down to as Lord. To exercise hope, faith, trust in
him, seemed then an impiety. I did not mean to impute impiety to
Unitarians; still I distinctly believed that English Unitarianism
could never afford me a half hour's resting-place.

Nevertheless, from contact with this excellent person I learned how
much tenderness of spirit a Unitarian may have; and it pleasantly
enlarged my charity, although I continued to feel much repugnance
for his doctrine, and was anxious and constrained in the presence of
Unitarians. From the same collision with him, I gained a fresh insight
into a part of my own mind. I had always regarded the Gospels (at
least the three first) to be to the Epistles nearly as Law to Gospel;
that is, the three gospels dealt chiefly in _precept_, the epistles
in _motives_ which act on the affections. This did not appear to me
dishonourable to the teaching of Christ; for I supposed it to be a
pre-determined development. But I now discovered that there was a
deeper distaste in me for the details of the human life of Christ,
than I was previously conscious of--a distaste which I found out, by
a reaction from the minute interest felt in such details by my new
friend. For several years more, I did not fully understand how and why
this was; viz. that _my religion had always been Pauline_. Christ was
to me the ideal of glorified human nature: but I needed some dimness
in the portrait to give play to my imagination: if drawn too sharply
historical, it sank into something not superhuman, and caused a
revulsion of feeling. As all paintings of the miraculous used to
displease and even disgust me from a boy by the unbelief which they
inspired; so if any one dwelt on the special proofs of tenderness and
love exhibited in certain words or actions of Jesus, it was apt to
call out in me a sense, that from day to day equal kindness might
often be met. The imbecility of preachers, who would dwell on such
words as "Weep not," as if nobody else ever uttered such,--had always
annoyed me. I felt it impossible to obtain a worthy idea of Christ
from studying any of the details reported concerning him. If I
dwelt too much on these, I got a finite object; but I yearned for an
infinite one: hence my preference for John's mysterious Jesus. Thus my
Christ was not the figure accurately painted in the narrative, but one
kindled in my imagination by the allusions and (as it were) poetry of
the New Testament. I did not wish for vivid historica