on
Nonconformists through conservative glasses, and saw a rabble of
fanatics and rebels. The Nonconformists looked on the clergy through
revolutionary glasses, and saw a host of superstitious formalists, and
blind, persecuting Pharisees. The man who looks through the unstained
glasses of impartiality, sees much that is good, and something that is
not good, in all.

Who, that knows much of human nature, expects Catholics to judge
righteously of Protestants, or Protestants to judge righteously of
Catholics? Who, that knows anything of the world, expects revolutionary
Radicals to do justice to the characters and motives of Conservatives,
or ejected Irishmen to see anything in Englishmen but robbers and
tyrants? I know that all this is great weakness, but where is the man
that is not weak? The man who thinks himself free from this weakness,
has probably a double share of it. The man who is really strong is some
one who is keenly sensible of his weakness, and who feels that his
sufficiency is of God. Weakness and humanity are one.

I dwell the longer on this point because, as I have already intimated, a
right understanding of it will go far towards explaining the disastrous
change which took place in my own mind with regard to Christianity. One
great cause of my separation from the Church, and then of my
estrangement from Christ, was the influence of bad feeling which took
possession of my mind towards a number of my brother ministers.

CHAPTER IV.

ORIGIN OF THE UNHAPPY FEELING--CHARACTERISTICS OF THE AUTHOR'S
MIND--RATIONALIZING TENDENCY.

How came I to be the subject of this bad feeling? I will tell you.

As a young minister I had two or three marked tendencies. One may be
called a rationalizing tendency. I was anxious, in the first place,
clearly to understand all my professed beliefs, and to be able, in the
second place, to make them plain to others. I never liked to travel in a
fog, wrapped round as with a blinding cloud, unable either to see my
way, or to get a view of the things with which I was surrounded. I liked
a clear, bright sky, with the sun shining full upon my path, and
gladdening my eyes with a view of a thousand interesting objects. And so
with regard to spiritual matters. I never liked to travel in theological
fogs. They pressed on me at the outset of my religious life, on every
side, hiding from my view the wonders and the glories of God's word and
works; but I never rested in the darknes