THK RE V. JAMKR MARTINEA V. 511 
so much more highly did I prize the conscious strength and 
pleasure derived from moral and religious feeling which, 
I may add, was mine without the intervention of dogma. 
The error was not au ignoble one, but this did not save it 
from the penalty attached to error. Saner knowledge 
taught me that the body is no weed, and that treated as 
such it would infallibly avenge itself. Am 1 personally 
lowered by this change of front? Not so. Give me their 
health, and there is no spiritual experience of those earlier 
years no resolve of duty, or work of mercy, no work of 
self-renouncement, no solemnity of thought, no joy in the 
life and aspects of nature that would not still be mine; 
and this without the least reference or regard to any purely 
personal reward or punishment looming in the future. 
And now I have to utter a "farewell" free from bitter- 
ness to all my readers; thanking my friends for a sympathy 
more steadfast, I would fain believe, if less noisy, than the 
antipathy of my foes; and commending to these a passage 
from Bishop Butler, which they have either not read or 
failed to lay to heart. " It seems," saith the bishop, 
"that men would be strangely headstrong and self-willed, 
and disposed to exert themselves with an impetuosity 
which would render society insupportable, and the living 
in it impracticable, were it not for some acquired moder- 
ation and self-government, some aptitude and readiness in 
restraining themselves, and concealing their sense of 
things." 
CHAPTER XXXIII. 
THE REV. JAMES MARTINEATJ AND THE BELFAST ADDRESS.* 
PRIOR to the publication of the fifth edition of these 
"Fragments" my attention had been directed by several 
estimable, and indeed eminent, persons, to an essay by the 
Rev. James Martineau, as demanding serious consideration 
at my hands. I tried to give the essay the attention 
claimed for it, and published tny views of it as an Intro- 
duction to Part II. of the " Fragments." I there referred, 
and here again refer with pleasure, to the accord subsisting 
between Mr. Martineau and myself on certain points of 
* "Fortnightly Review." 
