APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS. 223 



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 an 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 I per- 

 sonally lowered by this change of front? Not so. 

 Give me their health, and there is no spiritual experi- 

 ence 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 

 bitterness 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 head- 

 strong and self-willed, and disposed to exert themselves 

 with an impetuosity which would render society insup- 

 portable, and 'the living in it impracticable, were it not 

 for some acquired moderation and self-government, 

 some aptitude and readiness in restraining themselves, 

 and concealing their sense of things.' 



