The thoughts which here fill but a few pages, occupied me a long while in working out; because I consciously, with caution more than with timidity, declined to follow them rapidly.  They came as dark suspicions or as flashing possibilities; and were again laid aside for reconsideration, lest I should be carried into antagonism to my old creed.  For it is clear that great error arises in religion, by the undue ardour of converts, who become bitter against the faith which they have left, and outrun in zeal their new associates.  So also successive centuries oscillate too far on the right and on the left of truth.  But so happy was my position, that I needed not to hurry:  no practical duty forced me to rapid decision, and a suspense of judgment was not an unwholesome exercise.  Meanwhile, I sometimes thought Christianity to be to me, like the great river Ganges to a Hindoo.  Of its value he has daily experience:  he has piously believed that its sources are in heaven, but of late the report has come to him, that it only flows from very high mountains of this earth.  What is he to believe?  He knows not exactly:  he cares not much:  in any case the river is the gift of God to him:  its positive benefits cannot be affected by a theory concerning its source.

Such a comparison undoubtedly implies that he who uses it discerns for himself a moral excellence in Christianity, and submits to it only so far as this discernment commands.  I had practically reached this point, long before I concluded my theoretical inquiries as to Christianity itself:  but in the course of this fifth period numerous other overpowering considerations crowded upon me which I must proceed to state in outline.

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All pious Christians feel, and all the New Testament proclaims, that Faith is a moral act and a test of the moral and spiritual that is within us; so that he who is without faith, (faithless, unfaithful, “infidel,”) is morally wanting and is cut off from God.  To assent to a religious proposition solely in obedience to an outward miracle, would be Belief; but would not be Faith, any more than is scientific conviction.  Bishop Butler and all his followers can insist with much force on this topic, when it suits them, and can quote most aptly from the New Testament to the same effect.  They deduce, that a really overpowering miraculous proof would have destroyed the moral character of Faith:  yet they do not see that the argument supersedes the authoritative force of outward miracles entirely.  It had always appeared to me very strange in these divines, to insist on the stupendous character and convincing power of the Christian miracles, and then, in reply to the objection that they were not quite convincing, to say that the defect was purposely left “to try people’s Faith.”  Faith in what?  Not surely in the confessedly ill-proved miracle, but in the truth as discernible by the heart without aid of miracle.