224 THE JOURNEYMAN. 



from what the people of the world think it. Four years 

 ago, I deemed the love of God a passion altogether 

 chimerical. AVhen I looked towards the sky, I saw that 

 the sun was a glorious and sublime object, and a very 

 apt image of the God who had created it and all things ; 

 but I thought I could as rationally love that sun as I 

 could the invisible being of whom I deemed it the best 

 type. I found what I reckoned admirable things in the 

 writings of Plato. Socrates I regarded as a very excel- 

 lent, talented man ; his reasonings on the immortality 

 of the soul, on the love of God, on prayer, and on the 

 nature of holiness and of man, delighted me. But 

 though I never once thought of bringing forward argu- 

 ments to weigh against his. I could not consider what 

 he taught in the light of serious truths. I felt the same 

 pleasure in perusing his dialogues, or in reading fine 

 moral poems and discourses, as I felt when looking at 

 an elegant statue or picture ; but I thought as little of 

 taking the precepts I found in these pieces as rules to 

 live by as I did of paring my limbs or features to the 

 exact proportions of those of the Apollo Belvidere or the 

 Hercules Farnese. As for the religion of the New 

 Testament, I could not at all admire it. Some of the 

 morals it inculcated I thought good, though in the main 

 rather calculated to make a patient than an active man, 

 and better adapted for the slave and the vanquished than 

 for the freeman and the conqueror. The scheme of 

 Redemption and its consequent doctrines I regarded as 

 peculiarly absurd. I held it impossible that a man of 

 taste and judgment could in reality be a Christian. As 

 for those men w r ho were evidently possessed of both 

 these faculties in a high degree and yet professors of 

 religion, I interpreted their seeming assent to its dogmas 

 as the effect of a prudence similar to that which made 



