THK REV. jAtfKS MARTIN EAV. 



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 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 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 EEV. JAMES MARTINEAU 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 my 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." 



