VI.  I must devote a few words to define the direction and justification of my argument in one chapter of this treatise.  All good arguments are not rightly addressed to all persons.  An argument good in itself may be inappreciable to one in a certain mental state, or may be highly exasperating.  If a thoughtful Mohammedan, a searcher after truth, were to confide to a Christian a new basis on which be desired to found the Mohammedan religion—­viz., the absolute moral perfection of its prophet, and were to urge on the Christian this argument in order to convert him, I cannot think that any one would blame the Christian for demanding what is the evidence of the fact.  Such an appeal would justify his dissecting the received accounts of Mohammed, pointing out what appeared to be flaws in his moral conduct; nay, if requisite, urging some positive vice, such as his excepting himself from his general law of four wives only.  But a Christian missionary would surely be blamed (at least I should blame him), if, in preaching to a mixed multitude of Mohammedans against the authority of their prophet, he took as his basis of refutation the prophet’s personal sensuality.  We are able to foresee that the exasperation produced by such an argument must derange the balance of mind in the hearers, even if the argument is to the purpose; at the same time, it may be really away from the purpose to them, if their belief has no closer connexion with the personal virtue of the prophet, than has that of Jews and Christians with the virtue of Balaam or Jonah.  I will proceed to imagine, that while a missionary was teaching, talking, and distributing tracts to recommend, his own views of religion, a Moolah were to go round and inform everybody that this Christian believed Mohammed to be an unchaste man, and had used the very argument to such and such a person.  I feel assured that we should all pronounce this proceeding to be a very cunning act of spiteful, bigotry.

My own case, as towards certain Unitarian friends of mine, is quite similar to this.  They preach to me the absolute moral perfection of a certain man (or rather, of a certain portrait) as a sufficient basis for my faith.  Hereby they challenge me, and as it were force me, to inquire into its perfection.  I have tried to confine the argument within a narrow circle.  It is addressed by me specifically to them and not to others.  I would not address it to Trinitarians; partly, because they are not in a mental state to get anything from it but pain, partly because much of it becomes intrinsically bad as argument when addressed to them.  Many acts and words which would be right from an incarnate God, or from an angel, are (in my opinion) highly unbecoming from a man; consequently I must largely remould the argument before I could myself approve of it, if so addressed.  The principle of the argument is such as Mr. Rogers justifies, when he says that Mr. Martineau quite takes away all solid