n extolling Abraham as the pattern of faith; James and
the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews specify the sacrifice of
Isaac as a firstrate fruit of faith: yet if the voice of morality is
allowed to be heard, Abraham was (in heart and intention) not less
guilty than those who sacrificed their children to Molech.

Thus at length it appeared, that I must choose between two courses. I
must EITHER blind my moral sentiment, my powers of criticism, and
my scientific knowledge, (such as they were,) in order to accept the
Scripture entire; OR I must encounter the problem, however arduous,
of adjusting the relative claims of human knowledge and divine
revelation. As to the former method, to name it was to condemn it; for
it would put every system of Paganism on a par with Christianity. If
one system of religion may claim that we blind our hearts and eyes in
its favour, so may another; and there is precisely the same reason
for becoming a Hindoo in religion as a Christian. We cannot be both;
therefore the principle is _demonstrably_ absurd. It is also, of
course, morally horrible, and opposed to countless passages of the
Scriptures themselves. Nor can the argument be evaded by talking of
external evidences; for these also are confessedly moral evidences, to
be judged of by our moral faculties. Nay, according to all Christian
advocates, they are God's test of our moral temper. To allege,
therefore, that our moral faculties are not to judge, is to annihilate
the evidences for Christianity.--Thus, finally, I was lodged in three
inevitable conclusions:

1. The moral and intellectual powers of man must be acknowledged as
having a right and duty to criticize the contents of the Scripture:

2. When so exerted, they condemn portions of the Scripture as
erroneous and immoral:

3. The assumed infallibility of the _entire_ Scripture is a proved
falsity, not merely as to physiology, and other scientific matters,
but also as to morals: and it remains for farther inquiry how to
discriminate the trustworthy from the untrustworthy within the limits
of the Bible itself.

* * * * *

When distinctly conscious, after long efforts to evade it, that
this was and must henceforth be my position, I ruminated on the many
auguries which had been made concerning me by frightened friends. "You
will become a Socinian," had been said of me even at Oxford: "You will
become an infidel," had since been added. My present res