ults, I was
aware, would seem a sadly triumphant confirmation to the clearsighted
instinct of orthodoxy. But the animus of such prophecies had always
made me indignant, and I could not admit that there was any merit in
such clearsightedness. What! (used I to say,) will you shrink from
truth, lest it lead to error? If following truth must bring us to
Socinianism, let us by all means become Socinians, or anything else.
Surely we do not love our doctrines more than the truth, but because
they are the truth. Are we not exhorted to "prove all things, and hold
fast that which is good?"--But to my discomfort, I generally found
that this (to me so convincing) argument for feeling no alarm, only
caused more and more alarm, and gloomier omens concerning me. On
considering all this in leisurely retrospect, I began painfully to
doubt, whether after all there is much love of truth even among those
who have an undeniable strength of religious feeling. I questioned
with myself, whether love of truth is not a virtue demanding a robust
mental cultivation; whether mathematical or other abstract studies may
not be practically needed for it. But no: for how then could it exist
in some feminine natures? how in rude and unphilosophical times? On
the whole, I rather concluded, that there is in nearly all English
education a positive repressing of a young person's truthfulness; for
I could distinctly see, that in my own case there was always need of
defying authority and public opinion,--not to speak of more serious
sacrifices,--if I was to follow truth. All society seemed so to
hate novelties of thought, as to prefer the chances of error in the
old.--Of course! why, how could it be otherwise, while Test Articles
were maintained?

Yet surely if God is truth, none sincerely aspire to him, who dread to
lose their present opinions in exchange for others truer.--I had not
then read a sentence of Coleridge, which is to this effect: "If any
one begins by loving Christianity more than the truth, he will proceed
to love his Church more than Christianity, and will end by loving his
own opinions better than either." A dim conception of this was in my
mind; and I saw that the genuine love of God was essentially connected
with loving truth as truth, and not truth as our own accustomed
thought, truth as our old prejudice; and that the real saint can never
be afraid to let God teach him one lesson more, or unteach him one
more error. Then I rejoiced to fee