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You recollect, no doubt, the amusing dream of Geoffrey Crayon in the Library at Westminster Abbey ;- how he fancied the books beginning to talk, and one little squab quarto, long buried and forgotten, after rustling its leaves and looking big, asking in a husky voice whether one " Will Shakspeare a vulgar fellow and vagabond deerstealer, who enjoyed an unaccountable reputation in his time, was still remembered?" He presumes he "soon sank into oblivion." Lord Bolingbroke might represent that little fat forgotten quarto; but even the popularity of Shakspeare faintly shadows that enjoyed by the Jewish tent-maker. "Well," perhaps you will say, "and what of all this? I suppose you will next infer that an author whose opera omnia' are a few little tracts, and those too (as many say) so worthless, so crammed with extravagance, nonsense, and obscurities, have been inspired, because he has, in spite of all this, exerted such a prolonged and intense influence on the world." By no means. I mention the fact, indeed, as very curious and inexplicable; but I have no intention of travelling beyond your hypothesis in the application of it. On the supposition that Paul was not inspired, one of two things is, I think, abundantly plain; either he must have been so prodigiously clever that men will never escape the toils in which he has caught them; or they are such fools that you cannot hope to deliver them. On the latter alternative, you may declaim as much as you will against the infinite folly of man; but then, I think, the corollary is the extreme difficulty, not to say impossibility, of your ever directly counter-working this delusion! Pray make much of it; let it even be a melancholy solace to the Deist, — who, after so long a time and so much labour, has done so little in that enterprise to which he has committed himself. He has in truth much "need of patience;" he must wait in all probability for many weary ages before this curious insanity of mankind will become extinct.

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The Deist should, at least, carefully abstain from insisting that the Apostle Paul has nothing or little in him, because that only makes matters worse; the delusion is all the greater and the more hopeless of cure; he ought rather to insist that the

Apostle's grandeur and sublimity of character and sentiment,his eloquence and genius, his magnanimity and virtue, his benevolence and his pathos, were inconceivably great, and thus it is that he has inveigled the world into its superstitious homage. On second thoughts, however, it is dangerous to give the Deist advice on this point; for it is attended with difficulties. It is a delicate topic looked at in any light; for if Paul was such a man, however it may appear to account for the besotted reverence for the Apostle felt by the world, it greatly aggravates every difficulty when we come to consider how a man thus admirably endowed came to be either so knavish or so cracked; so knavish if he propagated, without believing, that false system of doctrines by which he has deluded men; so cracked, if he propagated because he believed it! If, on the other hand, he be the profane, absurd, and trivial writer Bolingbroke makes him out, it proves that mankind in general — amongst them multitudes even of the highest genius must be such fools in having been befooled by such a fool, that you cannot hope they will ever be wiser! I know what you will say: "Millions upon millions of men have believed other false systems of religion." I grant it; but what you have got to show is some such thing as this; millions upon millions of men, of the most diverse races and ages, and amongst them men of the acutest intellect and the most liberal culture, English, Scotch, French, Germans, Dutch, including men like Bacon, Newton, Locke, Butler, Leibnitz, madly bent on believing, expounding, embracing, and if necessary dying for, some such books as the Vedas or the Koran! Take my advice, -leave Christianity alone, and steer on a different tack.

Yours truly,

R. E. H. G.

LETTER XCIV.

To the Same,

My dear Friend,

1852.

Before I proceed to my promised counsels, let me offer a remark or two on your recent letter. You say, as if it afforded you hope, that, after all, the great mass of Christians know but little of the "Evidences of Christianity," and are incapable of entering into them. I must show you that this affords, and can afford, you no hope of success; rather the contrary, considering that what they are thus content to believe with, it seems, so little knowledge of the why, goes, as I have remarked, desperately against the grain of human nature!

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But further; what you insist on does not affect the fact that many of the most comprehensive minds have deliberately examined the "Evidences," and their authority naturally weighs with men in general who have not; indeed these men are as impregnably intrenched in their reasons for belief, as they would be if they were as learned as Paley or Lardner himself. They may not be always able to analyse their convictions their logic may want a voice - but if they could speak their feelings, each would say something like this: "You taunt me with yielding much to authority-well, to some extent I must, by your own argument, do so in relation either to you or those who oppose you? And why should I defer to you rather than your opponents? To one or other, by your own showing, I must defer. You tell me that I am unable to enter into the Historic Evidences for Christianity with any success, or with any pretensions to give an independent opinion on the subject. I confess it, and for the same reasons I am unable to pronounce on the validity of your arguments against it; just as I am also unable to pronounce on any one of those metaphysical riddles which are involved in the systems which you present to me for my choice

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dozen theories of Deism: as, for example, whether it be true, as some say, that I am immortal, or, as others say, that I am not; whether there be a Providence that takes cognizance of all my actions, or no such thing. On a score of such questions my natural light does not enable me to pronounce so as to justify me in wrangling with you about them. On all such points, I am just as impotent to form an independent opinion as on the evidences of Christianity — though I have some shrewd guesses about the contradictions among your theories. I am a plain man; I have no more time or ability to enter into these subtleties, than into the deep critical questions which you say are involved in the investigation of the Truth of the Gospel. I confess that one of my chief arguments, though not the only one, is drawn from authority; from what they say who have, as I believe, gone thoroughly into all these matters; and I am puzzled to know why I should rather believe you when you tell me that the Gospel is false than them when they tell me it is true. I cannot conceive that the original authors of Christianity had any motives to deceive the world, and as little why these defenders of it should deceive me. As to knowledge and character, I cannot, for the life of me, say that Bolingbroke is worthier of my attention than Butler; Tom Paine than Paley; Voltaire than Pascal; Hobbes than Locke. But pray don't suppose that Authority is my only or chief reason for belief. No, I believe because I cannot help it; as I read the Gospels and the Epistles, in spite of many things nature does not like, I can't help believing them true. They are so stamped with honesty and guileless simplicity —with such an inimitable air of truth, that if they lie, Nature herself has lied, and deceived I must be. As I read Paul, as I see his candour, his pathos, his magnanimity, his noble charity, his loving, burning, earnest words, I cannot but believe what he says. Nor is that all ;- I feel that the doctrines are so beyond human invention, and so unlikely to be invented, if not beyond it -the morality so pure and elevated the appeals to my spiritual consciousness so profound, that I cannot believe the Gospel false. Nor is that all myriads of us will cry, and it is the most

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resistless argument of all, 'You may talk on for ever, but we have seen, have felt, the transforming power of Christianity "We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen." For the reasons detailed in the last few letters, I, for one, fully believe that the assault on Christianity will be lost time. What I think you ought to do, I will now show you. As to Christianity, leave it alone, to do its worst or its best.

LETTER XCV.

To the Same.

Yours truly,

R. E. H. G.

My dear Friend,

And now, leaving Christianity to its own devices, let us consider the system of religious truth which you say commends itself to your reason at present; I will, then, give you my promised hints for securing its currency in the world.

You tell me that you are no longer satisfied that Christianity is a preternatural and authoritative revelation; rather, that you suspect the contrary, though you frankly own dissatisfaction with the theories hitherto struck out, to account, by ordinary causes, for its origin, characteristics, and success. You say, at the same time, that you are deeply impressed with the value and importance of "Religion," as the "highest style of man;" more than ever convinced of the great truths of "Natural Religion" (as it is called), and that they ought to exercise a deep practical influence over the life; that of such truths you account these the chief: the existence of a Supreme Being, Infinite in all perfections; the necessity and duty of every rational creature's knowing, loving, obeying, and worshipping Him; the immediate access of every soul of man, without any "figment of mediation," at all times to

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