to invent evi- 

 dence which would suffice to convince me. Thus disbelief 

 (crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. 

 The rate was so slow that I felt no distress. 



" Although I did not think much about the existence of 

 a personal God until a considerably later period of my life, 

 I will here give the vague conclusions to which I have been 

 driven. The old argument from design in Nature, as given 

 by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, 



, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. 



I 



} 



