e we
can gain the clue to the interpretation of his works. But if we wish
further to derive moral instruction from him, the biographical mode of
study becomes even more necessary. For the notion of freedom as the ground
of responsibility is now superadded; and the story of his life is the sole
means for such an apprehension of the causes of his heart-struggles as
shall enable us to take the gauge of his moral character, and appropriate
the lessons derivable from the study of it.

Indeed biographical notices, if they could be extended compatibly with the
compass of the subject, would be the most instructive and vivid mode of
presenting alike the facts relating to scepticism and their
interpretation. Such memoirs are not wanting, and are among the most
touching in literature. The sketch which Strauss has given of his early
friend and fellow student Maerklin,(113) gradually surrendering one
cherished truth after another, until he doubted all but the law of
conscience; then devoting himself in the strength of it with unflinching
industry to education; until at last he died in the dark, without belief
in God or hope, cheered only by the consciousness of having tried to find
truth and do his duty:--the sad tale, told by two remarkable biographers,
of Sterling,(114) doubting, renouncing the ministry, yet thirsting for
truth, and at last solacing himself in death by the hopes offered by the
Bible, to the eternal truths of which his doubting heart had always
clung:--the memoir of the adopted son of our own university, Blanco
White,(115) a mind in which faith and doubt were perpetually waging war,
till the grave closed over his truth-searching and care-worn spirit:--the
confessions of one of our own sons of the successive "phases of
faith"(116) through which his soul passed from evangelical Christianity to
a spiritual Deism, a record of heart-struggles which takes its place among
the pathetic works of autobiography, where individuals have unveiled their
inner life for the instruction of their fellow-men:--all these are
instances where the great moral and spiritual problems that belong to the
condition of our race may be seen embodied in the sorrowful experience of
individuals. They are instances of rare value for psychological study in
reference to the history of doubt; sad beacons of warning and of guidance.
Accordingly, in the history of free thought we must not altogether neglect
the spiritual biography of the doubter, though o