APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS. 205 



passage. Much as we dislike seasoning polemics with 

 strong words, we assert that this Apology only tends to 

 affix with links of steel to the name of Professor Tyn- 

 dall, the dread imputation against which he struggles/ 

 Here we have a very fair example of subjective re- 

 ligious vigour. But my quarrel with such exhibitions 

 is that they do not always represent objective fact. No 

 atheistic reasoning can, I hold, dislodge religion from 

 the human heart. Logic can not deprive us of life, and 

 religion is life to the religious. As an experience of 

 consciousness it is beyond the assaults of logic. But 

 the religious life is often projected in external forms 

 I use the word in its widest sense and this embodi- 

 ment of the religious sentiment will have to bear more 

 and more, as the world becomes more enlightened, the 

 stress of scientific tests. We must be careful of pro- 

 jecting into external nature that which belongs to 

 ourselves. My critic commits this mistake: he feels, 

 and takes delight in feeling, that I am struggling, and 

 he obviously experiences the most exquisite pleasures of 

 ' the muscular sense ' in holding me down. His feel- 

 ings are as real, as if his imagination of what mine are 

 were equally real. His picture of my 'struggles' is, 

 however, a mere delusion. I do not struggle. I do 

 not fear the charge of Atheism; nor should I even dis- 

 avow it, in reference to any definition of the Supreme 

 which he, or his order, would be likely to frame. His 

 * links ' and his * steel ' and his ' dread imputations ' are 

 therefore, even more unsubstantial than my ' streaks of 

 morning cloud/ and they may be permitted to vanish 

 together. 



These minor and more purely personal matters at 

 an end, the weightier allegation remains, that at Bel- 

 fast I misused my position by quitting the domain of 



