MY CHARACTER AT TWENTY-ONE 227 



or " Paradise Lost," or some religious tracts or moral tales, 

 or the more interesting parts of the Bible were read by my 

 mother, or we read ourselves about Esther and Mordecai or 

 Bel and the Dragon, which were as good as any story book. 

 But all this made little impression upon me, as it never dealt 

 sufficiently with the mystery, the greatness, the ideal and 

 emotional aspects of religion, which only appealed to me 

 occasionally in some of the grander psalms and hymns, or 

 through the words of some preacher more impassioned than 

 usual. 



As might have been expected, therefore, what little religious 

 belief I had very quickly vanished under the influence of 

 philosophical or scientific scepticism. This came first upon 

 me when I spent a month or two in London with my brother 

 John, as already related in my sixth chapter; and during the 

 seven years I lived with my brother William, though the 

 subject of religion was not often mentioned, there was a per- 

 vading spirit of scepticism, or free-thought as it was then 

 called, which strengthened and confirmed my doubts as to 

 the truth or value of all ordinary religious teaching. 



He occasionally borrowed interesting books which I usually 

 read. One of these was an old edition of Rabelais' works, 

 which both interested and greatly amused me ; but that which 

 bears most upon the present subject was a reprint of lectures 

 on Strauss' " Life of Jesus," which had not then been trans- 

 lated into English. These lectures were, I think, delivered 

 by some Unitarian minister or writer, and they gave an admir- 

 able and most interesting summary of the whole work. The 

 now well-known argument, that all the miracles related in the 

 Gospels were mere myths, which in periods of ignorance and 

 credulity always grow up around all great men, and especially 

 around all great moral teachers when the actual witnesses of 

 his career are gone and his disciples begin to write about him, 

 was set forth with great skill. This argument appeared con- 

 clusive to my brother and some of his friends with whom he 

 discussed it, and, of course, in my then frame of mind it 

 seemed equally conclusive to me, and helped to complete the 

 destruction of whatever religious beliefs still lingered in my 



