Perhaps no two of us would explain it alike, and this would expose Christian doctrine to contempt.”  Then farther it came across me; How very remarkable it is, that the Jews, those strict Monotheists, never seem to have attacked the apostles for polytheism!  It would have been so plausible an imputation, one that the instinct of party would so readily suggest, if there had been any external form of doctrine to countenance it.  Surely it is transparent that the Apostles did not teach as Dr. Waterland.  I had always felt a great repugnance to the argumentations concerning the Personality of the Holy Spirit; no doubt from an inward sense, however dimly confessed, that they were all words without meaning.  For the disputant who maintains this dogma, tells us in the very next breath that Person has not in this connexion its common signification; so that he is elaborately enforcing upon us we know not what.  That the Spirit of God meant in the New Testament God in the heart, had long been to me a sufficient explanation:  and who by logic or metaphysics will carry us beyond this?

While we were at Aleppo, I one day got into religious discourse with a Mohammedan carpenter, which left on me a lasting impression.  Among other matters, I was peculiarly desirous of disabusing him of the current notion of his people, that our gospels are spurious narratives of late date.  I found great difficulty of expression; but the man listened to me with much attention, and I was encouraged to exert myself.  He waited patiently till I had done, and then spoke to the following effect:  “I will tell you, sir, how the case stands.  God has given to you English a great many good gifts.  You make fine ships, and sharp penknives, and good cloth and cottons; and you have rich nobles and brave soldiers; and you write and print many learned books:  (dictionaries and grammars:) all this is of God.  But there is one thing that God has withheld from you, and has revealed to us; and that is, the knowledge of the true religion, by which one may be saved.”  When he thus ignored my argument, (which was probably quite unintelligible to him,) and delivered his simple protest, I was silenced, and at the same time amused.  But the more I thought it over, the more instruction I saw in the case.  His position towards me was exactly that of a humble Christian towards an unbelieving philosopher; nay, that of the early Apostles or Jewish prophets towards the proud, cultivated, worldly wise and powerful heathen.  This not only showed the vanity of any argument to him, except one purely addressed to his moral and spiritual faculties; but it also indicated to me that Ignorance has its spiritual self-sufficiency as well as Erudition; and that if there is a Pride of Reason, so is there a Pride of Unreason.  But though this rested in my memory, it was long before I worked out all the results of that thought.