I know that many Evangelicals will reply, that I never can have had “the true” faith; else I could never have lost it:  and as for my not being conscious of spiritual change, they will accept this as confirming their assertion.  Undoubtedly I cannot prove that I ever felt as they now feel:  perhaps they love their present opinions more than truth, and are careless to examine and verify them; with that I claim no fellowship.  But there are Christians, and Evangelical Christians, of another stamp, who love their creed, only because they believe it to be true, but love truth, as such, and truthfulness, more than any creed:  with these I claim fellowship.  Their love to God and man, their allegiance to righteousness and true holiness, will not be in suspense and liable to be overturned by new discoveries in geology and in ancient inscriptions, or by improved criticism of texts and of history, nor have they any imaginable interest in thwarting the advance of scholarship.  It is strange indeed to undervalue that Faith, which alone is purely moral and spiritual, alone rests on a basis that cannot be shaken, alone lifts the possessor above the conflicts of erudition, and makes it impossible for him to fear the increase of knowledge.

I fully expected that reviewers and opponents from the evangelical school would laboriously insinuate or assert, that I never was a Christian and do not understand anything about Christianity spiritually.  My expectations have been more than fulfilled; and the course which my assailants have taken leads me to add some topics to the last paragraph.  I say then, that if I had been slain at the age of twenty-seven, when I was chased[8] by a mob of infuriated Mussulmans for selling New Testaments, they would have trumpeted me as an eminent saint and martyr.  I add, that many circumstances within easy possibility might have led to my being engaged as an official teacher of a congregation at the usual age, which would in all probability have arrested my intellectual development, and have stereotyped my creed for many a long year; and then also they would have acknowledged me as a Christian.  A little more stupidity, a little more worldliness, a little more mental dishonesty in me, or perhaps a little more kindness and management in others, would have kept me in my old state, which was acknowledged and would still be acknowledged as Christian.  To try to disown me now, is an impotent superciliousness.

At the same time, I confess to several moral changes, as the result of this change in my creed, the principal of which are the following.