The first books which I looked at as doubtful, were the Apocalypse and the Epistle to the Hebrews.  From the Greek style I felt assured that the former was not by John,[8] nor the latter by Paul.  In Michaelis I first learnt the interesting fact of Luther having vehemently repudiated the Apocalypse, so that he not only declared its spuriousness in the Preface of his Bible, but solemnly charged his successors not to print his translation of the Apocalypse without annexing this avowal:—­a charge which they presently disobeyed.  Such is the habitual unfairness of ecclesiastical corporations.  I was afterwards confirmed by Neander in the belief that the Apocalypse is a false prophecy.  The only chapter of it which is interpreted,—­the 17th,—­appears to be a political speculation suggested by the civil war of Otho, Vitellius and Vespasian; and erroneously opines that the eighth emperor of Rome is to be the last, and is to be one of the preceding emperors restored,—­probably Nero, who was believed to have escaped to the kings of the East.—­As for the Epistle to the Hebrews, (which I was disposed to believe Luther had well guessed to be the production of Apollos,) I now saw quite a different genius in it from that of Paul, as more artificial and savouring of rhetorical culture.  As to this, the learned Germans are probably unanimous.

Next to these, the Song of Solomon fell away.  I had been accustomed to receive this as a sacred representation of the loves of Christ and the Church:  but after I was experimentally acquainted with the playful and extravagant genius of man’s love for woman, I saw the Song of Solomon with new eyes, and became entirely convinced that it consists of fragments of love-songs, some of them rather voluptuous.

After this, it followed that the so-called Canon of the Jews could not guarantee to us the value of the writings.  Consequently, such books as Ruth and Esther, (the latter indeed not containing one religious sentiment,) stood forth at once in their natural insignificance.  Ecclesiastes also seemed to me a meagre and shallow production.  Chronicles I now learned to be not credulous only, but unfair, perhaps so far as to be actually dishonest.  Not one of the historical books of the Old Testament could approve itself to me as of any high antiquity or of any spiritual authority; and in the New Testament I found the first three books and the Acts to contain many doubtful and some untrue accounts, and many incredible miracles.

Many persons, after reading thus much concerning me, will be apt to say:  “Of course then you gave up Christianity?”—­Far from it.  I gave up all that was clearly untenable, and clung the firmer to all that still appeared sound.  I had found out that the Bible was not to be my religion, nor its perfection any tenet of mine:  but what then!  Did Paul go about preaching the Bible? nay, but he preached Christ.  The New Testament did not as yet exist:  to the Jews he necessarily