l realisation:
relics I could never have valued: pilgrimages to Jerusalem had always
excited in me more of scorn than of sympathy;--and I make no doubt
such was fundamentally Paul's[4] feeling. On the contrary, it began
to appear to me (and I believe not unjustly) that the Unitarian mind
revelled peculiarly in "Christ after the flesh," whom Paul resolved
not to know. Possibly in this circumstance will be found to lie the
strong and the weak points of the Unitarian religious character, as
contrasted with that of the Evangelical, far more truly than in the
doctrine of the Atonement. I can testify that the Atonement may be
dropt out of Pauline religion without affecting its quality; so may
Christ be spiritualized into God, and identified with the Father: but
I suspect that a Pauline faith could not, without much violence and
convulsion, be changed into devout admiration of a clearly drawn
historical character; as though any full and unsurpassable embodiment
of God's moral perfections could be exhibited with ink and pen.

A reviewer, who has since made his name known, has pointed to the
preceding remarks, as indicative of my deficiency in _imagination_ and
my tendency to _romance_. My dear friend is undoubtedly right in the
former point; I am destitute of (creative) poetical imagination: and
as to the latter point, his insight into character is so great, that
I readily believe him to know me better than I know myself,
Nevertheless, I think he has mistaken the nature of the preceding
argument. I am, on the contrary, almost disposed to say, that those
have a tendency to romance who can look at a picture with men flying
into the air, or on an angel with a brass trumpet, and dead men rising
out of their graves with good stout muscles, and _not_ feel that the
picture suggests unbelief. Nor do I confess to romance in my desire
of something _more_ than historical and daily human nature in the
character of Jesus; for all Christendom, between the dates A.D. 100
to A.D. 1850, with the exception of small eccentric coteries, has held
Jesus to be essentially superhuman. Paul and John so taught concerning
him. To believe their doctrine (I agree with my friend) is, in some
sense, a weakness of understanding; but it is a weakness to which
minds of every class have been for ages liable.

* * * * *

Such had been the progress of my mind, towards the end of what I will
call my Third Period. In it the authorit