APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS 237 



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 ear- 

 lier 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 sym- 

 pathy 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 im- 

 petuosity which would render society insupportable, and 

 the living in it impracticable, were it not for some ac- 

 quired moderation and self-government, some aptitude 

 and readiness in restraining themselves, and concealing 

 their sense of things." 



