106 
ness ” or of “ deliberate unfairness.” As the result of some 
patient study at all events, I conclude (strange to say) that 
whilst persistently advocating Pantheism he has no intention to 
destroy religion ; and that an address of such astonishing cha- 
racter was even the result of cool and careful, and what we must 
in a sense term religious preparation ! I think that we must 
even go further and say that the object which he had in view 
appeared in his eyes something laudable and heroic. 
The inner history of the life of any person (specially of 
those who have influenced largely the minds of their fellow- 
creatures) must needs be interesting; for nothing that is 
human, if described to the life, can he alien to us.* We are 
indebted to Professor Tyndall for the pains which he has taken, 
in his seventh preface, to present us with the history of his 
early life and the record of his early impressions. This enables 
us to form at once a more correct and a more charitable esti- 
mate of his present course. 
“ Sprung from a source to which the Bible was peculiarly 
dear, my (Professor Tyndall’s) early training was confined almost 
exclusively to it.” Too exclusively , perhaps, I may be allowed 
to suggest. It is not unfamiliar to those who know the world, 
to find a revulsion take place in manhood from a too severe 
repression of the inquiring faculties in youth. 
The next thing mentioned by the Professor shows that he 
was trained (and who could doubt it considering his parentage) 
in dogmatic theology. “ Born in Ireland,” he says, “ I, like my 
predecessors for many generations, was taught to hold my own 
against the Church of Rome.”f And what was the sequence of 
all this — the Professor will not allow me to sav the consequence 
of this particular training ? “ I can remember the time when I 
regarded my body as a weed, 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 .”J 
* I need scarcely point out, at least to those familiar with the 
effects of biblical teaching, the improbability of the assertion 
that all this took place without the intervention of dogma. 
Let us turn to page xxxi., where we find alluded to as 
“ spiritual experiences of those earlier years, resolves of duty, 
works of mercy, acts of self-renouncement.” Did these arise 
spontaneously without any connection with the truths of Scrip- 
ture in which he was daily instructed ? 
* “ Homo sum, humaui nihil a me alienum puto.” 
t Preface, p. xxiii. $ lb. p. xxx. 
