A little self-examination enabled me to reply, that it was no ill-grounded feeling or ghost of past opinions; but that my religion always had been, and still was, a state of sentiment toward God, far less dependent on articles of a creed, than once I had unhesitatingly believed.  The Bible is pervaded by a sentiment,[1] which is implied everywhere,—­viz. the intimate sympathy of the Pure and Perfect God with the heart of each faithful worshipper.  This is that which is wanting in Greek philosophers, English Deists, German Pantheists, and all formalists.  This is that which so often edifies me in Christian writers and speakers, when I ever so much disbelieve the letter of their sentences.  Accordingly, though I saw more and more of moral and spiritual imperfection in the Bible, I by no means ceased to regard it as a quarry whence I might dig precious metal, though the ore needed a refining analysis:  and I regarded this as the truest essence and most vital point in Christianity,—­to sympathize with the great souls from whom its spiritual eminence has flowed;—­to love, to hope, to rejoice, to trust with them;—­and not, to form the same interpretations of an ancient book and to take the same views of critical argument.

My historical conception of Jesus had so gradually melted into dimness, that he had receded out of my practical religion, I knew not exactly when I believe that I must have disused any distinct prayers to him, from a growing opinion that he ought not to be the object of worship, but only the way by whom we approach to the Father; and as in fact we need no such “way” at all, this was (in the result) a change from practical Ditheism to pure Theism.  His “mediation” was to me always a mere name, and, as I believe, would otherwise have been mischievous.[2]—­Simultaneously a great uncertainty had grown on me, how much of the discourses put into the mouth of Jesus was really uttered by him; so that I had in no small measure to form him anew to my imagination.

But if religion is addressed to, and must be judged by, our moral faculties, how could I believe in that painful and gratuitous personality,—­The Devil?—­He also had become a waning phantom to me, perhaps from the time that I saw the demoniacal miracles to be fictions, and still more when proofs of manifold mistake in the New Testament rose on me.  This however took a solid form of positive disbelief, when I investigated the history of the doctrine,—­I forget exactly in what stage.  For it is manifest, that the old Hebrews believed only in evil spirits sent by God to do his bidding, and had no idea of a rebellious Spirit that rivalled God.  That idea was first imbibed in the Babylonish captivity, and apparently therefore must have been adopted from the Persian Ahriman, or from the “Melek Taous,” the “Sheitan” still honoured by the Yezidi with mysterious fear.  That the serpent in the early part of Genesis denoted the same Satan,