e of fate or necessity. All the great difficulties of theology
had ugly likenesses in infidel philosophy. Instead of reaching a region
of unsullied light, I got into one of clouds and darkness. And the
further I wandered, the blacker the clouds became, and the thicker the
darkness. The difficulties, the perplexities, on the side of unbelief,
were more distressing and embarrassing than those I had encountered on
the side of Christianity.

13. Again. I was frequently tried by the characters of unbelievers. I
had read and believed that many of the older unbelievers had been
immoral; but I supposed that modern unbelievers were a better class. I
had seen a number of statements to that effect in books and newspapers,
some of them proceeding from Christians, and even from Christian
ministers. I was disposed to believe that even the older infidels had
not been so bad as represented. I knew that _I_ had been belied, and I
considered it probable that all who had had quarrels or controversies
with members of the priesthood, had been belied in like manner. I
believed for a long time, that the loss of faith in the supernatural
origin of Christianity and the Bible, had made me better, in some
respects, instead of worse. I thought no changes had taken place in my
character, but what, on the whole, were improvements. For years after I
became an unbeliever, I endeavored to practise all the unquestionable
virtues inculcated in the Bible, and I was disposed to believe that
modern unbelievers generally did the same. And when I lectured against
the Divine authority of the Bible, I disclaimed, as I have already said,
all sympathy with those who rejected the Bible because it
discountenanced vice. And such was the violence of my anti-religious
fanaticism, that I had actually come at one time to believe that
infidelity, in connection with natural science, was more friendly to
virtue than Christianity.

But my faith in this view met with many rude shocks after I had been
some time in America. Often when I came to be acquainted with the men
who invited me to lecture, I was ashamed to be seen standing with them
in the streets; and I shrank from the touch of their hand as from
pollution. And many a time when I had associated with persons for a
length of time, thinking them above suspicion, I was amazed to find, at
length, that they looked on vicious indulgence as harmless, and were
astonished that any man who had lost his faith in Christianity, sh